The Sturm und Drang and the Periodization of the Eighteenth Century

Summary

The Concept of a Literary Period

There is, nowadays, agreement in the historical disciplines that epochs and periods are not phenomena that can claim existence in their own right: they are constructs and hypotheses developed by historians and, therefore, require continual critical reevaluation. The period within which the Sturm und Drang is situated is the Age of Enlightenment. Because of the short time within which it flourished, the Sturm und Drang can only be counted as a trend within the Enlightenment. Since the eighteenth century the concepts of period and epoch have been used synonymously to refer to a single span of time or a unique phenomenon, but these terms would be imprecise as descriptions of the Sturm und Drang. The modern idea of an epoch became established through the tradition of German Idealism. It refers to a longer-term ensemble that develops out of one ensemble and points toward another one. Epochs and periods cannot be precisely dated, because their beginnings and endings are gradual. One of the particular features of the idea of an epoch is that it allows the temporal discontinuity of simultaneous histories, the experience of the acceleration, intensification, and temporalization of the world of experience, the openness to the future, and the multiplicity of perspectives that open up historical understanding.