ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that August Wilhelm Schlegel's notion of irony may be seen as a version of the sympathetic imagination which does not merely describe the ironic author as a Protean being. The shift in the theory of irony effected by Schlegel is usually described as the move from a rhetorical to a philosophical concept of irony. The chapter devotes to the practical effects of this irreconcilability of contradictions and to the way in which they transform the concepts of the reader, the author and the work. Incomprehensibility is an instance of interruption—a practical demonstration of which is to be found in his review of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Schlegel's review of Meister is a celebrated instance of Romantic literary criticism, and exemplifies the essentially Romantic tendency to judge a work of art as a consistent, organic whole. In the case of 'Prinzessin Brambilla', duplication can be found in every aspect of the text.
