"The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald" (1798) - an example of a romantic novel. The main character is an artist, an enthusiast. A person for whom there are no other values ​ ​ than art and who has devoted his whole life to serving art. Dürer appears in the novel, Franz Sternbald is his favorite student. Franz, having studied, goes on a trip from Germany to Italy. This is a journey of the spirit, spiritual enrichment. This novel is a combination of various genre forms: sonnet, poem, correspondence, that is, fragments, each associated with some theme, idea. The whole novel is a dialogue of ideas, so real life is only background. Meetings with different people are very important. Love is what makes you feel art better. Individual passages of the novel are perceived as poems in prose. This novel is a parody of a rational, enlightening novel (a parody of Goethe), and at the same time a parody of a romantic novel, that is, it is self-parody. From Thicke's point of view, there can be no finished form. The artist is overwhelmed by fantasies that cannot be expressed on paper.