The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.
- ISBN10 0860918378
- ISBN13 9780860918370
- Publish Date 17 August 1985 (first published 1 May 1977)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 14 May 1999
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Verso Books
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 256
- Language English