Helga Stipa Madland Bücher

The changing concept of mimesis from Bodmer and Breitinger to Lenz had a profound effect upon dramatic language, character and structure. Their notion of mimesis, which rejects Aristotle and the imitation of existing models, provided the impetus for innovation on the German stage. The dramatic theory and practice of J. M. R. Lenz is not an abrupt caesura breaking with the conventions of Enlightenment drama, but the culmination of a Non-Aristotelian tradition beginning with Bodmer and Breitinger. Lenz's dramatic theory and practice, which has found a resounding echo in twentieth-century dramaturgy, is examined in light of his Non-Aristotelian predecessors.

The Swiss-born writer Marianne Ehrmann, who lived and worked in Vienna, Strasbourg, and Stuttgart, initially pursued an acting career. Later, as a fiction writer, Ehrmann made educating women her primary goal. In this biography, Professor Madland follows this fascinating woman's life story, emphasizing her unique situation as editor of two women's journals. Ehrmann's opinionated wit and experience in the public sphere as an eighteenth-century working woman gave her a distinctive voice to enliven contemporary gender debates. She argues that reason and emotion should not exist in separate spheres, and that men and women should share both so that they may become better persons.