Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-1766)

P. M. Mitchell

The monumental quality of Johann Christoph Gottsched's role in the history of Germany becomes apparent when one compares the situation at the beginning of the eighteenth century and the situation midway through the century. Prior to Gottsched there was no standard for German poetics. There was no repertoire for the German theater in its infancy. There was no standard reference work on German rhetoric. There was no German grammar which could lead to the establishment of a literary language. Gottsched (1700-66) filled all these lacunae and gained a position of eminence from about 1720 to - in many fields - until his death, but with regard to the drama only until 1758 when he was knocked from his pedestal, so to speak, by the young G. E. Lessing in the so-called "Siebzehnter Literaturbrief" in the serial publication Briefe die neueste Literatur betreffend. Despite the fact that...

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