Historical Experience in German Drama
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A01=Alan Menhennet
Author_Alan Menhennet
Category=DSG
Cultural Identities
Dramatic Coherence
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
German Drama
German History
German Literature
Globalization
Historical Drama
Historical Events
Historical Experience
Jewish Germanists
Multiculturalism
Objective History
Political Formations
Postmodernism
Unification
Product details
- ISBN 9781571132550
- Weight: 432g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 25 Nov 2002
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A survey of 17th- to 20th-century German dramatic works that not only treat historical events but yield a historical experience.
In what is still the standard survey of German historical drama, Das deutsche Geschichtsdrama (1952), Friedrich Sengle understands "historical drama" as that in which objective history is blended with an idea that isthe basis of its dramatic coherence and force. This idea inevitably becomes the engine of a dramatic action, inclining the theatergoer to become wholly engaged with dramatic characters in a dramatic present, rather than with "real" figures in a historical past. Such plays (for instance Schiller's Maria Stuart) may remain broadly "true to history," but the experience they afford is often not historical; that is, it may be emotionally and intellectually compelling, but it will not be historical in the sense of causing us, in our present, to become engaged with our relationship with past figures and events and their continued relevance for us. Alan Menhennet identifiesand analyzes examples of German drama that are historical in the stricter sense: not only in terms of the provenance of the material, but also in that, while remaining dramatic in nature, they do convey a historical experience. Bymeans of a critical survey extending from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, in the contexts of literary history, the philosophy of history, and German history from the Thirty Years' War to the Second World War, Menhennetprovides a complement to Sengle's still-valuable study. Major figures treated include Gryphius, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Grillparzer, Hebbel, Schnitzler, and Brecht. There is no competing work in English.
Alan Menhennet is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. He is author of Grimmelshausen the Storyteller (Camden House, 1997).
ALAN MENHENNET is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. He is author of Grimmelshausen the Storyteller (Camden House, 1997).
