biography
| name: |
Gottsched, Johann Christoph
|
pronunciation:
[gotshed]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1700–66)
|
| biography:
| Writer and literary theorist, born in Judittenkirchen, East Prussia. The son of a parish priest, he studied theology, philosophy, and philology in Königsberg, then fled to Leipzig, probably to escape military service. After becoming professor of poetry (1730) and logic and metaphysics (1734), in 1739 he was appointed rector of the university there, already a renowned (if controversial) figure in literary circles. A leading theorist of the Enlightenment, he held that literature should combine didacticism with beauty of expression. Formally, he advocated ease of understanding coupled with adherence to classical and French models. He was averse to emotionalism, arguing that dramatic action should be governed by reason and subject to rules. This earned him a number of enemies, including both travelling players (in 1737 he had ceremonially burnt an effigy of ‘Hanswurst’, a traditional popular comic figure) and adherents of Klopstock and Shakespeare, including Lessing, who made him the subject of a satirical ‘Spottbrief’. Major works include Redekunst (1728), Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst vor die Deutschen (1730), the play Sterbender Cato (1732), Deutsche Schaubühne nach den Regeln der alten Griechen und Römer eingerichtet (6 vols, 1740–5), Grundlegung einer deutschen Sprachkunst (1748), and Nöthiger Vorrath zur Geschichte der deutschen dramatischen Dichtkunst (1757–65). |
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