Novalis's Philosophical Fictions: An Important Chapter in the History of German Romantic Philosophy and Poetry

FAIN: HB-282146-22

James David Reid
Metropolitan State College of Denver (Denver, CO 80217-3362)

Preparation of a book interpreting the work of German Romantic philosophical poet Novalis (1772-1801) plus a one-volume selected edition of his philosophical and literary writings.

This two-pronged project offers the first comprehensive philosophical account of the German Romantic thinker Novalis that takes into consideration his work as a philosopher, poet, and natural scientist. It promises to shed light on a figure essential to the history of humanistic efforts to understand ourselves and our world and should be of value to specialists and educated laypersons alike. It provides an integrative reading that shows his late lyric poems and novels to be essential in any adequate interpretation of his philosophical achievement. Its publication goals are twofold: (1) a monograph offering the first comprehensive interpretation in English of the totality of Novalis’s oeuvre, including his poetic writings, as a sustained contribution to philosophy, centered on the idea and conditions of a philosophical system in Kant and his earliest successors, and (2) a one-volume translation of a comprehensive, carefully edited selection of Novalis’s philosophical and literary writings.