UC Irvine

The aim of this dissertation is to consider the Athenaeum (1798-1800), the only major production of the early German romantics as a group that contained their most important writing experiments, as a work in its own right. Most approaches to the journal so far have only focused on several well-known individual contributions without considering the context of the journal and the interrelationality among major and minor voices within it. By calling into question approaches that have neglected to see the journal as a whole and treated the individual texts in isolation, I ask what the Athenaeum would look like if it is approached aesthetically as a work on its own. I do so to re-consider the essence of the journal and to show how the early romantic notion of a work of art has been put into practice. Examining three central aspects—innermost spiritual community, Bildung and Mitteilung—that are foregrounded throughout the six issues of journal as its unifying forces, I show how the Athenaeum forms as a unified whole with astonishing interrelationships among the diverse and disparate contributions within it. Bringing major and minor voices in the journal in dialogue with each other, this study shows how the Athenaeum is held together as a unity that lies in the innermost spiritual community of its authorship, in its ideal of Bildung, and in the freest communication as its principle of presentation.