Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's play
Die Soldaten[
The Soldiers, 1776] is probably the best known of the author's works and one of the most influential products of the German
Sturm und Drang[Storm and Stress] movement. Lenz was a pioneer of a radically open form of drama in German, which broke with the classical poetics of Aristotle and challenged the primacy of French neo-Classicism on the German stage. In his dramatic practice, Lenz dispensed with established conventions to produce a vital, dynamic theatrical form, which abandons linear exposition in favour of a rapid unfolding of events, blurs customary distinctions between comedy and tragedy and eschews the studied
bienséance[propriety] of French neo-Classical theatre. A further hallmark of Lenz's writing was his preoccupation with…
1993 words
Citation: Griffiths, Elystan. "Die Soldaten". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 December 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12296, accessed 23 November 2024.]