German Romance - Specimens of its Chief Authors. Volume 1: Musaeus and La Motte Fouque (Hardcover, Facsimile of 1827 ed)

This reprint again makes available Carlyle's famous translation of leading figures of German Romanticism. The book includes Musaeus' "Dumb Love," "Libussa," and "Melechsala," and La Motte Fouque's story "Aslauga's Knight." Although Carlyle's preface is pessimistic about penetrating the barrier between the Germanic and English cultures ("The dead wall, which divides us from this [German novels] as from all other provinces of German Literature, I must not dream that I have anywhere overturned"), the translations in his four-volume German Romance were of inestimable importance in the understanding and influence of German literature in the English-speaking world.