Patterns of poetic absorption in German lyric poetry in the age of Herder (1750-1784)

Within the theoretical context of the medial revolution in mid-eighteenth century Germany, this dissertation examines in a series of close-readings of German lyric poetry how patterns of poetic absorption affect the emergence of both lyric subjectivity and social group formation. Using Michael Fried's category of absorption, this work analyses the manner and extent to which poetic techniques of exclusion were instrumentalized by various German poets (Klopstock, Herder, the Göttinger Hainbund poets, Goethe) to function as models of social cohesion at four distinct levels: at a personal, intra-subjective level; in the formation of inter-subjective amorous intimacy; within circles of friends; and in the constitution of state and folk. Additionally, this dissertation addresses these poems' shift in medial modus within the framework of the emergence of the modern concept of authenticity and argues that the modern concept of authenticity can be read as emerging in the literary application of Shaftesbury's "method of soliloquy.".