OF ALL HOFFMANN'S NOVELLAS that focus on the artist figure, Der Artushof (1816) is perhaps the most neglected. Critics, if they do not ignore it altogether, usually dismiss it as a peripheral work. Its apparent simplicity, together with what appears to be a conventional happy ending, may make it appear untypical of Hoffmann's oeuvre. The fact is, however, that Der Artushof raises many of the same fundamental aesthetic questions to be found in the other novellas: the motivation of the artist, his relationship to a metaphysical realm of transcendent ideas, and his role in society.

In the mid-1950s Joachim Rosteutscher wrote a biographically oriented interpretation of Hoffmann's work, emphasizing what he saw as the crucial importance of the so-called “Julia-episode” for Hoffmann's work as a whole, suggesting that just as Hoffmann could not believe that his beloved idol Julia could marry Herr Graepel, so too Traugott cannot believe that Felizitas will marry a local civil servant from the court. The “Julia-Episode” also plays a central role in Fritz J. Raddatz's book Männerängste in der Literatur. However, as might be expected of a study of such breadth, Raddatz's treatment of Hoffmann's oeuvre is inevitably very general, and his conclusions are, at best, highly speculative, not least when he suggests that Hoffmann's belief in the irreconcilability of art and femininity can be traced back to his deep-rooted fear of women.