SOURCE: "Die schöne Müllerin," in Wilhelm Müller's Lyrical Song-Cycles: Interpretations and Texts, The University of North Carolina Press, 1970, pp. 8-34.

In the following excerpt, Cottrell examines the themes and images found in Die schöne Müllerin [The Pretty Maid of the Mill, showing how Millier uniquely fashioned the German folk song tradition to portray his own sense of the meaning of life and death as a process toward self-knowledge.]

The final version of the song-cycle Die schöne Müllerin, published in 1820, consists of twenty-three poems which are framed by a prologue and an epilogue. This frame will not concern us here. The cycle represents the last stage in a long development, the details of which have been described by Bruno Hake.¹ The opera of Paesiello La Molinaria (1788), which had appeared on the German stage as Die schöne Müllerin, provided the source...