Goethe and the Renaissance court: History, politics, and individualism

This dissertation focuses on Goethe's representation of sixteenth-century politics by analyzing his dramas Götz von Berlichingen, Egmont , and Torquato Tasso. Combining different theoretical approaches, I adopt a new perspective in studying the interplay of Goethe's aesthetic, historical, social, and political thought. By the eighteenth century, court criticism, which flourished during the Renaissance, has become a part of political discourse. In Germany, this court criticism manifested itself in the cultural revolt of the Sturm und Drang, which I call Oppositionsästhetik because it attacked the aesthetic norms that dominated German courts.;In the analysis of the first play, I examine the conflict between the nascent absolutist court and the autonomous individual, emphasizing the interaction of past and present in creating a cultural memory. While Goethe attacks the tyranny of Philip II in Egmont, his negative representation of the middle and lower classes makes the tragedy as much about social hegemony as about revolt against absolutism. This contradiction in the play is a facet of the incongruity of criticizing the court and being there at the same time. While Götz and Egmont eschew and resist the court, Tasso's dependence on a patron and insistence that his genius puts him on an equal footing with the duke leads to his crisis. This confrontation between an artist and his patron is the principal motif in the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, which Goethe translated.;Goethe's view of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as it is presented in these plays and in his commentary to Cellini's Vita is diametrically opposed to Jacob Burckhardt's thesis of Renaissance individualism. Individualism, according to Goethe, had already existed in the Middle Ages; the rise of the absolutist court threatened it during the Renaissance. I maintain that Burckhardt suffered from an anxiety of influence caused by his application to the Renaissance of ideas and concepts that originated or were first used to speak of the Middle Ages. This includes Justus Möser's metaphoric use of Kunstwerk and Arthur Schopenhauer's medieval principium individuationis. However, the greatest anxiety of influence resulted from his life-long struggle with Goethe.