SOURCE: "The Lost Shadow of Peter Schlemihl," in The German Quarterly, Vol. XLVII, No. 4, November, 1974, pp. 567-84.

In the following essay, Flores examines the magical and realistic elements of Peter Schlemihl, viewing the novel as a complex study of its protagonist's alienation from society.

Critics have recognized Chamisso's Peter Schlemihls Wundersame Geschichte to be an odd work—one for which the categories of literary history and criticism may seem to be adequate, yet one which seems to elude those categories in a somewhat disturbing way. Most critics have noted that the work, like other Romantic tales, is mixed in its modality: it combines the paraphernalia of magic (mandragora, a bird's nest, seven-league boots) with a "realistic" and quasi-autobiographical depiction of the exigencies of bourgeois life. Such is the point of departure, for example of Oskar Walzel's commentary.¹ Again, Stuart Atkins notes Grillparzer's remark that the story is "schlecht...