This essay gives an account of how the critical analysis of the great modernisation processes that interested European society at the end of the 18th century originates in German culture, through the elaboration of new temporal paradigms based on a critical revision of the traditional model of progressive and linear development. In Novalis' work, the tension towards the future looks back to the memory of the Middle Ages as an antidote to the sense of loss of the present, which seems to be fallen in the indefiniteness of an empty time. What prevails in Heine's lyrics, on the other hand, is the cyclical representation of time as revolved around itself and tragically blocked in a continuous repetition of abuses and forms of exploitation.
