Origin Of Germ Trag Dram Rad Thk

The Origin of German Tragic Drama is generally acknowledged as Benjamin's most sustained and original work and as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century. It begins with a general theoretical introductions on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Later, Benjamin discusses the engravings of Durer, and the theatre of Shakespeare and Calderon. Baroque tragedy, he argues was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history.

Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama.

George Steiner, author of dozens of books (The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, Heidegger, In Bluebeard’s Castle, My Unwritten Books, George Steiner at the New Yorker), is Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge University.