Abstract
This study is a comparative reading of the texts of Friedrich von Hardenberg
(Novalis) and Jacques Derrida. The main focus is on the importance Novalis and
Derrida accord to paradox and on the role of the Other in their texts. The introduction
considers questions ofreading and misreading, and examines the ways in which both
writers seek to complicate oppositional thinking, concluding that this is the key to
wide variations in the reception of their works. Chapter 1 deals with the philosophy
of consciousness and the paradoxical status of the absolute or the absolutely-other
('tout-autre'). The second chapter examines the opposition between philosophical
and literary writing, and the emergence of 'literary theory' in the era of German
Romanticism. Chapter 3 focuses on literature, and the ways in which it subverts
notions ofrepresentation and totality, through the strategies of nonclosure,
fragmentation and self-referentiality. The final chapter looks at similarities in the
way Novalis and Derrida articulate the interrelation between separation, language
and desire, and compares their ways of describing the structures through which we
relate to other people in love and friendship. Building on recent investigations into
the modernity of early German Romanticism, the aim of the study is not simply to
apply poststructuralist theory to an early Romantic writer, but rather to provide close
readings of selected texts in order to identify affinities between Novalis and Derrida.
As well as respect for alterity and affirmation ofparadox, there are remarkable
similarities in their perspectives on philosophy, literature and representation, and on
the interrelation between language, identity and desire.