Jean Paul

Biography

Born into 1763 from a father teacher and organist, it enters in 1781 to the university of Leipzig to follow studies of theology there. It publishes its first satirical parts. Difficult period (death of his/her father and commits suicide of its brother, financial problems). In 1787 it finds a station of tutor who allows him to improve his material situation.

Following a crisis during which it seems to him to come very close to death, it writes the novel the invisible cabin which breaks with the satirical style of its first parts. It adopts for the occasion the pseudonym of Jean Paul in homage to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This novel as well as the following establish its reputation as an author.

In 1796 it is established with Weimar, capital arts person of the time, where it côtoie Goethe and Schiller. In 1800 it goes to Berlin where it meets Karoline Meyer which it marries the following year. It binds friendship with the brothers Schlegel, Tieck and Fichte. Its popularity is then very large.

Its following novels, Titan and Flegeljahre , however receive a reception more mitigated. In 1804 Jean Paul and his wife leave Berlin to be established finally with Bayreuth where they carry out more withdrawn life. With died of his son in 1821 it gives up the drafting of its last novel, the Comet . The last years of its life are remembered by the disease which carries it in 1825.

Work

The work of Jean Paul comprises many sometimes contradictory aspects. Admiror of Laurence Tern, it shares his taste for imagination, the digressions, the satire, but also for sentimentalism. To these characteristics typical topics of the German romanticism are added: fantastic, mysticism, taste of the tragedy. Lastly, its praises of the middle-class life and resignation connect it with the style Biedermeier.

Its style is characterized by the accumulation of periphrases and ironic convolutions and frequent winks to the reader. Its novels take again the typical structure of the Bildungsroman but multiply the labyrinthian digressions and junctions. It approaches in that its contemporary Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann.

Jean Paul was a very great popular success of alive sound, although some critical reproached him its pedantry of autodidact and his humor scoffer. He had a considerable influence on the type-setter Robert Schumann. The work of Jean Paul fell today into a relative safe lapse of memory in Germany where it was redécouvert by avant-gardists authors such as Arno Schmidt.

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