Author(s): Walter Benjamin

Performing Arts Drama Plays

Cited by Georg Lukács as a principal source of literary modernism, Walter Benjamin's study of the baroque stage-form called Trauerspiel (literally 'mourning play') is the most complete document of his literary and philosophical practice. Engaging with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German playwrights as well as the plays of Shakespeare and Calderón and the engravings of Durer, Benjamin shows how the historically charged forms of the Trauerspiel broke free of tragedy's mythological timelessness. From its philosophical prologue, which offers a rare account of Benjamin's early aesthetics, to its mind-wrenching meditation on allegory, The Origin of German Tragic Drama sparkles with insight and the speeds of Benjamin's later thought.