Frederick Schiller
Pre-reading
Frederick Schiller (1759-1805) was a leading German dramatist, poet, philosopher, and literary theorist. During the last few years of his life (1788-1805), Schiller’s friendship with the already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe, ushered in a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They discussed issues concerning aesthetics. They encouraged each other; Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches, while Goethe convinced him to return to playwriting. They founded the Weimar Theater, which became the leading theater in Germany.
Their collaboration helped lead to a renaissance of drama in Germany.
Schiller is now best remembered for such dramas as The Robbers (1781), the Wallenstein trilogy (1800-1801), Maria Stuart (1801), and Wilhelm Tell (1804). His work On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (1794) is a philosophical inquiry into what had gone wrong, and how to prevent such tragedies in the future. In the Letters he asserts that it is possible to elevate the moral character of a people, by first touching their souls with beauty, an idea that is also found in his poem Die Künstler (The Artists): “Only through Beauty’s morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge.”
In September 2008, Schiller was voted by the audience of the TV channel ARTE as the second most important playwright in Europe after William Shakespeare.
Prompts for Your Reading
1.How many layers of meaning can you interpret in Paragraph 1?
2.Why is the good not included in art? What is the aim of art?
3.What is the point of the example in Paragraph 3?
4.What can be said of the good and the agreeable in terms of being objective or subjective?
5.In what ways is the good different from the agreeable?
6.What is the difference between the agreeable and the beautiful?
7.What is the function of Paragraph 8?
8.What do you think of Paragraph 9 and Paragraph 10? How do they fit into the whole passage?