This dissertation examines discourses on inheritance and their impact on the concept of the self. Drawing on biological treatises (Haller, Wolff, Blumenbach, Erasmus Darwin), works of fiction (La Roche, Goethe, Jean Paul Richter, E.T.A. Hoffmann) and legal sources (Code Civile, Allgemeines Landrecht), I argue that inheritance became a key concept of Modernity because it provides a paradigm that connects reference to the past with the promise of an open future. I show that after the failure of the revolutionary project---which had been defined by a rejection of heritage and a commitment to a contract-based community of fatherless brothers---one can observe a new interest in genealogy. Biology, which was just emerging as an independent discipline, became a driving force of this advancement. I investigate how biological tropes crossed over to literary discourses providing a matrix for formal and thematic problems. However, I do not argue that literature became a simple depiction and application of new biological findings. Rather, I show how literature started to redefine itself as an independent sphere shaped by its critical stance towards the positivistic claims of the sciences.
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