The Wanderer in Nineteenth-Century German Literature

Pathbreaking examination of the prominent 19th-c. motif with an eye toward literature as social commentary. The wanderer is an indispensable part of the German cultural imaginary. The nineteenth-century prominence of the motif owes much to the self-conception of the intellectual pioneers of the day as wanderers. The motif is also a keyto interpretation of the social and cultural phenomena of a turbulent century that began with the emancipatory claims of the Enlightenment and ended in untrammeled