Le merveilleux dans l'?uvre dramatique de Kleist

Abstract

Elements of the marvellous are a striking – and recurrent – feature in Kleist’s plays and prose fiction. The marvellous is so central to Das Kathchen von Heilbronn that it not only determines the dramatic action, but has also prompted some scholars to see this work as a fairy tale drama. This essay focuses primarily on Das Kathchen von Heilbronn, a play in which a number of key issues in Kleist-scholarship are clearly foregrounded. First, the essay explores those elements – classical, christian, heathen and popular – that the marvellous draws on, and seeks to link those same elements to the specific requirements of the fairy tale genre. The essay then turns to consider the role of the marvellous itself within the play : how it exposes the deceptive character of the world of appearance (‘Schein’), how it provokes crises of identity, how it exposes contradictions within the prevailing social norms, how it mobilises a critique of an exclusively rational view of the world, and – last but not least – how it inspires poetic creativity and the quest for truth. The final part of the essay considers how the use of the marvellous enables Kleist to address not only problems of cognition and human perception, but also the role of the unconscious in guiding human behaviour. In Das Kathchen von Heilbronn (as indeed in many of Kleist’s other plays) the marvellous serves both as a means of articulating truth and, at the same time, of calling it into question. As such it highlights the distinctive character of Kleist’s work as a whole and the difficulty of situating it within literary history.