If I can come up with a suitably snarky thought or dialogue, I shall insert it, then.
Gottsched would be gratified to be anyone's hero.Like Fritz, he had the misfortune to outlive his glory days. He was essential as a reformer of German theatre and as a promoter of the German language for artistic uses, but he was also totally married to the idea of the Aristotelian three unities and the French drama as the highest form of art. When duking it out with the slightly younger Lessing (currently employed by Fritz' sister Charlotte as librarian) who thought that these rules were constraining and strangling the life out of drama, had to go, and hooray for the British model to follow instead, he lost as far as the new crop of writers was concerned, and he never reconciled himself to the fact. Since the next crop of writers were the highlights of German literature, this meant he had the reputation of a dusty old pedant for at least a century before it swung back to "modern for his time, he just outlived it".
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Re: He said, she said, they said: on partitioning Poland and other matters
Date: 2020-03-04 08:22 am (UTC)Gottsched would be gratified to be anyone's hero.Like Fritz, he had the misfortune to outlive his glory days. He was essential as a reformer of German theatre and as a promoter of the German language for artistic uses, but he was also totally married to the idea of the Aristotelian three unities and the French drama as the highest form of art. When duking it out with the slightly younger Lessing (currently employed by Fritz' sister Charlotte as librarian) who thought that these rules were constraining and strangling the life out of drama, had to go, and hooray for the British model to follow instead, he lost as far as the new crop of writers was concerned, and he never reconciled himself to the fact. Since the next crop of writers were the highlights of German literature, this meant he had the reputation of a dusty old pedant for at least a century before it swung back to "modern for his time, he just outlived it".