The Life and Opinions of Kater Murr (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffman
- First Published: 1819
- Type of Work: Kunstlerroman
- Time of Work: The late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries
- Setting: Siegharsweiler (a town), Sieghartshof (a court), and the Abbey of Kanzheim—all in Germany
- Principal Characters: Murr, Johannes Kreisler, Furst Irenaus, Meister Abraham Liscov, Benzon, Julia, Princess Hedwiga
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: Dogs, Love or romance, Nineteenth century, Music or musicians, Poetry or poets, Cats, Eighteenth century, Composers, Germany or German people, Biography, Animals
- Locales: Germany
The Novel
E.T.A. Hoffmann, who introduces himself as the editor of Murr’s manuscript, informs the reader in the preface that this novel consists of the reminiscences of Murr the cat, interrupted at seventeen places by pages from an anonymous biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler which was used by Murr as scratch paper and sent to the printer by mistake. While the Murr material runs in a straightforward if interrupted chronology, the Kreisler biography (which constitutes more than half of the novel), supposedly torn at random from the book by Murr, lies like a...
[The entire page is 2430 words long]
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