Lessing's Reading of Racinian Tragedy

Recent Lessing scholarship has attempted to show that Lessing's objections to Racinian tragedy are less severe than they appear, and that his dismissal of Racine can be explained almost entirely by his efforts to decry the influence of French neo-classicism on German drama. It has been suggested that Lessing may have been aware of his many similarities to Racine, but realized that his polemical attack against the French would lose its forcefulness if he were to admit exceptions. The present study argues that scholars have wrongly minimized the substance of Lessing's criticisms of Racine in their exclusive emphasis on his polemical goals, and that they have also portrayed his judgment of Racine as more inconsistent – and favorable – than it actually is (Brown 263-65; Ritchie 129). An analysis of a misunderstood passage of Lessing's criticism will reveal similarities between Lessing and Racine that have not received sufficient attention in previous studies. But when read in its proper context, the passage also yields insights into why, even if Lessing actually did recognize his similarities to Racine, this recognition would presumably not have been strong enough to counterbalance his conviction that he is fundamentally dissimilar to Racine. As this study will show, Lessing's rejection of Racine stems both from his larger polemical goals and from his genuine inability to see in Racine anything but a gallant court poet. In the Conclusion to Letter 332 of the Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend, Lessing concurs with Johann Nikolaus Meinhard's explanation for why fifteenthcentury Italy produced few great writers despite the generous patronage of the Medicis. In a passage quoted by Lessing, Meinhard claims that there is no correlation between political sponsorship and literary achievement, since the genius needs no incentive to create. After all, Pietro Metastasio produced exceptional libretti as a poor baker's son, Shakespeare became ein groser Poet, ohne irgend eine Aufmunterung zu haben, ja so gar, ohne selbst es zu wissen, and Jean Racine would have produced better tragedies if he had not been obligated to please the government of Louis XIV:

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