Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon

Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon PDF Author: Avi Lifschitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192522744
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing first published Laokoon, oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (Laocoon, or on the Limits of Painting and Poetry) in 1766. Over the last 250 years, Lessing's essay has exerted an incalculable influence on western critical thinking. Not only has it directed the history of post-Enlightenment aesthetics, it has also shaped the very practices of 'poetry' and 'painting' in a myriad of different ways. In this anthology of specially commissioned chapters - comprising the first ever edited book on the Laocoon in English - a range of leading critical voices has been brought together to reassess Lessing's essay on its 250th anniversary. Combining perspectives from multiple disciplines (including classics, intellectual history, philosophy, aesthetics, media studies, comparative literature, and art history), the book explores the Laocoon from a plethora of critical angles. Chapters discuss Lessing's interpretation of ancient art and poetry, the cultural backdrops of the eighteenth century, and the validity of the Laocoon's observations in the fields of aesthetics, semiotics, and philosophy. The volume shows how the Laocoon exploits Greek and Roman models to sketch the proper spatial and temporal 'limits' (Grenzen) of what Lessing called 'poetry' and 'painting'; at the same time it demonstrates how Lessing's essay is embedded within Enlightenment theories of art, perception, and historical interpretation, as well as within nascent eighteenth-century ideas about the 'scientific' study of Classical antiquity (Altertumswissenschaft). To engage critically with the Laocoon, and to make sense of its legacy over the last 250 years, consequently involves excavating various 'classical presences': by looking back to the Graeco-Roman past, the volume demonstrates, Lessing forged a whole new tradition of modern aesthetics.

Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon

Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon PDF Author: Avi Lifschitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192522744
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing first published Laokoon, oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (Laocoon, or on the Limits of Painting and Poetry) in 1766. Over the last 250 years, Lessing's essay has exerted an incalculable influence on western critical thinking. Not only has it directed the history of post-Enlightenment aesthetics, it has also shaped the very practices of 'poetry' and 'painting' in a myriad of different ways. In this anthology of specially commissioned chapters - comprising the first ever edited book on the Laocoon in English - a range of leading critical voices has been brought together to reassess Lessing's essay on its 250th anniversary. Combining perspectives from multiple disciplines (including classics, intellectual history, philosophy, aesthetics, media studies, comparative literature, and art history), the book explores the Laocoon from a plethora of critical angles. Chapters discuss Lessing's interpretation of ancient art and poetry, the cultural backdrops of the eighteenth century, and the validity of the Laocoon's observations in the fields of aesthetics, semiotics, and philosophy. The volume shows how the Laocoon exploits Greek and Roman models to sketch the proper spatial and temporal 'limits' (Grenzen) of what Lessing called 'poetry' and 'painting'; at the same time it demonstrates how Lessing's essay is embedded within Enlightenment theories of art, perception, and historical interpretation, as well as within nascent eighteenth-century ideas about the 'scientific' study of Classical antiquity (Altertumswissenschaft). To engage critically with the Laocoon, and to make sense of its legacy over the last 250 years, consequently involves excavating various 'classical presences': by looking back to the Graeco-Roman past, the volume demonstrates, Lessing forged a whole new tradition of modern aesthetics.

Lessing

Lessing PDF Author: James Sime
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description


Lessing's Dramatic Theory

Lessing's Dramatic Theory PDF Author: John George Robertson
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description


A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing PDF Author: Barbara Fischer
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571132437
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
One of the most independent thinkers in German intellectual history, the Enlightenment author Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) contributed in decisive and lasting fashion to literature, philosophy, theology, criticism, and drama theory. Lessing invented the brgerliches Trauerspiel (bourgeois tragedy) and wrote one of the first successful German tragedies as well as one of the finest German comedies. In his final dramatic masterpiece, Nathan der Weise, he writes of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, of religious tolerance and intolerance and the clash of civilizations. Lessing's dramas are the oldest German theater pieces still regularly performed (both in Germany and internationally), and both his plays and his drama theory have influenced such writers as Goethe, Schiller, Hebbel, Hauptmann, Ibsen, Strindberg, Schnitzler, and Brecht. Addressing an audience ranging from graduate students to seasoned scholars, this volume introduces Lessing's life and times and places him within the broader context of the European Enlightenment. It discusses his pathbreaking dramas, his equally revolutionary theoretical, critical, and aesthetic writings, his original fables, his innovative work in philosophy and theology, and his significant contributions to Jewish emancipation. The volume concludes by examining 20th-century reception of Lessing and his oeuvre. Contributors: Barbara Fischer, Thomas C. Fox, Steven D. Martinson, Klaus L. Berghahn, John Pizer, Beate Allert, H. B. Nisbet, Arno Schilson, Willi Goetschel, Peter Hyng, Karin A. Wurst, Ann Schmiesing, Reinhart Meyer, Hans-Joachim Kertscher, Hinrich C. Seeba, Dieter Fratzke, Helmut Berthold, Herbert Rowland. Barbara Fischer is associateprofessor of German and Thomas C. Fox is professor of German, both at the University of Alabama.

