Regarding the Cousin: Surveillance and Narration in Hoffmann’s Des Vetters Eckfenster

This article contributes to debates on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Des Vetters Eckfenster (1822) and city writing that take the younger cousin’s point of view into account. I adopt the term internal focalization—the reproduction of embodied perception and thoughts—from narrative theory to conduct a close reading of Hoffmann’s frame narrative. Moving away from a focus on “modernity,” I show that this formal aspect illustrates the importance of scopic regimes of control in the story, and conclude that this narrative about surveillance, intersectional public spaces, and authorship announces social change in its own right.