A Critical Outline of the Literature of Germany (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER II. ON THE PERIODS AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN LITERATURE. Zenith of Literary Excellence, about I WOO A.M. One of the things that will be observed by the student of German literature is the very recent date at which it flourished, as compared with that of other European nations. It is not more than a hundred years since Germans could first boast of any great poets or prose writers, while in France literature had already reached its climax at least two centuries before the present age, in England nearly three, and in Spain and Italy at a still earlier period. The High-German race took its place in the literary world after the Western or Romance nations in point of time; and the poetic impulse, which first originated in Greece, and thence came to Italy, had previously gone the whole round of Europe before it stirred up the Teutonic nation, and roused it likewise to song and inspired thought. The year 1800 A. D. may be looked upon as the culminating point of literary excellence in Germany. The lateness, of this date may seem surprising; nor can we say what exactly may have been the cause which delayed the dawn of poetic genius in that country. The most probable solution of the question seems to be, that religion had absorbed the. whole attention of the . Germans, and that the disastrous contests subsequent to the Reformation blighted the spring-time of their intellectual fertility, just at the moment when the national language had been fixed, and nothing but peace and prosperity seemed wanting to bring the bud to- maturity. Be that as it may, there is a space of fully 230 years between Luther and Lessing, who commences theclassical era, so that the great national authors of Germany coincide only with the end of the last century: unless, indeed, we should claim for the mediaeval bar...