Mysticism and Sexuality. E.T.A. Hoffmann

This study aims to show that Hoffmann drew on his own psychic experiences relevant to sexuality, and that he also was writing in a broad literary tradition of roguish sexual humor and ironic portrayal of the psychology of desire that had survived to his time in -opera buffa- and comic theater generally, as well as in certain vestiges of the eighteenth-century -conte licencieux-. (In a second volume, -Part Two: Interpretations of the Tales-, this perspective will be used to provide new readings of each of Hoffmann's four-dozen tales and of his two novels.)"