(Closet) Drama of the Early Modern Age (1500-1775)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dirk Niefanger
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 242006157

In the planned continuation, the project will focus the (closet) drama in the final phase of the early modern age (18th century). This continuation will expand the project, which was first applied only for two years, by an additional year. Thus an overview of the whole time period would be achieved. With the addition of further case studies till 1775 (like Klopstock and Bodmer) historic specifics of this reading genre and systematic aspects of the drama of the early modern age as a whole could be fully unfolded. It is a reasonable expansion, since crucial cultural changes (like the literarization of the theater, the emergence of emphatic closet dramas, the new reading behavior, the institutionalisation and professionalisation of the theater and the book market, the critical public, and so forth) will become apparent in their impact on the design and on the effect of the printed drama.Up until now the project was able to work the orientation of the drama from 1500 to 1730 towards a (historical) predominantly reading reception, how it was sketched in the initial application. This was achieved with extensive archival research. It turns out that the textual and visual design of dramatic texts allows drawing conclusions about the aesthetics of the theater at a given time and especially on their design and effect as literary texts. The historical studies of dramatic texts of the 18th century allow a better outline of our results and a more adequate historic allocation of the findings. With the expansion a historico-cultural clarification of the thus far used typology of reading drama phenomena can be achieved. The Intention of a fundamental professional discourse of such pivotal terms like drama, closet drama, and theater text is to develop new and historicaly secured arguments.The continuation shall help to make the results of the project more visible as well as to stimulate subsequent studies of the genre drama from a analytic reading perspective by reaching out in a more familiar terrain.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Matthias Warstat