Sturm and Drang

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Sturm

Storm = the Tempest

Henry Fuseli - photo of man warding off storm = dynamic

  • forces of nature have a particular beauty about them - The Sublime 

Phillip Loutherbourg - known to be an artist of Sturm and Drang 

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Drang

  • pushing forward to shake civilisation
  • weighing women down 
  • storm occurs inside people not just outside 

Emfingsamkeit - sensitivity 

  • bourgeois class 
  • often cried 
  • important body part = heart 

Enlightenment and Empfindsamkeit = Sturm and Drang (approx. 1770-1780)

1770 - Goethe goes to Strasbourg

1781 - Schiller writes 'Die Räuber'

1782 - Goethe gets enobled 

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S & D and Aufklärung

  • late phase of Aufklärung
  • lays same stress on freedom and individuality 
  • betterment of mankind - start fulfilling individuality
  • does not have same views on reasoning
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S & D and Empfindsamkeit

  • bourgeois
  • emphasis on heart - mein Herz hab ich allein
  • nature (both senses)
  • not hang around long enough to weep
  • macho and nationalistic 

Fragmentation of German lands ---- Nationalism

Cultural Nationalism 

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Examples

Sturm and Drang in theatre 

Goethe : Götz von Berlichingen

  • begins to invent the cannon of world class German literature
  • includes all walks of life
  • stages rebellion within limits
  • stages violence
  • recognisably Shakespearean
  • occasionally vulgar
  • huge cast 
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Examples

Goethes : Werther (1774)

  • letters
  • one writer : solipistic individual
  • reads Oscian - faking up Scottish poetry
  • body part - heart 
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Examples

Roy Pascal - The German Sturm and Drang (1953)

State 

  • antagonism to political constitutions
  • freedom of automnous individual
  • loyalty e.g. Götz

Social Classes

  • anti-Church (Götz)
  • anti-nobility (Werther)
  • moral dilemma of outlaw

Religion

  • pietism - emotional form of Protestant Christianity
  • rejection of intolerance 
  • Prometheus vs. Ganymede 
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Examples

Roy Pascal - The German Sturm and Drang (1953) continued ...

Creative Personality

  • the 'Genius'

Thought and Reality

  • native and natural
  • the sublime 

History 

  • teleology
  • glorification of the past
  • Nationalism

Revolutionary Poetics 

  • away with formal genres
  • work defines own parameters
  • irregularity, jaggedness, precision 
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