Abstract

This article, through close textual analysis, compares the oral and literary dynamics of two narrative pieces: Johann Peter Hebel’s Unexpected Meeting (1811) and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Mines of Falun (1819). Against a background of their almost coterminous birth and death dates, respectively 1766-1826 and 1776-1822, and the close publication dates of these narratives, the line of argument explores the individual approaches of Hebel and Hoffmann as they flesh out the same story in completely different ways. It argues that both authors follow their own aesthetic principles, the former influenced by Enlightenment values and the latter mediating the preoccupations of German Romanticism.

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