Locating the romantic subject

Gail Newman's extensive introduction locates Novalis in the sociohistorical and philosophical context of the late eighteenth century, focusing on the theory of the subject that emerged at that time. She outlines the relationship of psychoanalytic and literary interpretation from the Freudian to the French to her own Winnicottian perspective. In the body of the text she provides a detailed and thorough analysis of Novalis's principal narrative text, the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1801).