Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie [Laokoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry]

Friederike von Schwerin-High

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Domains

Aesthetics

Dates

First circulation or publication 1766

Places

Germany (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

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Why is Laocoon, the serpent-beleaguered Trojan priest who, along with his two sons, is dying in great agony, only permitted to sigh in the famous statue that depicts him, whereas Virgil allows Laocoon to scream in his poetic account of the priest's death in Book 2 of the

Aeneid

? Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's innovative answer to this question provides the thesis informing many of the twenty-nine chapters of his treatise

Laokoon

. While Lessing's contemporary, the celebrated art historian Johann Jacob Winckelmann, had attributed Laocoon's subdued expression of suffering depicted by the statue to the presumed dignity and grandeur of Laocoon's character, Lessing argued that rather than being character traits, these qualities were first and foremost functions of the artistic medium used to…

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1646 words

Citation: von Schwerin-High, Friederike. "Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 September 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16334, accessed 03 December 2024.]