Geister der Aufklärung Christoph Martin Wieland und der Gespensterdiskurs

Authors : Onur BAZARKAYA

Pages : 573-585

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Publication Date : 2017-06-20

Article Type : Other Papers

Abstract :In the 18th century, the belief in ghosts was widely spread. According to that, this topic has never been debated so grimly and persistently as in the era of Enlightenment. Christoph Martin Wieland was one of the authors who have discussed the social impact of occultism with particular intense. That has probably to do with the fact that for Wieland, an author of Enlightenment, occultists like Giuseppe Balsamo alias Cagliostro or Emanuel Swedenborg represented tendencies of Anti-Enlightenment. In a certain way Wieland defined his own intellectual standpoint by considering such characters permanently. Based on various works of the author, the question will be examined in the following article, in how far the novel Geschichte der Abderiten (1773-1779) reflects the contemporary discourse about ghosts in a literary way.
Keywords : Christoph Martin Wieland, Enlightenment, Ghosts, Cagliostro