This study examines the life and works of the poet Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg(1750-1819). It begins with an analysis of Stolberg's essays on poetic expression in relation to Romantic thinking, and the impact of his poetic style on Novalis's early poetry. Stolberg's aesthetic education in Italy is examined as well as his challenge to the idea that classical sculpture was always the pinnacle of beauty and that the culture of antiquity was the highest form of humanity, The detection of melancholy in Greek sculpture, which arises from the transfer of anxieties about redemption from the artist to the artefact, affected his response and detracted from the beauty of the sculpture. This view amounted to an attack on Goethe and Schiller, as it identified the issue of salvation and death as a weakness in the classical paradigm. The picture of Italy that Stolberg offered was overshadowed by a crisis of confidence in the aesthetic insights both of Winckelmann and of Lessing and was also the basis for lib reception of Raphael and Michelangelo, Stolberg arrived at a response to Renaissance art and artists that marginally predates the early German Romantic worship of artists in the 1790s. The book concludes with a discussion of Stolberg's support of Romantic politics and Romantic conversions.

This 1972 text provides the student of German literature and European drama with a general introduction to Grillparzer's work. Dr Yates begins with a substantial biographical introduction which is one of the most detailed of its kind in any language. He then turns to the writings and introduces them linked by theme, identifying as Grillparzer's finest achievements the series of four dramas completed between 1823 and 1832. He also indicates the virtues characteristic of Grillparzer's work in general: the subtlety of his characterisation, his concern with moral values, the consistent ideals underlying his view of history and the human condition, and the essential theatricality of his drama. Dr Yates quotes freely; quotations from Grillparzer's prose are given in translation, those from the plays and poems are in the original with an English translation at the foot of the page. The aim throughout is to show the reader what is characteristic in the plays.

Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (1801-1862), for a quarter of a century the dominant actor on the popular Viennese stage, was the author of over eighty dramatic works, all but one of them comedies in the local Viennese tradition. It was only in the twentieth century that Nestroy's influence, above all as a satirist and master of language, was recognised. In this 1972 publication, the first book in English on Nestroy, Professor Yates centres his discussion of the possen (theatrical comedies) on the dominant comic elements of satire and parody, which are considered in close relation to the sources. He examines in detail five of Nestroy's best-known plays, considering them in relation to their Viennese setting and providing an introduction to the history and conditions of Viennese popular theatre from the early eighteenth century up to Nestroy's times, including an assessment of its relationship to other traditions of popular drama.

This is the first general history in English of theatre in Vienna, the one German-speaking city which, in the eighteenth century and for most of the nineteenth, sustained a theatrical life comparable to that of Paris or London. The book covers this theatrical culture from the beginnings of modern theatre in 1776 to the present day, relating it to social, political and intellectual history. It focuses primarily on the most important and productive theatres: the Burgtheater of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the commercial theatres that housed Viennese dialect comedy and operetta. Particular emphasis is placed on the dramatists and composers from whom the lasting importance of the theatres chiefly derives, and on the ideological pressures reflected in the repertory, in censorship (to which one chapter is devoted), and in press reception. The book draws on original documents including diaries, memoirs and reviews, and is accessible to general readers as well as specialists.

Dieser Band untersucht die literarische und filmische Behandlung halboeffentlicher Raume im Verlauf des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Bahnhoefe, Hotels und Cafes werden hier als topografische Fixpunkte verstanden, die angesichts politischer, kultureller und sozialer Veranderungen jeweils neu erschlossen oder wahrgenommen werden. Auf diese Weise koennen Narrative konkretisiert, soziale Konstellationen ausgeleuchtet und historische Umbruche nachvollziehbar werden. Wahrend der Schwerpunkt auf dem deutschen Sprachraum und hier wiederum Berlin liegt, findet, wo angemessen, auch der europaische Kontext Berucksichtigung. Die chronologisch angelegte Auseinandersetzung mit Schriftstellern und Regisseuren schliesst unter anderen Joseph Roth, Gabriele Tergit, Vicki Baum, Walther Ruttmann, Klaus Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ingeborg Drewitz und W.G. Sebald ein und konzentriert sich erst auf die Zwischenkriegszeit und den Zweiten Weltkrieg, dann auf die Nachkriegszeit und den Kalten Krieg bis zur Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands. Daruber hinaus werden die halboeffentlichen Raume auch in Hinblick auf ihre Rolle in der Kriminal-und Reiseliteratur und als Spiegel von Regional-und Landesgeschichten aufgegriffen.

First survey of the history of criticism on the plays of the Viennese dramatist Nestroy. Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (1801-62) dominated the Viennese popular stage from the early 1830s until his retirement in 1860, both as an actor, and as the author of some 80 plays, mostly satirical comedies with farcical plots illuminated by virtuoso word play. His reputation, however, has always been mixed. This book, the first ever survey of the whole history of Nestroy criticism, traces the changing critical reactions to him, beginning with contemporary records, which show how he often offended the morals of conservative theatre critics; his acidic wit led to his being considered a destructive cynic, an assessment which became a critical orthodoxy in the half-century after his death.It was not until 1912 that he was 're-discovered' by Karl Kraus as a linguistic genius, and in the last 40 years the rise in his reputation has been meteoric. The story Professor Yates traces is not just one of changing fashion, with shifts in critical judgement, but of the struggle to establish a reliable evaluation of Nestroy's stature - reflected in the many attempts to establish a definitive text of his work.

This study examines the life and works of the poet Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg(1750-1819). It begins with an analysis of Stolberg's essays on poetic expression in relation to Romantic thinking, and the impact of his poetic style on Novalis's early poetry. Stolberg's aesthetic education in Italy is examined as well as his challenge to the idea that classical sculpture was always the pinnacle of beauty and that the culture of antiquity was the highest form of humanity, The detection of melancholy in Greek sculpture, which arises from the transfer of anxieties about redemption from the artist to the artefact, affected his response and detracted from the beauty of the sculpture. This view amounted to an attack on Goethe and Schiller, as it identified the issue of salvation and death as a weakness in the classical paradigm. The picture of Italy that Stolberg offered was overshadowed by a crisis of confidence in the aesthetic insights both of Winckelmann and of Lessing and was also the basis for lib reception of Raphael and Michelangelo, Stolberg arrived at a response to Renaissance art and artists that marginally predates the early German Romantic worship of artists in the 1790s. The book concludes with a discussion of Stolberg's support of Romantic politics and Romantic conversions.

Louise von Francois (1817-1893) was a German realist writer whose work appeared in several editions during her lifetime and was translated abroad. Her most famous novel, Die letzte Reckenburgerin, attracted significant critical attention from her contemporaries and was regarded as one of the most innovative novels of the century. Her other prose fiction, however, is less well known. In the context of the ongoing re-assessment of nineteenth-century women writers, this book evaluates the thematic preoccupations and narrative technique of Francois's creative work as a whole. Through a study of ten representative texts, most of which have not been subject to detailed literary analysis in the past, the author considers Francois's powerful portrayals of female self-reliance, and seeks to elucidate aspects of her most cherished convictions, which centred on values of honour and duty, and on a vision of a more equitable and decent society.