Speech Distribution in Five-Act Tragedies (A Question of Classicism and Romanticism)

The following essay2 is methodological in the strictest sense of the word. While the study itself deals with a very narrow subject, it should demonstrate a method (methodos) for resolving a major problem in the comparison of broad literary entities, in this case, providing a scientific basis for a distinction between Classicism and Romanticism. Should this method turn out to be long and arduous, involving labour-intensive work, then I have embraced it because the quick method, which has been used up till now, is clearly not fit for purpose. True, our literary experience very often grants us the capacity to distinguish between different entities (school, authorial style, genre, epoch) through an immediate feeling; but when we try to objectify this feeling, to give it a scientific definition, we are very rarely successful. So, we can distinguish a typical work of Classicism from a typical romantic piece, but the essence of Classicism and Romanticism is still awaiting definition. The presently prevailing deductive method of definition is based on the idea that intuition can pluck out a single feature and designate it the »essence«, »nature«, das Wesen of Romanticism; at best, several intuitively selected features are elevated to the rank of »basic