Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rowland, Herbert

Titel

Imitation, Pleasure, and Aesthetic Education in the Poetics and Comedies of Johann Elias Schlegel

Ist Teil von

• Goethe yearbook, 2010, Vol.17 (1), p.303-325

Ort / Verlag

Rochester: North American Goethe Society

Erscheinungsjahr

2010

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• For this reason the contribution of the present considerations lies not in the discovery of an entirely new state of affairs but rather in eliminating a marked inconsistency in Schlegel studies and elaborating on the consequences of its elimination for his work. Since the sparse writing on the poet over the last two decades has dealt largely with the tragedies, I have limited my comments to the link between crucial theoretical issues and the comedies, convinced with Wolfgang Paulsen in any event that the comedy was "die seiner Wesensart entsprechende Gattung. The intrigue executed by von Schlangendorf and Catherine, Amalia's father and maid, respectively, reflects an attempt to uncover Abgrund's identity so as to determine his fitness as a husband for Amalia, not to cure him of his "inscrutability." [...]as we learn at the end of the play, he left home under the pretext of going to France in order to seek his fortune relying only on himself rather than on his influential father. That is to say, he returns to the fold not, for example, as a prodigal son, but instead as an admirable, if rather unusual young man, one who retains his characteristic trait even at the final curtain. [...]it is useful to consider the reserved evaluation of her study by Jill Anne Kowalik, German Quarterly 61 (1988): 304-5, who observes in it a conflation of ancient and modern concepts that prevents the author from recognizing the novelty of Renaissance and neoclassical [including eighteenth-century German] responses to ancient texts as well as a tendency to compile quotations rather than to develop a clear argument, all of which limits its usefulness as a research tool. [...]a snail's-eye view of Schlegel's ideas and relation to his German and Swiss contemporaries allows one to discern ultimately significant differences of emphasis even within (previously unrecognized) areas of essential agreement. [...]one wonders whether "the very mention ... of the practice of crossdressing in order to gain sexual access to other women" indeed "places the idea into the heads of the authence member, at least as a potentiality" (276).