Heinrich von Kleist

The works of the major German author Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) have inspired many contradictory interpretations. This study offers a new perspective in which the visual and theatrical features are emphasized alongside Kleist's familiar and all-pervasive irony and paradox. His complex dramas and prose tales are here approached principally via literary - or pre-literary - features displayed in Kleist's early letters. The problem of artistic illusion, a main concern in the letters, can also be given due attention in discussions of the works, in many of which it is thematized.