German novelist and humorist whose works were immensely popular in the first 20 years of the 19th century. His pen name, Jean Paul, reflected his admiration for the French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Jean Paul’s writing bridged the shift in literature from the formal ideals of Weimar Classicism to the intuitive transcendentalism of early Romanticism.
Jean Paul’s novels are peculiar combinations of sentiment, irony, and humour expressed in a highly subjective and involuted prose style that is marked by rapid transitions of mood. His books are formless, lacking in action, and studded with whimsical digressions, but to some extent they are redeemed by the author’s profuse imagination and equal capacity for realistic detail and dreamlike fantasy. One favourite theme is the tragicomic clash between the soul’s infinite aspirations and the trivial restrictions of everyday life. Jean Paul greatly influenced his contemporaries by his simple piety, humanity and warmth, his religious attitude toward nature, and his beguiling mixture of sentimentality, fantasy, and humour. After the mid-19th century the unevenness and undisciplined form of his novels began to detract rather than add to his reputation, but the deep humanity of his finest works has preserved them from oblivion.
He died on 14 November 1825 at 8 PM in Bayreuth.
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