Tautologiepoetik

Early Romanticism is widely regarded as a poetics of affirmative self-reference. Drawing on a concept of tautology derived from form and communication theory, this study offers a new perspective. Through close readings of Early Romantic texts by Tieck, Schlegel, and Brentano, it demonstrates how literary and social processes of form are conceived in relation to the negative potential of self-referential poiesis: its collapse into 'pure' self-reference. In the process, specific 'poetics of tautology' emerge that meticulously stage the tautological collapse of literature as a problem concerning the conditions of its own possibility while simultaneously reintegrating it into the creation of poetic form.