Performing Knowledge, 1750-1850

by Mary Helen Dupree (Editor), Sean B. Franzel (Editor)

Overview

The period between 1750 and 1850 was a time when knowledge and its modes of transmission were reconsidered and reworked in fundamental ways. Social and political transformations, such as the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, went hand in hand with in new ways of viewing, sensing, and experiencing what was perceived to be a rapidly changing world. This volume brings together a range of essays that explore the performance of knowledge in the period from 1750 to 1850, in the broadest possible sense. The essays explore a wide variety of literary, theatrical, and scientific events staged during this period, including scientific demonstrations, philosophical lectures, theatrical performances, stage design, botany primers, musical publications, staged Schiller memorials, acoustic performances, and literary declamations. These events served as vital conduits for the larger process of generating, differentiating, and circulating knowledge. By unpacking the significance of performance and performativity for the creation and circulation of knowledge in Germany during this period, the volume makes an important contribution to interdisciplinary German cultural studies, performance studies, and the history of knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110412062
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	07/20/2015
Series:	Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies , #18
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sean B. Franzel, University of Missouri, Columbia Missouri, USA; Mary Helen Dupree, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Performing Knowledge, 1750-1850 Mary Helen Dupree Sean Franzel 1

Part 1 Sounds and Stages

The Making of Acoustics around 1800, or How to Do Science with Words Viktoria Tkaczyk 27

The Fate of Rhetoric in the "Long" Eighteenth Century Dietmar Till 57

Pity Play: Sympathy and Spectatorship in Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson and Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments Ellwood Wiggins 85

The Sound of Glass: Transparency and Danger Rebecca Wolf 113

Early Schiller Memorials (1805-1808) and the Performance of Literary Knowledge Mary Helen Dupree 137

Modern Architecture Takes the Stage: Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Architectural Spectacles Hans-Georg von Arburg 165

Part 2 Pedagogies and Publics

Performance and Play: Lichtenberg's Lectures on Experimental Physics Claire Baldwin 193

Kant on the Logic of Anthropology and the Ethics of Disciplinarity Chad Wellmon 221

Staging the Knowledge of Plants: Goethe's Elegy "The Metamorphosis of Plants" Michael Bies 247

Playing to the Public: Performing Politics in Heinrich von Kleist Edgar Landgraf 269

Constructions of the Present and the Philosophy of History in the Lecture Form Sean Franzel 295

Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Forms of Musical Knowledge: The Case of the Piano Adrian Daub 323

Afterword: The Audience, the Public, and the Improvisator Maximilian Langenschwarz Angela Esterhammer 341

Bibliography 347

Index 377

Editorial Reviews

"Der vorliegende Sammelband verbindet in insgesamt dreizehn Beiträgen beide Perspektiven und spitzt sie in Gestalt der beiden Sektionen ,,Sounds and Stages“ und ,,Pedagogies and Publics“ zugleich auf die Forschungsinteressen der Herausgeberin (Mediengeschichte der Akustik) und des Herausgebers (Kulturgeschichte der Vorlesung) zu. Die allgemeine Hypothese, dass Wissen innerhalb mehr oder weniger dramatischer Vorführungen entworfen, überprüft und vermittelt wird, bleibt dabei aber deutlich kenntlich, und der Band präsentiert überdies auch eine pointierte Diagnose zum Zusammenhang der wissensgeschichtlichen Sattelzeit um 1800 und dem Aufkommen populärer Massenmedien im gleichen Zeitraum. [...] Der Innovationsgehalt des Bandes ist mithin beträchtlich [...]"
Nicolas Pethes in: Monatshefte 110.3 (2018), 447-450

"[...] a thoughtful collection of essays reflecting on the moment of performance as part of the process of enlightenment, taken in its broader sense."
David Hill in: German Studies 2017, p. 268

"These well-researched, provocative essays offer readers much to think about; they illuminate a wide variety of cultural phenomena, all grounded historically and viewed through the lens of the performative scenario [...]. [...] Performing Knowledge will be of great interest to scholars and students of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from a variety of fields, and should provide impetus for turther cultural-historical studies."
(Edward T. Potter, Lessing Yearbook XLIV)

From the Publisher