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Against the dominant psychoanalytical view of the recent literary studies
which use the Freudian terminology to explain the narcissistic appearance in novels,
this article attributes the various repeating of Ovid’s myth of Narciss in the German
S. Li ()
Universität Göttingen, Seminar für Deutsche Philologie
Göttingen, Deutschland
E-Mail: lishuangzhi@nju.edu.cn
56 S. Li
Literature around 1800 and 1900 to different kinds of aesthetic notions about literature
itself. It argues that the literary narration of the boy seeing and loving his
own youthful beauty encodes the reclamation of aesthetic autonomy as well as its
problems. The concept of the eternal youth expressed in Friedrich Schlegels novel
Lucinde can be connected with his idea of the Universalpoesie which reflects itself
endlessly and stays constantly open for further development. In contrast, the novels
of Andrian von Leopold, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann which emphasize
the failure of the love and the tragic death of the male protagonist symbolize
the critical reflection of the aestheticism. Thus, the analyses open up an alternative
view of the aesthetic significations of the literary texts retelling the story of Narciss.