Jean Paul, Reader of Goethe: Walt and Vult, or The Twins as a Transitional Novel

Abstract

Walt and Vult, or The Twins by Jean Paul (1805) can be read as a response to Wilhelm Meister (1795/1796), as the work of an irreverent reader who oscillates between homage and parody. Written ten years after the publication of “The Years of Apprenticeship”, Jean Paul’s novel still contains elements of illustrated literature that send the reader back to literary models of the past, but these are mixed with transgressive procedures that outline a new form, very close to Schlegelian projections of what the romantic novel should be. The result of this lack of definition is a hybrid work, in which materials of a heterogeneous nature and belonging to different stages do not manage to merge in a harmonious way. The aim of this work is to analyse the way in which Walt and Vult, or The Twins dialogues with the Goethean Bildungsroman, and what strategies its author uses to express a more ambiguous and obscure vision of Bildung.