Using the aesthetic theories of the Schlegel brothers, Novalis and Schelling, this thesis examines aesthetic and scientific discourse as it appears in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Serapion Brethren and considers to what extent Hoffmann appropriates early Romantic thought or distances himself from it. Faced with the philistinism and maliciousness of others and with his own interior demons, the Serapiontic artist pursues both a social and psychic ideal. Dreamers, madmen, children or those who are under the influence of magnetidm, Hoffmann’s characters are all seeking recognition and an identity. Polymorphous and heterogeneous, centered on artistic interaction and on the work of creation and reception, The Serapion Brethren is a type of ‘total work of art’ before its time in which the sciences and the arts come together.
