Virtue Versus ‘Schwärmerei’ in Lessing's Emilia Galotti

Abstract

ABSTRACT‘Tugend’ (virtue) is a complex concept with both classical and Christian sources. It often means a virtuous disposition which is prior to the exercise of specific virtues. In many eighteenth‐century contexts its meaning shifts from a cognitive concept to an emotional one, dependent on what Shaftesbury called the ‘moral sense’. In Emilia Galotti, Odoardo and Appiani consider themselves and each other highly virtuous, yet their virtue seems strangely empty, the expression respectively of a choleric and a melancholy temperament. As for Emilia, though commentators have found her ‘suicide’ hard to understand, it can best be understood as the result of an uncontrolled sensuality which has in fact been hinted at earlier in the play, and which is bound up with her extreme and specifically Catholic piety. Lessing's portrayal of her illustrates the Enlightenment critique of religious visionary experience, especially by nuns, as the product of excessive imagination and displaced sensuality. Odoardo, Appiani and Emilia represent different versions of ‘Schwärmerei’. A brief comparison with Kleist's Die Marquise von O… suggests that Lessing depicts the Galottis as a dysfunctional family, and that Kleist was developing some of Lessing's implications. The Galottis' dysfunctionality is masked by their obsession with ‘Tugend’.