THE FOUNDING OF ROMANTIC CRITICSIM

SCHLEGEL, AUGUST WILHELM und FRIEDRICH.

Charakteristiken und Kritiken. 2 Bde.

Königsberg, 1801. 8vo. 2 beautiful cont. uniform brown hcalfs w. gilt spines and blindstamped decorations. Some brownspotting due to paper quality. VIII, 397; IV, 400 pp.

First edition of the joint volume of critical essays by the two brothers, who are regarded the leaders of Romantic criticism.

August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845 and his younger brother, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) were both renowned poets, critics and scholars. Especially August Wilhelm, who was also an eminent translator, is considered the actual leader of German Romanticism, but the two together dominated this most important of German eras, and this collection of their essays was of great importance to German Romantic criticism.

The two Schlegel brothers decided to publish these two volumes because of the attention that their critical writings had received by the public. They felt that this attention was not caused by a thorough knowledge of their critical writings, and thus they published this collection for the sake of those seriously interested in German literature. Some of the essays had been published before in journals and magazines, and some of them are published here for the first time.

Among many "characteristics" and "criticisms", this collection contains Friedrich Schlegel's "Ueber Lessing" and his characteristic of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister as well as August Schlegel's "Ueber Shakespeare's Romeo und Julie", his "Recensionen" of "Homers Werke von Voss", "Goethe's Römische Elegien" etc., etc.

Order-nr.: 36193