The lure of the linguistic

This study focuses on how Romantic speculations on the origin of language blended eighteenth-century European mystical and Enlightenment musings about language to produce lyrical and compelling depictions of its origins and development. Johann Gottlieb Fichte's essays and lectures on language and Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert's treatise on dream symbolism were pivotal in expanding the Romantic understanding of language as far more than a vehicle of everyday communication. For Fichte, language was the pinnacle of human reason; Schubert anticipated Freud's dream language theories a century later by exploring the universal and highly symbolic language of dreams.The Lure of the Linguistic is the first book to bring together the diverse strands of mystical and Enlightenment speculations on the origin of language to highlight the unique manner in which eighteenth-century thought has shaped our modern understanding of language.