Charakteristik: the masterpiece of literary criticism

Abstract

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) regarded the Charakteristik as a masterpiece of literary criticism in which both the extrinsic and intrinsic aspects of the literary work should be taken into consideration and understood as an unity. According to this theory, the task of literary criticism was to reveal the tendency and the ideal of the work of literature through the observation and understanding of several aspects which belonged either to the letter or to the spirit of the work, or that might even transit between these two realms. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce and to discuss some aspects of Schlegels Philosophy of Characterization, as it is exposed in his Fragmente zur Poesie und Literatur, the Literary Notebooks, (1793-1803), and to demonstrate how the German critic concretized his theory in his Meister-Aufsatz, the Characterization of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, from 1798.