Sentimentalism (literature)

Sensitivity referred to in the European Enlightenment, a trend that extends approximately from 1720 until the French Revolution ( 1789-1799 ). In France and England the tendency of sensitivity already occurs from about 1700. In literary studies, the sensitivity is an epoch 1740-1790.

Origins

The sensitivity is related to the end of the French rationalism after the death of Louis XIV together in 1715. She opposes a strictly rational oriented lifestyle as they arose in disciplining and civilizing of European society in the age of absolutism. The German " Age of Enlightenment " only began when the French " Age of Reason " was supplemented by socially critical and emancipatory tendencies or questioned. It therefore coincides with the start of the " era of sensibility " or the rococo.

The origin of the sensitivity is largely religious. The emotionally charged texts for the oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach are typical examples. The sensitivity is interpreted as a secularized Pietism, as they are often associated with moralizing content, however, increasingly detached from ecclesiastical and religious requirements. An important theorist was Jean -Baptiste Dubos.

Characteristics

After the sensitivity considers the exuberant feeling is not a flaw for those who has it, but marks him out as a moral man. The emphasis of the public in absolutism put the sensibility an emphasis on the private life contrary. Starting from religiously motivated pity it expanded soon spread to other sensations. The motive of sensual love was for example no more than destructive passion ( Vanitas), but on the contrary regarded as the basis of social institutions, such as Antoine de la Motte Houdar. The successful love was in serious opera ( Tragédie lyrique or opera seria ) as a symbol of a successful confederation. The reading addiction was socially acceptable, and the novel was significantly enhanced as a literary genre over the drama.

Around the middle of the century of the Enlightenment discovered Jean -Jacques Rousseau in his epistolary novel Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761 ) a " pristine " nature as a counterpart to the ( court ) civilization. Also its precursor, the sentimental epistolary novel Pamela, or Virtue rewarded (1740 ) by Samuel Richardson had with his socially critical tendencies major literary influence.

German sensibility

The musician and publisher Johann Christoph Bode translated Laurence Sterne's novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy under the title Yoriks sentimental journey in 1768 into German and had so much success. The word " sensitive " was a neologism to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing had advised and was subsequently transferred to the whole epoch.

German poets who are close to the sensitivity, was Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715-1769) and Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807), the first author of an epistolary novel in the German language. Johann Timotheus Hermes with his novel Sophie's journey from Memel to Saxony written a successful work of this literary epoch. The influence of the sensibility still be seen in Goethe's early work The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774 ), a major work of Sturm und Drang. The novel is the literary highlight of the "age [s ] of sensitivity" ( Renate Krüger) and the beginning of their decline as an art period ( Goethe in " Poetry and Truth ").

Aftermath

The religious sensitivity was approximately at François -René de Chateaubriand an inspiration of romance. In popular literature, the sensitivity has to well into the 19th century played a role, to serialized novels in magazines such as the gazebo. On the stage the melodrama emerged from the sensitivity.