An- und abstoßende Naturen. Zur Mechanik, Ästhetik und Poetik der Antikenrezeption in der Frühen Neuzeit
German poetics of the 18th century does not develop straightforwardly towards what is commonly
called the 'classical' conception of art of Goethe's time. It rather evolves in confrontation with very
different cultural and conceptual systems. This is evident, for example, in the fact that statements on
the history of art are combined with those on the laws of nature and motion; concepts of poetry and
beauty are explained by terms such as imagination or force of imagination. The "nature of elegy" [1]
meets with "mingled sensations, " [2] and the "character of the ode" [3] is submitted to the "order of
enthusiastic imagination." [4] Correspondingly, poetic language is understood as a "mechanical" [5]
principle, compared to its rhetorical "diction," [6] and "sensation and affect" [7] work according to
the scheme of "effect and cause" [8]. Thus, natural-philosophical, aesthetic, and poetological terms
are increasingly coming together in this period, and for the most part they mutually justify each
other. My study focusses on the relationship between these three fields of knowledge.
This question immediately draws attention to the concepts of nature developed in 18th century and
to their validity within theories of art and poetry. Since antiquity is the most important paradigm for
poetic naturalness in this period, organological as well as mechanical, empirical as well as
metaphysical natures are likely to meet in its reception. While scholarship has preferably dealt with
the metaphysical nature, a corresponding consideration of the mechanical nature is missing so far. In
order to describe mechanical nature, it is necessary, on the one hand, to examine the taxonomies of
poetic genres (a certain genre corresponds to a certain nature), and on the other hand, to reappraise
the aesthetic tradition in terms of the history of concepts and ideas. For numerous poetics, reviews,
and treatises on art theory of the Enlightenment commit themselves both to ancient paradigms and
to psychomechanical concepts such as "imagination," "impression," "degree of affect," "vehemence,"
etc., thereby following the tradition of Christian Wolff and A. G. Baumgarten. In this way, my study
attempts to describe the relationship of the 18th century's aesthetics to antiquity apart from
transcendental explanations that tend towards transfiguration.
[1] Abbt, Thomas: Betrachtungen über die Natur der Elegie. In: Nicolai, Friedrich (Hg.): Briefe, die
Neueste Litteratur betreffend, 13. Teil, Berlin 1762, 47: "Natur der Elegie".
[2] Ibid.: "vermischte Empfindungen".
[3] Mendelssohn, Moses: Gedanken von dem Wesen der Ode. In: Nicolai, Friedrich (Hg.): Briefe, die
Neueste Litteratur betreffend, 17. Teil, Berlin 1764, 142: "Wesen der Ode".
[4] Ibid., 150: "Ordnung der begeisterten Einbildungskraft".
[5] Engel, Johann Jacob: Von dem lyrischen Gedicht, S. 312. In: Nicolai, Friedrich (Hg.): Anfangsgründe
einer Theorie der Dichtungsarten aus deutschen Mustern entwickelt, Berlin und Stettin 1783, 277-
331, hier 312: "[m]echanische".
[6] Ibid.: "Diktion".
[7] Schmid, Christian Heinrich: Theorie der Poesie nach den neuesten Grundsätzen und Nachricht von
den besten Dichtern nach den angenommenen Urtheilen, Leipzig 1767, 303: "Empfindung und
Affekt".
[8] Ibid.: "Wirkung und Ursache".
Research Field: Germanistik
Supervisors: Prof. Eric Achermann (German Studies, WWU Münster), Prof. Alexander Arweiler (Latin Studies, WWU Münster), Prof. Heinz Drügh (German Studies, Goethe-University, Frankfurt)