"Schiller’s Don Carlos, written ten years before his great Wallenstein trilogy, testifies to the young playwright’s growing power. First performed in 1787, it stands at the culmination of Schiller’s ...formative development as a dramatist and is the first play written in his characteristic iambic pentameter. Don Carlos plunges the audience into the dangerous political and personal struggles that rupture the court of the Spanish King Philip II in 1658. The autocratic king’s son Don Carlos is caught between his political ideals, fostered by his friendship with the charismatic Marquis Posa, and his doomed love for his stepmother Elisabeth of Valois. These twin passions set him against his father, the brooding and tormented Philip, and the terrible power of the Catholic Church, represented in the play by the indelible figure of the Grand Inquisitor. Schiller described Don Carlos as ""a family portrait in a princely house.” It interweaves political machinations with powerful personal relationships to create a complex and resonant tragedy. The conflict between absolutism and liberty appealed not only to audiences but also to other artists and gave rise to several operas, not least to Verdi’s great Don Carlos of 1867. The play, which the playwright never finished to his satisfaction, lives on nonetheless among his best-loved works and is translated here with flair and skill by Flora Kimmich. Like her translations of Schiller’s Wallenstein and his Fiesco’s Conspiracy at Genoa, this is a lively and accessible rendering of a classic text. As with all books in the Open Book Classics series, it is supported by an introduction and notes that will inform and enlighten both the student and the general reader."
The series "QUELLEN UND FORSCHUNGEN ZUR LITERATUR- UND KULTURGESCHICHTE" (Sources and Research in the History of Literature and Culture), with a rich tradition stretching back to 1874, is an ...established feature among the renowned publications for German Literary Studies. Edited by Ernst Osterkamp and Werner Röcke at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the series presents examples of high-quality scholarship examining literary texts in conjunction with historical cultural phenomena, particularly with the other arts. There is an explicit demand for literary studies with a transdisciplinary approach. German literature from the Middle Ages to the present day forms the main focus of the series. As the historical cultural thrust of the series includes aspects of intercultural experience and national perceptions of the other, Quellen und Forschungen is also open to occasional comparative studies. The publications of the series include monographs, doctoral and professorial theses and thematically focused volumes of collected papers. Works presented for acceptance in the series are required to display scholarly relevance and excellence in method and presentation.
Questioning the resistance to change of the West in constant crisis, and framed by early writings of Max Horkheimer and others, John E. O'Brien's historical-materialist method explores the contested ...perspectives of Voltaire, Schiller, Baudrillard, Foucault, Eagleton and Hayden White.
For the first time, this comprehensive study deals with the entire reception of Schiller's works in all relevant Slavic literatures up to 1900. She concentrates on the translations of his poetry into ...the corresponding languages as well as the respective reactions to his work in scientific circles as well as in the wider literary public. Not least of all, it is taken into account to what extent the respective nationalistic journalistic statements on Schiller reflect an independent Slavic opinion formation or, in their dependence on foreign sources, possibly far more particularly reflect German or French judgments on his work. The presentation complements a detailed, more than 1,600 titles comprehensive bibliography of the transmissions of works Schiller in all Slavic languages until 1900.
Wallenstein Schiller, Friedrich; Paulin, Roger
2017
eBook
Open access
" By the time Frederich Schiller came to write the Wallenstein trilogy, his reputation as one of Germany’s leading playwrights was all but secured. Consisting of Wallenstein’s Camp, The Piccolomini ...and The Death of Wallenstein, this suite of plays appeared between 1798 and 1799, each production under the original direction of Schiller’s collaborator and mentor, Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe. Across the three plays, which are now commonly performed and printed together, Schiller charts the thwarted rebellion of General Albrecht von Wallenstein. Based loosely on the events of the Thirty Years' War, the trilogy provides a unique vantage on an army’s loyalty to their commander and the machinations and intrigues of international diplomacy, giving insight into the military hero who is placed on the threshold between these forces as they are increasingly pitted against one another. The Wallenstein trilogy, formally innovative and modern beyond its time, is a brilliant study of power, ambition and betrayal. In this new translation—the latest in a long line of distinguished English translations of the play, starting with Coleridge's in Schiller's lifetime—Flora Kimmich succeeds in rendering what is often a difficult source text into language that is at once accessible and enjoyable. Coupled with a complete and careful commentary and a glossary, both of which are targeted to undergraduates, and accompanied by an authoritative introductory essay by Roger Paulin, this edition also includes embedded readings in German of the play and links to the original German text. It will be an invaluable resource for students of German, European literature and history, and military history, as well as to all readers approaching this important set of plays for the first time. "
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