The Self As Muse

While there are countless philosophical and psychological studies that focus on sources of the self, narcissism?the creation of an ideal image of the self and the vain attempt to merge with it?has found relatively little attention in a pre-Freudian context. The Self as Muse fills this gap by examining various aspects of narcissism and their significance for the outpouring of creativity in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century German literature. Narcissism provided an impetus for poetic production when writers expressed what they perceived as the inner workings of their soul. By showing narcissism's pervasive allure for a broad array of literary productions, the volume shows that narcissism is a constitutive force in both literary production and the construction of modern subjectivity. Yet this construction is by no means complete and invites the reader to strive toward the illusive image of an ideal.

Alexander Mathas is professor of German at the University of Oregon and author of Narcissism and Paranoia in the Age of Goethe and Der Kalte Krieg in der deutschen Literaturkritik: Der Fall Martin Walser.