The Translator and the Fairies. Christoph Martin Wieland’s Oberon and the British Romantics.

The aim of this paper is to reconsider the influence that the works of Christoph Martin Wieland, a German author so deeply influened by English literature reciprocally had on some British writers, by focusing on two important aspects of the Romantic re-shaping and re-definition of the distinctive character of German and English national identities: Shakespeare's work and the "fairy way of writing". The paper will show how Wieland's treatment of these elements, defying the "nationalization" of the imaginary, transforms them in the currency of a truly transnational cultural exchange that moves accross national boundaries, and undermines the very categories on which the Romantic attempt to shape national identity is based.