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Niefanger, Dirk [German version] A. Introduction, Methodology (CT) Besides the narrative tradition of mythology together with architecture and sculpture, tragedies are among the central historical sources shaping the modern perception of ancient culture. For that reason, the history of the reception of ancient tragedy provides an insight into the changing perception of Antiquity and its aesthetic relevance to the Modern Age. The European genre of tragedy continued to develop through an ever-changing, critical analysis of Aristotelian tragedy especially, but als…

Niefanger, Dirk [English version] A. Einführung, Methodik (RWG) …

[German Version] (Feb 23, 1899, Alzey – Jul 25, 1950, Rheinzabern) was a poet shaped by Catholicism, important especially in the years immediately after World War II. The daughter of a Jewish (later Catholic) architect, she trained as a teacher in Darmstadt. She was dismissed from teaching after the birth of a daughter out of wedlock, who would later become the author Cordelia Edvardson (born Jan 1, 1929). The father was the Jewish constitutional lawyer, Hermann Heller (1891–1933). From 1930, Lang…

[German Version] (Oct 11, 1825, Zürich – Nov 28, 1898, Kilchberg near Zürich), realist poet, whose work is characterized by contrasts, ambiguities and multifaceted allusions. Meyer came from a respected patrician family; his father, who died prematurely, occupied a number of positions in the government, and his mother, deeply religious and influenced by the puritanical teaching of Zwingli, suffered from bouts of depression, which eventually led to her suicide. Meyer's younger sister Betsy (1831–1912) was a…

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1. IntroductionThe word “theater” (from the Greek theatron, “place for viewing,” via Latin  theatrum, “[open-air] place for viewing [spectacles or plays]”) in the early modern period had a social sense that went far beyond watching or performing drama, and that was considerably wider in scope than today. It was neither associated with institutions, nor properly susceptible to experience and description as a single, coherent phenomenon. The fundamental characteristics of early modern theater were plurimedial…

1. Institutions and genres 1.1. Principles of lemmatization The distinction between different literary genres as specific forms of poetic expression is already found in the  Poetics  of Aristotle. The increasing criticism incurred by normative claims of genre definition, from the 18th century at the latest, and the subsequent acknowledgement that genres are phenomena subject to historical change, and hence fluid, have not diminished their significance in the classification of literary forms. On the contrary: the m…

1. Galantry as a European concept Within the cultural history of the early modern period, the term  …

1. ConceptA comedy (German Komödie,  Lustspiel) is a drama presenting primarily comic characters and light-hearted situations. Although no fixed definition exists, some dominant characteristics can be discerned in the early modern period. The ending is generally a happy one, not infrequently a wedding as a reconciliatory celebration of life, the “ending in peace.” The setting is often an everyday or private environment, certainly not a political one. The characters are people from the lower social o…

1. DefinitionHistorical dramas are dramatic texts (Drama) based on historical material, not limited to a specific generic presentation (see Genre), but usually falling within the subcategory of  tragedy. This vague definition can be supplemented by noting several distinguishing features: historical drama claims historical authenticity for the dramatic events by means of stage directions and by-play or para-textual materials; the historical material is represented as not merely the past, but as fi…

1. Ceremonial as a readable system of signs The concept of Ceremonial (from Latin caerimonia, French cérémonial) denotes forms, rules, and behaviors that were valued as necessary and constitutive in respect of standardized, often solemnized actions in the course of social intercourse, political processes, and religious events. To this extent, it is reasonable to call ceremonial a “semiotic supersystem […] that is capable of rendering visible the political, legal, social, or religious order, and of regulating it within limits [5. 1500 f.]. Ceremonial might include visual ima…

1. DefinitionThe term school drama (or  school play) in the narrower sense denotes plays written primarily for didactic and representative purposes for performance in schools; in the broadest sense, it also includes academies and universities (in early modern England:  university drama or  university play). In early modern Europe, they were usually associated with instruction in rhetoric. They promoted practice in oratory and also provided instruction in historical, political, mythological, and theological material. A central aspect…

