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Empathy and Distance: Romantic Theories of Acting Reconsidered*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Gloria Flaherty
Gloria Flaherty
Affiliation:
Professor of German at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
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Extract

Works dealing with the actor proliferated during the early decades of German Romanticism. Actors had come to be viewed as role models whose very costumes, hairstyles, and mannerisms often influenced prevailing fashions or, at least, gave them specific labels from particular plays. Popular interest in everything having to do with people of the theatre was seconded by contemporary poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, professors, and physicians. While some of their writings concentrated on historical and philosophical concerns, others investigated anthropological and psychiatric as well as medical ones. And contemporary actors themselves contributed publications about the ways, means, and consequences of playing roles in public.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Summer 1990 , pp. 125 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1990

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References

Notes

1. Harris, Edward P., ‘From Outcast to Ideal: The Image of the Actress in Eighteenth-Century Germany’, German Quarterly, 56 (03 1981), 177–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and, ‘Mirrors of Change: The Actor in Eighteenth-Century Germany’, The Stage in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Browning, J. D., Publications of the McMaster University Association for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 9 (New York and London, 1981), pp. 54–69Google Scholar. See also, Knoll, Hans, Theorien der Schauspielkunst: Darstellung und Enlwicklung ihres Gedankens in Deutschland von Lessing zu Goethe, Diss. Greifswald, 1916Google Scholar; Oberländer, Hans, Die geistige Entwicklung der deutschen Schauspielkunst im 18. Jahrhundert, Theatergeschchtliche Forschun-gen, Vol. 15, Hamburg and Leipzig, 1898.Google Scholar

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3. Flaherty, Gloria, ‘The Dangers of the New Sensibilities in Eighteenth Century German Acting’, Theatre Research International, 8 (1983), 95–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Strohschneider-Kohrs, Ingrid, Die romantische Ironie in Theorie und Gestaltung, 2nd rev. and enl. ed. (Tübingen, 1977), p. 131Google Scholar. Actors rarely come up.

5. Römische Studien, 3 pts. (Zurich, 1806–1808), I, 260Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, I am responsible for the English translations.

6. Ibid., p. 263.

7. Römische Studien, 3 pts. (Zurich, 1806–1808), II, 304.Google Scholar

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24. Gesammelte Schriften, Werke, Vol. 2 (1904), pp. 394–95.Google Scholar

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26. Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Böcking, Eduard, 12 vols. (Leipzig, 1846–1847), I, 10–11.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 240.

28. Sämmtliche Werke, IX, 271.Google Scholar

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30. Ibid., p. 46.

31. Ibid., II. p. 306.

32. Kritische Schriften, 2 pts. (Berlin, 1828), I, p. 376Google Scholar. I have treated the elder generation of Schlegels in Opera in the Development of German Critical Thought (Princeton, 1978), pp. 135–46 and 150–8.Google Scholar

33. Kritische Schriften, I, 313.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., p. 315.

35. Ibid., p. 317. I have taken up the subject of Parmenon in ‘The Dangers of the New Sensibilities in Eighteenth Century Acting’, p. 96.Google Scholar

36. Nachgelassene Schriften und Briefwechael, eds. Tieck, L. and von Raumer, Friedrich, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1826), I, 20.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 54.

38. Ibid., p. 56.

39. Ibid., p. 59.

40. Ed. Heyse, K. W. L. (Leipzig, 1829), p. 16.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 17.

42. Facsimile reprint (Amsterdam, 1968), p. 322Google Scholar. Karoli, Christa, Ideal and Krise enthusiastichen Künstlertums in der deutschen Romantik, Abhandlungen zur Kunst-, Musik- und Literaturwissenschaft, Vol. 48 (Bonn, 1968), pp. 38–40 and 106Google Scholar. emphasizes the importance of music without going into contemporary psychiatric writings.

43. Ibid., pp. 209–10.

44. Sämtliche Werke, ed. von Maassen, Carl Georg, Vol. I (Munich and Leipzig, 1908), p. 94.Google Scholar

45. Sämtliche Werke, ed. von Maassen, Carl Georg, Vol. 6, Die Serapions-Brüder, Zweiter Band (Munich and Leipzig, 1912), pp. 87–119Google Scholar. Important in respect to such works is Jennings, Lee B., ‘Hoffmann's Hauntings: Notes towards a Parapsychological Approach to Literature’, JEGP, 75 (1976), 559–67.Google Scholar

46. Sämtliche Werke, I, 15–29Google Scholar. See also the discussion following ‘Signor Formica’, Sämtliche Werke, ed. von Maassen, Carl Georg, Vol. 8 (Munich and Leipzig, 1925), p. 112Google Scholar, and Sluser, Georg Edgar, ‘Le Neveu de Rameau and Hoffmann's Johanness Kreisler: Affinities and Influences’, Comparative Literature, 27 (1975), Pp. 327–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. Sämtliche Werke, I, Kreisleriana, No. 6, p. 79.Google Scholar

48. Sämtliche Werke, ed. von Maassen, Carl Georg, vol. 4 (Munich and Leipzig, 1910), p. 25Google Scholar. Raraty, M. M., ‘E. T. A. Hoffmann and His Theatre’, Hermathena: A Dublin University Review, 98 (Spring 1964), pp. 53–67Google Scholar, especially p. 58, interprets everything from the point of view of creating an illusion that reduplicates everyday reality.

49. Sämtliche Werke, IV, 39.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., p. 49.

51. Ibid., p. 53.

52. Ibid., p. 67.