„Ich bin und bleibe bloβ Poet und als Poet werde ich auch sterben.“ Friedrich Schiller and the Role of the Poetic Idea in his Emerging Professional Identity as a Poet-Dramaturge
This dissertation examines how Schiller’s deep sense of poetic calling and his desire to ennoble human character informed his literary works. I contend that Schiller’s early conceptions of drama and dramatic practice, and the exogenesis of his later aesthetic theories crystallized his understanding of what it meant to be a poet. While foregrounding Schiller’s writings, two major considerations guided my thoughts on this topic: first, the author’s conceptions of the theoretical aesthetic education of human beings and, second, the dynamic relationships that Schiller’s creative acts that shaped his dramas, Die Räuber and Don Carlos. I show that Schiller sought to counteract the one-sided rational development of human beings by asserting that poesy’s aim was to form the entire human character. While it is the poet and not the philosopher who possesses the artistic skills to portray and evoke emotions, I submit that the task of ennobling human character remained central to his poetic and theoretical pursuits.
One of the major challenges for scholarship is Schiller’s self-identification and prediction for his own future: “Ich bin und bleibe bloß Poet und als Poet werde ich auch sterben” (27.02.1792). At the same time, given his intensified study of Kant’s philosophy and his lack of poetic-dramatic production in the late 1780s and early 1790s (as examined by Jeffrey High, 2004 and Dirk Oschmann, 2007), the trend to privilege the philosopher Schiller over the poet has a long history, one that continues into the present day (e.g., Frederick Beiser, 2005 and Rüdiger Safranski, 2009). Along with, and at variance from that body of work, the main purpose of my dissertation is to investigate how Schiller’s study of human nature and his concepts of the beautiful and the sublime are put to work in his dramatic practice while in the process of actualizing his sense of vocation and cultivating his professional identity as a poet-dramaturge.
Committee members: Drs. Steven Martinson (Chair), Barbara Kosta, David Chisholm