"I Too Am Naked": Kleist, Habermas, and the Epigrammatic Exposure of Literary Honesty

Attention to Kleist's investment in the genre of the epigram helps cast new light on his understanding of the changing status and function of artistic works. By reviewing the role his epigrams played in the peculiar circumstances that surrounded the beginning of the Phobus journal, and by considering the response to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that those epigrams present, we gain a valuable perspective on Kleist's understanding of artistic truthfulness as a concern of authors and audiences in emerging literary publics.