The present essay draws on the example of Adalbert Stifter's novel Witiko to consider the circulatory dimension of literary prose texts, where the levels of distribution, content, and narrative form stand in a complementary and reciprocal, yet also conflict-laden relationship. As will become clear, the nature of this interplay is quite different in Stifter's later oeuvre when compared to his works from the 1840s, a period when the author already engaged intensively with the multi-faceted phenomenon of circulation. I demonstrate that the various ways in which intra-literary circulatory practices draw upon extra-literary processes of circulation have a profound impact on the aesthetics of prose texts, and, in some instances, also on their material distribution.