1. ConceptThe word “stage,” from the Vulgar Latin staticum (place to stand) via the Old French  estage, took on the sense of a raised platform for performance in the 14th century, and today generally denotes a place that is regularly used for public performance, for example, in debating, theater, or opera. In the early modern period, it could also refer to “performances” in legal proceedings or anatomy (Anatomical theater). It separates the performing space from the audience via its raised and highly visible …

1. ConceptThe folk play (German Volksstück) was a specific form of popular theater. The term is generally used in the context of German-language theater history. The most characteristic form emerged in the Vienna  Volkstheater in the late 18th century. Its heyday came in the 19th century and it spawned successors in variants of boulevard theater as well as (to this day) in sophisticated, sometimes socially critical plays. The Volkstheater [5] was relatively unstandardized and adopted effective modes of portrayal from a range of stage traditions, including m…

1. Modernity and the late modern periodThe transition from the early to the late modern period, in the sense defined in the introductory chapter to this encyclopedia, came as a result of the range of profound changes - political, economic, technological, social, and cultural - that took place in the first half of the 19th century, culminating in the “year of revolutions” of 1848/49. Those changes came to define “modernity” in a new sense that endures to this day. To claim validity as a term for an epo…

1. Institutionen und Gattungen 1.1. LemmatisierungsprinzipienDie Unterscheidung zwischen verschiedenen lit. Gattungen als je spezifischen Formen dichterischen Ausdrucks findet sich bereits in der Poetik des Aristoteles. Dass der normative Anspruch von Gattungsbestimmungen spätestens seit dem 18. Jh. zunehmend in die Kritik geriet und Gattungen in der Folge als dem histor. Wandel unterworfene und damit fluide Phänomene erkannt wurden, hat ihre Signifikanz für die Klassifikation literarischer Manifestationen nicht gesc…

1. Galanterie als europäisches KonzeptInnerhalb der Kulturgeschichte der Frühen Nz. bezeichnet der Begriff G. L. eine wichtige europ. Literatur-Strömung im 17. Jh. und zu Beginn des 18. Jh.s; in Deutschland dominierte die G. L. die Dichtung zwischen Barock und Aufklärung. Sie reduzierte die barocke Rhetorizität der Texte, verminderte gelehrte Anspielungen und setzte so auf eine bessere Verständlichkeit der dichterischen Sprache; zur Musik vgl. Galanter Stil.Konstitutiv für G. L. ist die Galanterie, ein Verhaltens- und Kommunikations-Ideal, das – auf der Hofmann-Litera…

1. BegriffAls K. (dt. Synonym: Lustspiel) bezeichnet man ein Drama, das vorwiegend komische (= kom.) Figuren und heitere Handlungen präsentiert. Auch wenn keine allgemein bindende Definition existiert, so können für die Nz. doch einige dominierende Merkmale festgemacht werden: Der Ausgang der Handlung ist meist glücklich, nicht selten bildet eine Hochzeit als versöhnliche Feier des Lebens, als ending in peace, den Abschluss. Als Handlungsraum findet sich häufig ein alltägliches oder privates, jedenfalls nicht politisches Umfeld. Als Akteure treten Pers…

1. BegriffAls Sch. (auch Schulspiel) bezeichnet man im engeren Sinn Schauspiele, die für die Aufführung an schulischen Institutionen (Schule), im weitesten Sinn auch an Akademien und Universitäten (Universitätsdrama, im nzl. England: university play), und für primär didaktische sowie repräsentative Zwecke geschrieben wurden. Meist wurden sie in der europ. Nz. dem Rhetorik-Unterricht angegliedert. Sie förderten die Redepraxis und unterrichteten darüber hinaus über histor., staatstheoretische, mythologische und theologische Inhalte. Ein zentraler…

1. AllgemeinIm dt. Sprachraum taucht das Substantiv M. seit dem späten 19. Jh. auf, während sich die franz. Begriffsbildung modernité seit dem ersten Drittel des 19. Jh.s und das engl. Pendant modernity sogar schon im 17. Jh. vereinzelt nachweisen lassen. Diese vergleichsweise frühe Etablierung des Wortes im Englischen hat dazu geführt, dass es in der engl. Wissenschaftssprache für die gesamte Neuzeit als modern times inklusive der Frühen Neuzeit im Sinne der early modern period Verwendung finden konnte. Zurückführen lässt sich der Begriff der M. auf die temporale…