SOURCE: "Achim von Arnim and the Romantic Grotesque," in The Germanic Review, Vol. LVIII, No. 1, Winter, 1983, pp. 21-32.

In the following excerpt, Lokke contends that Arnim's use of the grostesque in Isabella von Ägypten "represents an attack upon early nineteenth-century aesthetic expectations, rational thought and social norms through its intermingling of incongruous elements and its juxtaposition and fusion of opposites."

A side from André Breton's assertion [in his introduction to Contes Bizarres, 1933] that Achim von Arnim's contes bizarres are the finest works of prose fiction produced by either the eighteenth or the nineteenth century, critical appreciation of Arnim's fantastic tales has been virtually nonexistent until recently. This striking fact has represented an obligatory point of departure for contemporary Arnim research and has resulted in numerous surveys and summaries of negative critical response to Arnim's work. The charges aimed at Arnim are twofold and closely related: 1) that his works...