The frame story, a series of stories presented within a narrative, has been a staple in the catalogue of literary genres ever since people started to tell tales. It enables the writer to integrate a wealth of heterogenous material and comment on contemporary events as well. German writers of the Romantic period, such as Achim von Arnim in "Der Wintergarten" (1809) and E.T.A. Hoffman in "Die Serapionsbruder" (1818-21) followed Goethe in his expansion of the frame and began to experiment with the genre, making the first significant changes to the structure of the frame story in several hundred years. Written early in his career, Arnim's work has never received the attention the author believes it deserves. It provides an early example of tendencies that become important in his later work, such as the manner in which he adapted sources from the past for the present. His frame characters try to confront the reality of the Napoleonic wars and their significance for the Germans. Unlike Arnim's "Der Wintergarten", Hoffman's Serapionssbrueder" was written near the end of his life.
In the frame conversations, Hoffman set down some of his final commentaries on major issues in German Romanticism: madness, the problems of the artist, and extra-sensory phenomena. Consequently, the frame is an important and previously neglected interpretative resource, not only for the inner stories here, but also for the major works of both Arnim and Hoffman. Vickie L. Ziegler examines these two cyclical narratives that are representative of two traditions (Armin's of Goethe and Hoffman's of Tieck) and then studies the interaction between the frames and the inner stories. She demonstrates, by means of strict and detailed textual analysis, that there are significant linkages of meaning among the frame discourses and the inner narratives. Written primarly for scholars of late 18th and 19th century German literature, this volume should also interest students of comparative literature and medievalism.