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Carlyle as a Critic of Grillparzer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2021

John C. Blankenagel
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Extract

Thomas carlyle's essay entitled German Playwrights appeared in the Foreign Review in 1829. The three playwrights dealt with as representatives of the whole class in Germany are Grillparzer, Klingemann and Milliner. If the space devoted to each of these three could be regarded as a criterion of their relative merit Klingemann would rank slightly above Grillparzer, and Milliner would have to be considered almost doubly as important as either of the other two. In a footnote Carlyle lists the following plays of Grillparzer which had appeared prior to 1829: Die Ahnfrau, König Ottokars Glück und Ende and Sappho. He disposes of Die Ahnfrau in summary fashion in about two pages, devotes about three to Kônig Ottokar, and dismisses Sappho with a few sentences. Of Das Goldene Vliess, which had appeared in 1821, Carlyle merely says (p. 97): “His Goldene Vliess we suspect to be of similar character, [like Sappho] but have not yet found time and patience to study it.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , December 1927 , pp. 1027 - 1035
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1927

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References

1 References are to pages of Vol. II of the Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, London, Chapman & Hall.

2 Thomas Carlyle as a Critic of Literature, Columbia Univ. Press, 1910, p. 144.

3 In his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, Braunschweig, Westermann, 1920, 9th ed., Adolf Bartels says (p. 298): “Sein zweites Stiick, ‘Sappho’ …. stellte Grillparzers Dichtergrösse bei alien Urteilsfähigen fest, wenn er auch bei dem Durchschnitt, namentlich in Norddeutschland, Namen und Ruf eines Schicksalsdramatikers nie recht los wurde.”

4 Miscellaneous and Critical Essays, Vol. I, p. 218; essay on Goethe.

5 A History of German Literature, translated from the Third German Edition, New York, 1908. II, 312.

6 John G. Robertson, A History of German Literature, London, 1903, P. 532.

7 The Works of Lord Byron. Letters and Journals. Vol. V, p. 171 f. Edited by Rowland E. Prothero, London and New York, 1901.

8 John Nichol, Thomas Carlyle, New York, 1892, p. 171 f.