From, Hans-Dieter. Verfehlte and erfullte Natur. Variationen fiber ein Thema im Werk Heinrich von Kleists. Epistemata: Wurzburger wissenschaftliche Schriften, Reihe Literaturwissenschaft, 296. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2000. 416 pp. DM 98.00 paperback. In his study Verfehlte and erfute Natur, Hans-Dieter Fronz traces the theme of nature in leist's ceuvre, including individual prose and dramatic works, letters, and theoretical-philosophical writings, and investigates the theme within the context of the developing views on nature throughout the eighteenth century. In the first half of the eighteenth century, nature began to be viewed as the telos of humankind, and breaking from the allegorical representations and understanding of nature during the Baroque period, Fronz argues, [wird] mit Tugend and Weisheit assoziiert and als vollkommenes Muster des asthetisch Schonen gepriesen (15). During the second half of the eighteenth century, nature was viewed in stark contrast with and in diametrical opposition to the declining aristocracy and its courtly institutions and the developing city. The period of Storm and Stress added other new dimensions to nature: the familial and bourgeois spheres. The literary idolization of nature reached its zenith around 1800 when leist began to write. Fronz suggests that during the Goethezeit in the sense of human nature, was a normative rather than descriptive term, and writes die menschliche im emphatischen Sinn des Worts, darin sie mehr ist als bloBe Triebnatur, ist dem Menschen nach der Vorstellung der Zeit weniger gegeben als vielmehr aufgegeben (25). Fronz organizes his study into four sections which correspond to Kleist's general interpretation and portrayal of nature in his writings. He begins with a chapter on Kleist's letters from 1800-02, which signal his turn to literature. These letters reflect Kleist's still naive, yet developing conception of and how it was firmly rooted in the literary and philosophical traditions of the late eighteenth century. He notes that Kleist's use of the term has many meanings, ranging from Wirklichkeit to the Wesen or Naturell of an individual, and these variants can be differentiated even further (41). In the second chapter on Ieist's early works, Fronz argues that a Pervertierung der menschlichen Natur (17) characterizes Kleist's perception of nature. The motif of paradise and occurs throughout Kleist's writings, and in Familie Schroffenstein, it is a metaphor for the fall from and perversion of nature. The corrupting of nature is much less direct in Robert Guiskard, and is signaled symbolically by the plague, which disrupts and destroys humans and their relationships. …