ABSTRACT Specialization, or the division of labour, defined European economies around 1800. The cultural response of German literary writers such as Goethe, Schiller, and the Early German Romantics to the conceptual nexus of consumption and production is well known. But other canonical writers, such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, have been misunderstood in relation to classical-cum-Romantic thought. This essay offers an overview of contemporary authors’ attitudes towards specialization, and to consumer culture around 1800 specifically. It then embeds a close reading of Hoffmann’s story Der Sandmann (1816) into that historical context. Consumerism is the source of Hoffmann’s creativity and becomes the subject of his critique. But it is not the counter-concept of his art. Hoffmann’s literary works achieve their critique of consumption through an immanent form of irony that is enacted within literature as a self-conscious commodity, without transcendence or some theoretical (Hegelian) overcoming. Thus the final part of this article asks how we might describe Hoffmann’s position theoretically, drawing critically upon the twentieth-century thought of Guy Debord.

中文翻译：

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1800年左右的消费，创造力和作者：ETA Hoffmann案

摘要专业化或分工定义了1800年左右的欧洲经济。歌德，席勒和早期德国浪漫主义者等德国文学作家对消费和生产的概念联系的文化反应是众所周知的。但是，其他经典的作家，例如埃塔·霍夫曼（ETA Hoffmann），对于古典暨浪漫主义思想却被误解了。本文概述了当代作者对专业化的态度，特别是在1800年左右对消费文化的态度。然后，它将霍夫曼的故事《德·桑德曼》（Der Sandmann，1816年）的细读读入这一历史背景。消费主义是霍夫曼创造力的源泉，并成为他批评的主题。但这不是他艺术的反概念。霍夫曼的文学作品通过一种内在的讽刺形式实现了对消费的批判，这种讽刺形式在文学中被作为一种自我意识的商品而制定，没有超越性或理论上的（黑格尔主义）克服。因此，本文的最后一部分提出了批判性地借鉴了二十世纪盖伊·德博尔德思想的理论，我们该如何从理论上描述霍夫曼的立场。