Skip Navigation



Forum for Modern Language Studies Advance Access published online on June 2, 2009
Forum for Modern Language Studies, doi:10.1093/fmls/cqp048
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
45/3/305    most recent
cqp048v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Corkhill, A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.

HEINRICH VON KLEIST'S NOTIONS OF HAPPINESS: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

Alan Corkhill

School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies
The University of Queensland
Brisbane
Queensland 4072
Australia

a.corkhill{at}uq.edu.au

  Abstract

The study charts and evaluates Heinrich von Kleist's changing attitude to happiness (Glück) during the author's short lifetime and situates this thinking in the intellectual discourses of his day. Three textual sources serve this objective: key pronouncements in Kleist's seminal treatise Aufsatz, den sichern Weg des Glücks zu finden and in letters to his fiancée, half-sister and close friends, as well as happiness tropes in the novellas Das Erdbeben in Chili and Die Marquise von O... . It will be shown that Kleist's philosophy of happiness embraces intense speculation about the ontology and teleology of happiness and the relationship of happiness to virtue ethics, especially against the background of Kantian epistemology and moral philosophy. In turn, what we might term Kleist's sociology of happiness is strongly evidenced by a preoccupation in his correspondence with issues of gendered and domestic happiness.

Key Words: von Kleist • Heinrich • happiness • moral philosophy • gender relations • German literature


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.