Romantische Identitätskonstruktionen: Nation, Geschichte und (Auto-)Biographie: Glasgower Kolloquium der Internationalen Arnim-Gesellschaft

At the fourth colloquium of the international Arnim Society in Glasgow, the central issues were biographical and national identity, culture- and socio-political codification, and marginalization and communality. Alongside comparative studies concentrating on intertextuality, there were also a number of interdisciplinary contributions largely concerned with the historical, political, social, and cultural contexts. Among the Romantics, the crisis occasioned by the Napoleonic wars strengthened the recourse to their own literary traditions and the highly problematic (from a 20th century viewpoint) reception accorded to those traditions. Experience of other cultures (Arnim's image of England, Jews and gypsies in Arnim's works) differentiated the formation of identity on the national, communitarian, and individual plane. There is also discussion of the reasons for a shift to aesthetic identifications (as opposed to philosophical and/or political alternatives). Other case studies are devoted to the narrative construction of artistic, social, amicable, and gender-based identity.