Literarische Irrenhausbesuche zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik

The presented study focuses on a specific type of text in which the narrator visits an asylum, is guided through it by the local doctor, and is told the stories of individual patients. These texts originate from the period between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. A similar narrative scheme (where the narrator is in hell instead of an asylum) can be found in world literature from antiquity to the early modern period. The authors of these texts generally wanted to express their own social critiques and other views, or they used such texts to address personal conflicts. These literary asylums also represent a form of critical engagement with the world and society, as various problematic phenomena the authors wanted to highlight are placed in them. During the observed period, however, there was a gradual reformulation of the critiques that the authors aimed to express through these texts, eventually leading to the complete emptying of the original function of this type of literature. The presented work aims to capture these changes based on selected recurring motifs and place them in a broader culturalhistorical context.