Veiled Narratives: Novalis'Heinrich von Ofterdingenas a Staging of Orientalist Discourse

Abstract

This examination of representations of the Orient in Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen mediates early romantic aesthetics, normative mainstream and feminist readings of the novel, and post‐colonial theory. The novel is often read as a foundation myth that depicts the genesis of the romantic poet out of the encounter with the feminine, which appears as a spiritual anchor and guarantor of poetic fulfillment. The article reveals a systematic juxtaposition of the feminine with the Orient at all crucial junctures of the developmental narrative of the poet, which suggests that this variant of Romantic neue Mythologie is vaster in scope than normally believed, as the novel is both the myth of a poet and the myth of a nation. Accordingly, the dual nature of the encounter with the other is suggestive of a double‐contest, one addressing the issue of sexual difference, the other the cultural difference of Occident and Orient.