Der theatrale „Korridor“. Schrift und Theatralität bei E. T. A. Hoffmann. Vom textuellen Metadrama zur theatralen Narration
The Theatrical “Corridor”. Writing and Theatricality in E.T.A. Hoffmann. From Textual Metadrama to Theatrical Narration

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the question of theatricality in the literary work of E.T.A. Hoffmann. In the first section, Hoffmann’s forgotten drama publication Prinzessin Blandina will be analyzed against the backdrop of its staging problematic and its editorial insertion into a narrative frame; the outspokenly ‘undramatic’ play will be discussed as a metadramatic text and as an early theatrical, formally dramatic variant of the famous later capriccio Prinzessin Brambilla. The discussion emphasizes the non-dramatic, specifically textual elements of Hoffman’s drama publication. In the second section, the article will turn the question of theatricality around by focusing on the scenic, theatrical elements in Hoffmann’s narrative texts. Besides some other short examples, the analysis will in particular concentrate on Hoffmann’s tale Don Juan, which evokes a staging of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s acclaimed opera Don Giovanni. The tale features the motif of a “corridor” as a tunnel between two worlds and as a liminal zone of transgression and confusion. This corridor becomes an image of theatricality in Hoffmann´s work: it creates a link between scene and text, without ever leading the subject beyond the masks or to the outer world, the corridor blurs boundaries, destabilizes order. The analysis will, among other things, point to textual elements of claustrophobia, hermetism, and poetics of “explosion”. In the third and last section, the results of the first two sections will be brought together and combined with a media theoretic perspective on what will be described here as Hoffmann’s theatricality, as a corridor between writing and the performance of the unwritten.

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