The Utopia of the Moment of Genius: Literary Improvisation in Hans Christian Andersen's Novel The Improviser (1835)

Contributors

Program

Improvisation is not only found in music. Hans Christian Andersen, now famous worldwide for his fairy tales, wrote his first novel in 1835 about a Roman boy who grows up to become a master of literary improvisation. The public celebrates him for his spontaneous, atmospheric, in-the-moment verse. The lecture explores the art of poetic improvisation as Andersen himself experienced it in Italy. What is the special performative dimension of literary improvisation compared to musical improvisation? How does the more popular art of improvisation relate to the bourgeois literature of its time? And what utopian poetology does Andersen create on the basis of the art of improvisation?

Prof. Dr. Joachim Grage is Professor of Scandinavian Studies (Modern Literature and Cultural Studies) at the University campus Freiburg and Deputy Director of the FZM. He researches Scandinavian literatures from the 17th century to the present day, with a focus on the relationship between literature and music.

The lecture is part of the FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous Creativity in Art and Everyday Life".

In the summer semester of 2026, the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center(FZM) is organizing a lecture series on the topic of improvisation from various specialist perspectives and facets. In addition to ten lectures by members of the FZM and guests, which will take place on Wednesdays in the lecture hall of the University's Musicology Department, events with improvisational-musical performances or cross-genre performances are planned on five Monday evenings at the College of Music, two of which are part of the FZM event series "musik + wissen".

Here you will find the short program (pdf) (this file is not barrier-free) with all individual dates of the public lecture series.

The Freiburg Research and Teaching Center (FZM) is a joint institution of the College of Music and the University campus Freiburg with the aim of mutual networking in music-related research and teaching.