ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some evidence for the relevance of the figures of inversion and reversal, both of which touch upon poetic imagination, for Sternean humour as a form of literary scepticism in the work of the great German Shandeans Jean Paul and Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel. The similarities to Sterne are of course readily noticeable, in the central topic of birth and the course of life in Tristram Shandy. The literary form of inversion proves to be an essential facet of Romantic subjectivity. Romantic-modern art involves a double inversion; it is a kind of double check: with true humour, art triumphs over transience (vanitas); it is primarily capable of repre sent ing the substantial in the momentary and transitory, in supposed insignificance. The descent into hell as the requirement for the ascent to heaven, Merops's backwards flight to heaven, dancing on its head, and drinking the nectar upwards; castling, or hysteron proteron: the inversion of given relations is expressed.
