Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2006

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major Professor

Stefanie Ohnesorg

Committee Members

Jeff Mellor, Olaf Berwald

Abstract

The following thesis looks at manifestations of reflections about language as a medium for communication in the works of Novalis and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Tracing similar statements that refer to linguistic crisis and linguistic scepticism in the fictional and theoretical works of both authors, I demonstrate that it is impossible to give a clear definition of their relationship towards language. I therefore suggest that their complex relationship to language should be viewed as a shifting concept on an axis somewhere between linguistic innovation and linguistic skepticism. The selected works by Novalis (Monolog and Die Lehrlinge zu Sais) and by Hofmannsthal (Weltgeheimnis and Ein Brief) were analyzed and the results of these interpretations were incorporated into a wider context of literary and linguistic criticism focusing on the functionality of language in literature and in linguistics. An overview of current institutions practicing linguistic criticism in Germany today round up the historic account of Novalis’ and Hofmannsthals’s ambivalent relationship to their tool, language. As a result it is argued that the ever-changing nature of language can be best analyzed and described by focusing simultaneously on literary as well as non-literary accounts.

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