Female Characters In Novalis’s Novels

Heinrich von Ofterdingen, by the German Romantic writer Novalis, creates many female characters that combine such poetic elements as love, affections and sexuality. By portraying those characters, Novalis intended to express his political ideal for the Golden Age he lived in:a poetic Utopia based on love and poetry. Poetry, besides an ontological existence, serves as a meaas of salvation and enhancement of human soul. The poet, therefore, embodies the perfectness of human nature. The poetic women characters represent Novalis’s ideal, by means of poetry, to cure society of its vices and shape people’s inner world so as to restore the unity and infiniteness of human nature.The present study has investigated the female characters in Heinrich von Ofterdingen by employing such methods as social research, text close reading and comparative research, with the aim of disclosing the authorial political ideal behind those characters. We hold that Heinrich’s mother symbolizes the companion of the hero on his journey of life, Princess of Atlantik the medium of poetry and Zulima, occidental culture. Besides, the research makes a focused analysis of the images of Mathilde the beloved and the blue flower, which shed light on Novalis’s ideal of human nature:the unity of poetry, philosophy, love and sensibility. Compared with Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, which explores the social position for the artist, Heinrich von Ofterdingen emphasizes the development of the artist’s inner world. Therefore, the present thesis has compared the different women characters respectively created by Goethe and Novalis, disclosed the cultural and literary factors accounting for the differences and commented on the social and literary significance. The thesis consists of five parts. The Introduction part makes a literature review on Heinrich von Ofterdingen and discusses the significance of the present study. The second chapter introduces the social background and Novalis’s life experience as well as their influences on his writing. In the third chapter, we investigate how Novalis has both inherited and betrayed Goethe. In the fourth chapter, the thesis makes a detailed study of the women characters created by Novalis by reading the text closely in the light of Novalis’s role theory. It is found that those female characters refer to each other and to Novalis’s political ideal as well. The last part summarizes the relationship between the female characters and Novalis’s political ideal.