The article aims to analyse the philosophical content of selected aspects of the literary theory of Friedrich Schlegel - one of the initiators and main founders of the Jena Romantic school. Schlegel is primarily known as a brilliant literary critic who popularised the notion of Romantic poetry. Romantic poetry, however, is not only a fundamental concept of the new school of literary studies, but also an important element of Schlegel’s philosophy of man, describing the model of modern humanity. In this (...) paper, I assume that Schlegel's literary theory is a mirror that generates a reflection of Romantic man. In this perspective, all the main features of Romantic literature – self-consciousness, reflexivity, freedom, individuality, the striving for the infinite or organicism – in fact turn out to be attributes of its creator. (shrink)

In 1798, Friedrich Schlegel published a review of _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_, extolling Johann Wolfgang Goethe's book as a masterpiece. At the same time, he commenced work on _Lucinde_, which caused a moral scandal and was criticized widely. Here, I retrace several threads of Schlegel's novel that testify to the fact that his assessment of Goethe's work may not have been so unequivocally favorable as it might seem at first sight. When looking at _Wilhelm Meister_ through _Lucinde_'s eyes, we can see (...) that Schlegel challenges the Goethean philosophy of man, and his novel remains the only consistent record of this criticism. (shrink)