Annette von Droste-Hülshoff:- A Woman of Letters in a Period of Transition

The aim of this study has been to give a new analytic assessment of the work of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff within its European historical and literary framework, taking into account informed literary opinion from the Droste's time up to the present day. The first half of the Nineteenth Century was an age of transition, of ideological and social change. This climate of change is perceptible in her work. The authoress has attempted also to trace Annette's own «Übergang» from the derivative to the original. She anticipated some ideas and practice of Naturalism, while never losing her feeling for the preternatural and inexplicable in the universe and the human psyche.