'Sie haben mich Nach und Nach verstuemmelt': The wounded body and the literary self in works of Goethe, Hoelderlin, and Buechner

This dissertation examines the image of the wounded human body in the Goethezeit and details how the metaphor of the fragmented body defines disparate notions of the self. Close readings of Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen (1773), Holderlin's Hyperion (1797/99), and Buchner's Dantons Tod (1835) as well as of related works by each author yield original interpretations and situate various notions of the self against and within post-modern (particularly deconstructive and psychoanalytic) concepts of the self.; The wound in Gotz highlights the conflict between "Gehalt" and "Gestalt" and thus points to the dichotomous structure which underlies both the drama and Goethe's notion of the self. The drama catalogs failed attempts to overcome this dichotomy; healing the wound subverts dichotomy and ultimately leads to the demise of the self. For Goethe, the self must maintain a constant tension between "Gehalt" and "Gestalt," fragmentariness and wholeness.; Holderlin's understanding of the self in Hyperion depends on a Fichtean notion of reflective consciousness split into poles of subject and object. The narrating Hyperion represents this split as the wounded body. Following a model of infinite approximation between diametrical opposites, he presents healing of the subject/object split as possible only in aesthetic experience, thus asserting an aesthetically-engaged, dialectical self.; For Buchner, however, the image of the wounded body disrupts the totality and autonomy of both the self and society. The fundamental experience of the self for Buchner is wounding and fragmentation. I draw upon Lacanian psychoanalysis (through Slavoj Zizek) to discuss Buchner's notion of the self--a notion which unlike Goethe and Holderlin allows for disruptive interjections of the unconscious.; The dissertation traces the transformation of notions of the self during the Goethezeit, contrasting the ability of the metaphor of the wound to sustain three radically different notions of the self in a single literary epoch. In relying on the fragmented physical body to define the self, these authors highlight the sense of inadequacy resulting from a definition of the self restricted to language and consciousness; the self longs for a corporeal referent to fortify its sense of existence.