Szenen einer Gattung

Abstract

Abstract The paper discusses metapoetic reflections in German drama around 1800. It argues that Goethe, Schiller and Kleist challenge the tragic form by blurring the differences to lyric and epic poetry. The starting point is the thesis that the paradigm of heroism, which has defined the tragic genre from the very beginning, falls into crisis. Both contemporary poetics and literary texts demonstrate this development: Heroism neither functions as an ideal way to constructing a character nor of organizing political plots which successfully rely on and account for personal greatness. To illustrate this, the essay focuses on significant metapoetic scenes from Goethe’s, Schiller’s and Kleist’s dramas and reads them as ‘scenes from a genre’ for which the female characters play a decisive role. Thus, it discusses how the selected dramas reflect on the principles of genre and on the ever-permeable boundaries of genre which lead to questions of political heroism and charismatic authority at the dawn of modernity. The political drama would therefore be incomplete without taking into account the gendering of political agency. Political heroism as well as the form of heroic tragedy are challenged by critical perspectives brought into play by female voices.