Aufklärung und Aufklärungskritik in Patrick Süskinds 'Das Parfum'

In the spring of 1985, a title appeared on the German book market that would quickly become a bestseller ¿ and not only in Germany. Hardly any work of contemporary German literature was as successful as Patrick Süskind's ¿Das Parfum¿ and hardly any other work was to be translated into so many languages. It spent 316 weeks on the bestseller lists and was almost unanimously celebrated by critics. Probably also because the author succeeded with his work in appealing to both an educated reading public and the lay reader. At the centre of the work, as in other Süskind works, is the character of an eccentric whose perception of the environment is severely deficient and limited to the perception of olfactory stimuli, and who, isolated from society, seeks his place in it. In this paper, the historical period reference of the work is examined and in particular the references of the text to the epoch of the Enlightenment are considered.