SOURCE: "Immermann's Muinchhausen and the Post-Romantic Predicament," in Kentucky Foreign Language Quarterly, Vol. X, No. 3, 1963, pp. 145-48.

In the following essay, Jennings qualifies the common critical conception that Immermann intended to parody German Romanticism in Munchhausen.

A common interpretation of Immermann's quixotic and mercurial protagonist Muinchhausen (a distant relative, as he claims, of the old liar-baron) is that he is intended as a parody of the romantic artist, the subjective visionary and dreamer who can no longer persist in a prosaic age.

As is the case with most claims to an "overcoming" of romanticism, this interpretation represents a half-truth. The most obvious counter-argument is that Munchhausen's tales are not so much parodies or exaggerations of the romantic technique as they are travesties of the inane journalistic factualities that seemed to be taking the place of idealistic and imaginative literature. His "lies" are truths deprived of their essence, facts...