Los relatos fantásticos de interior en las producciones literarias de E.T.A. Hoffmann y Ambrose G. Bierce. Un estudio comparativo.

Abstract

This essay tries to confirm the world-wide projection of the German writer, E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), through his sure influence in the indoor fantastic stories of the North-American writer, Ambrose G. Bierce (1842-1914?). E. T. A. Hoffmann conceives the fantastic in a subjective way, and Bierce in an objective one. Nevertheless, in those stories in which the action takes place within a closed space, both authors express, by means of a very defined symbology, the intimate anguish of the human being, that is, the intima te anguish of themselves. We think that this shared literary characteristic is the consequence of Bierce's direct reading of Hoffmann's tales or Bierce's good knowledge of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, the great admirer and pupil of Hoffmann in United States. Our essay analyzes the indoor fantastic stories of both writers to show those affinities.