Until the 1950s most critics tended to treat Eichendorff as a kind of light-hearted raconteur who spun tales of warmth and action having little aesthetic or philosophical depth. Critics who read his works more closely then began to view him as a thinker whose works concealed, behind seemingly simpler constructs, profound insights into the human condition. Marxist critics were especially drawn to Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing, finding in that ostensibly frivolous novella a romantic critique of capitalism.
This work, the first thorough survey of Eichendorff criticism in any language, and written for the general reader of literature as well as the specialist, is a must for college and university libraries.