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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German dramatist, critic, and writer on philosophy and aesthetics. He helped free German drama from the influence of classical and French models and wrote plays of lasting importance. His critical essays greatly stimulated German letters and combated conservative.
The painter and art lecturer Henry Fuseli mentioned Lessing’s work in his arts lectures and the French archaeologist Antoine Quatremère de Quincy was influenced by him. Herder, however, ever at odds with Lessing, insisted on a separate theory for sculpture as a tactile art, distinct from visual art in his Plastik of 1778 (written in 1768-70).
In Lessing's eyes, the effect of this French influence was the suppression of the native German genius.
From 1760 to 1765, he worked in Breslau (now Wrocław) as secretary to General Tauentzien during the Seven Years' War between Britain and France, which had effects in Europe. It was during this time that he wrote his famous Laocoön, or the Limitations of Poetry [ de ] .
Dec 11, 2008 · Because the sole effect of tragedy should be an increased capacity for compassion, Lessing complains that the French and “mediocre poets” tend to save the tear-jerking scenes for the last act, thereby failing to fully exploit the genre to its full extent: “The true poet,” writes Lessing to Mendelssohn on December 18, 1756 ...
Dec 16, 2023 · Lessing’s “Rettungen,” “literary trials” inspired by Pierre Bayle’s historic-critical method, venture to vindicate scholarly positions deemed heretical or otherwise immoral. By critically reassessing historic details, Lessing puts the arguments of the accused in new theological and philosophical perspective.
Jan 22, 2021 · In his search for a German-language bourgeois theater, Lessing was strongly influenced intellectually by the French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot. Legacy Lessing was a versatile poet, thinker and critic.
