Kein Folientitel

1
Drama in the Age of Enlightenment

• Definition of periods within the Enlightenment
• Life of Lessing (brief summary)
• Drama before/since Lessing (referring back to
  Gottsched)
• Plot of Miß Sara Sampson
• Family structures
• Introduction into the 1st act

2
Recommended Reading

• Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Poetik und Ästhetik
  Lessings und seiner Zeitgenossen, in Hansers
  Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, Vol. 3
  (München / Wien 1980), pp. 304-326.
• Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Drama, in Hansers
  Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, Vol. 3
  (München / Wien 1980), pp. 423-499, esp. Lessing
  pp. 450-452, 456-465.
• CD-ROM, see Lessing, Selected Bibliography

3
The different phases within the Enlightenment

• 1720-1755 Frühaufklärung rationalism
  (Verstandes-aufklärung), Gottsched
• 1750-1770 empfindsame Hochaufklärung unity of
  brain and heart (Vernunftsaufklärung), Bodmer und
  Breitinger, Klopstock, Lessing
• 1770-1790 Spätaufklärung

4

• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• (1729-1781)
• born in Saxonia (Kamenz)
• 1746-48 studied theology, then medicine at
  Leipzig
• 1748-67 mainly Berlin F. Nicolai and M.
  Mendelssohn
• 1767-70 dramaturg at Hamburg (Hamburgische
  Dramaturgie)
• 1770-1781 Librarian at Wolfenbüttel

5
(No Transcript)
6

• Lessings main works
• till 1755 plays in the Classicist French
  tradition
• 1755 Miß Sara Sampson - first German
  bürgerliches Trauerspiel
• 1766 Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei
  und Poesie
• 1767 Minna von Barnhelm oder Das Soldatenglück
• 1767/69 Hamburgische Dramaturgie
• 1772 Emilia Galotti
• 1779 Nathan der Weise - first German blank verse
  drama, model for the later German Classicist
  plays

7

• German Drama before Lessing
• Tragedy Haupt- und Staatsaktionen - nobility,
  Ständeklausel, necessity of a Fallhöhe
• Comedy Verlachkomödien - lower classes
• more or less alexandrine based
• strict keeping to 3 unities time, place,
  action/plot
• Within the Enlightenment
• teaching morals according to Tugend- and
  Lasterkatalog
• the means elios and phobos (Aristotle) fear
  and terror (Angst und Schrecken) in tragedies

• German Drama since Lessing
• Tragedy Bürgerliches Trauer-spiel - touching
  domestic drama, mixed characters, gleiche
  Ranghöhe
• Comedy Ernste Komödie - noble and bourgeois
  characters
• prose play
• 3 unities only as a matter of Wirkung (time,
  place,) action/plot (Handlung)
• Creating Sensibility as the purpose of a
  bourgeois tragedy
• the means the compassion a tragic action
  should produce in an audience - Furcht und
  Mitleid, Katharsis as Reinigung der
  Leidenschaften, not von den

8

• Plot of Lessings Miß Sara Sampson and its
  function (1755)
• quite a simple one, small amount of characters
• this leaves room for dealing with conversation
  as a means of solving conflicts
• stress on dialogue instead stress on action
• Mitleidsästhetik make the audience becoming
  affected not teaching them a morale, but giving
  them the experience of a social order to be
• Moralisierungsprogramm to educate all classes
  within society according to the passionate ideal
  of family life and thus to establish a paradigm
  for social and political change

9

• Das ganze Haus
• all generations, servants under one roof
• Allianzehe - a political, economic ratio
  behind each and every marriage
• affection, desire, lust outside the marriage
  intrigues
• nobility
• children care by nannies
• Mätressenwesen
• liaisons

• Die bürgerliche Kernfamilie
• parents and children only under one roof
• Liebesehe - love and compassion for a once
  chosen lifelong partner
• idea of Sittlichkeit and Moral, strict moral
  codes
• bourgeois family
• father working outside the house
• mother house keeping and children feeding
• growing importance of children and their
  attitudes
• idea of education
• family becomes the raw model for social (and
  political) life

Pic Pic Pic
10

• Further readings
• W.A. Bruford, Germany in the Eighteenth Century
  The Social Background of the Literary Revival
  (Cam-bridge University Press, 1965) Lib. 943.05
  BRU
• Victor Lange, The Classical Age of German
  Literature. 1740-1815 (London Arnold, 1982) Lib.
  830.96 LAN