The daemonic in the novel Eduard Allwills Briefsammlung’s by Friedrich Jacobi

Abstract

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's literary contributions were largely reduced to the philosophical squabbles in which the author participated. However, Jacobi published two important novels which in addition to the good reception they received at the time also c onversed strongly with the trends of their era. This article aims to analyze how the first of these novels, Eduard Allwills Briefsammlung , might be seen as an important contribution to modern literature and to the establishment of trends and structures whi ch were later explored from romanticism on up to contemporary literature. According to our analysis, Jacobi's novel is marked by a strong trait of negativity, and this element is inserted through the main character, Eduard Allwill. By emulating genres such as the epistolary novel or the philosophical novel, Jacobi uses this negativity as a key which produces effects of suspension and subversion in the constitution of a new kind of novel. Our analysis seeks to demonstrate how this negativity is realized thro ugh the concept of the daemonic, inherited from philosophy, and then converted into one of the main components of modern literature.