Silvia Maria Esposito

Abstract

The essay proposes an analysis of Albert Béguin’s work «L’âme romantique et le rêve». In the essay we try to clarify Beguin’s theories about the essence of Romantics’ existential pursuit, from his personal journey through the works and biographical occurrences of German preromantic and romantic authors, including Hölderlin, Novalis, Brentano, Hoffmann. According to Béguin, some of the achievements reached by these poets could be found also in French literature of XIX and XX century. The focal point of this connection is the  symbolic meaning of dream, considered as an emblematic experience of free detachment from the sterile dimension of reality, as a world specifically assigned to imagination, and a journey through the obscure lands of unconscious.

Silvia Maria Esposito (Napoli 1986) has studied Philosophy and Communication in the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. She graduated in Esthetics with professor Giampiero Moretti with a thesis concerning Albert Beguin’s life and works and she’s currently earning her Master’s Degree in Philosophy and Politics at the University of Naples.