For a theory of modernity in On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry

Abstract

On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry currently figures as one of the most intriguing reflections of the German poet Friedrich Schiller. Although the dramaturge had the immediate interest of considering the forms of feeling and producing beauty, in particular on poetry and theater, the impact of this treatise on its own intellectual community and the reception of these ideas throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made it meaningful to investigate the concept of history coetaneous to that aesthetic debate and to analyze the construction of the modern identity in the midst of this historical process. This work aims to analyze Schiller’s aesthetic treatise looking forward to understand how his proposal is part of a typically modern temporal experience; as well as to concern about its contribution to the construction of the identity of this modern man and to investigate its relation and influence in a cultural atmosphere in which the intellectual creation was increasingly associated to a reflexive procedure.