Crafting flesh, crafting the self: violence and identity in early nineteenth-century German literature

The divided self: "We think of nothing excellent without thinking of its distorted opposite": Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion -- Trauma and the self: "To find a home only in the deep scars of my wounds": Clemens Brentano's Godwi -- The self and systems of power: "To recognize the culprit by his wound": Heinrich von Kleist's The broken pitcher -- Violence and the tenacity of the self: "I am something, that's the misery of it!": Georg Büchner's Danton's death.;This book analyzes wounded human bodies in early nineteenth-century German literature and traces their connection to changing philosophical models of the self. It argues that literary representations and metaphors of violence against the body not only offer powerful physical referents for a concept of self, but that they also define violence as an integral component of the self.