The Contested Quill

The Contested Quill PDF Author: Ruth P. Dawson
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874137620
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This book charts the entrance of women into public writing in the culturally vibrant world of late eighteenth-century Germany. It gives an absorbing account of the failed autobiography of Friderika Baldinger; the successful fiction, disguised self-narratives, and innovative monthly of Sophie La Roche; the praised poetry of Philippine Englehard; the controversial journalism and novels of Marianne Ehrmann; and the poems and prose about love and suicide by Sophie Albrecht. The book offers a feminist reassessment of the relationship of texts by these eighteenth-century German women writers to traditional literary history and traces how the women changed the cultural discourse of their day.

Narcissism and Paranoia in the Age of Goethe

Narcissism and Paranoia in the Age of Goethe PDF Author: Alexander Mathäs
Publisher: Associated University Presse
ISBN: 9780874130140
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
"The analyses of poems, narratives, dramas, and critical texts by Moritz, Schiller, Herder, Tieck, Goethe, Lavater, and others shed new light on how progress in the medical, philosophical, and anthropological discourses of the time converge with aesthetic and literary considerations." "The volume illustrates how aspects of Freud's psychology have grown out of notions of subjectivity not confined to the Victorian age, as is often assumed, but with roots in the contradicting values of bourgeois emancipation."--Jacket.

Lessing and the Sturm und Drang

Lessing and the Sturm und Drang PDF Author: Karen Ottewell
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Despite the benevolent intellectual climate of the 1960s in Germany which had witnessed a reappraisal of earlier attitudes towards the eighteenth century in general, and towards the Aufklarung in particular, relatively little has since been done to pursue this stimulus to its logical conclusion-or to a discussion of possible conclusions. By looking beyond artificial literary classifications at the historical data and by accumulating detailed empirical evidence this study seeks to reappraise this situation, firstly by establishing a case which overcomes the traditional antithesis of Aufklarung and Sturm und Drang, and secondly by presenting a clear picture of the degree and nature of Lessing's influence on German dramatists from Herder to Schiller. Contents: Aufklarung and Sturm und Drang: (Re-) Definitions-Lessing as precursor of the Sturm und Drang before 1769-Lessing's Attitude towards Writers of the Sturm und Drang-Emilia Galotti-The Reception of Lessing by the Sturm und Drang Writers

The Origins of Kant's Aesthetics

The Origins of Kant's Aesthetics PDF Author: Robert R. Clewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009209418
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Organized around eight themes central to aesthetic theory today, this book examines the sources and development of Kant's aesthetics by mining his publications, correspondence, handwritten notes, and university lectures. Each chapter explores one of eight themes: aesthetic judgment and normativity, formal beauty, partly conceptual beauty, artistic creativity or genius, the fine arts, the sublime, ugliness and disgust, and humor. Robert R. Clewis considers how Kant's thought was shaped by authors such as Christian Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten, Georg Meier, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Sulzer, Johann Herder, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Henry Home, Charles Batteux, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. His resulting study uncovers and illuminates the complex development of Kant's aesthetic theory and will be useful to advanced students and scholars in fields across the humanities and studies of the arts.

The Encyclopædia Britannica

The Encyclopædia Britannica PDF Author: Thomas Spencer Baynes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Languages : en
Pages : 750

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Book Description


Tragedy in Paradise

Tragedy in Paradise PDF Author: Gail Kathleen Hart
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571130372
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Hart's study views bourgeois tragedy and related forms of "family" drama as being the enactment of a threat to stability, to bourgeois or domestic order, organized so as to defeat that threat and relieve the anxieties of a middle-class audience.