Description

Abstract:

The Nachtwachen von Bonaventura 1804/50, an enigmatic, much debated, anonymous work, originally highly regarded, variously interpreted and ascribed to leading German writers of the Age of Goethe, among them Jean Paul, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Brentano, even Goethe himself, but eventually to August Klingemann, a prolific author of long-forgotten novels and dramas. Since then it is widely regarded as trivial literature.
Time, place and acting persons are vague and undefined, but the text is filled with proper names. Having followed their context I found striking parallels with the thought and intellectual pursuits of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Goettingen and influential Late Enlightenment satirist(see "Eine Untersuchung der Eigennamen in den Nachtwachen von Bonaventura und bei Georg Christoph Lichtenberg", MA Thesis, UF, 1984). Lichtenberg was also a leading authority on English culture and literature, and the correspondences between his writings, the Nachtwachen and the English enlightenment satirists led me to the conclusion that the Nachtwachen are a Menippean Satire, written by Lichtenberg or else someone commanding the same exceptional intellectual horizon and commitment

Dissertation Discovery Company and University of Florida are dedicated to making scholarly works more discoverable and accessible throughout the world. This dissertation, "The Influence of the English Eighteenth-century Satirists on G. Ch. Lichtenberg and the Nachtwachen. Von Bonaventura" by Linde Katritzky, was obtained from University of Florida and is being sold with permission from the author. A digital copy of this work may also be found in the university's institutional repository, IR@UF. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation.