Te Sturm und Drand and the Idea of a Literary Period

The present volume offers a wealth of basic information about the Sturm und Drang, together with a series of in-depth examinations of some of the most important themes associated with it. Histories of literature conventionally use a single-stranded narrative in order to organize information about literary texts and locate them within a historical development. The present volume provides this basic orientation, especially in this first, introductory chapter, but the following chapters offer a variety of perspectives on the Sturm und Drang by scholars adopting different approaches and placing different emphases. This format allows a range of arguments to be developed. Authors and texts, ideas and forms are not reduced to lists; they are introduced not merely because they are intrinsically or historically important but because they are part of an argument that shows why they are important. Indeed, no history is merely an accumulation of facts: it always consists of hypotheses about the way in which the relationships between the facts may be reconstructed. This volume attempts to respond to the multidimensionality and complexity of authors and texts, ideas and forms, and is able to illuminate them by presenting them in different essays within different argumentative frameworks. The reader is thus drawn into current debates about the Sturm und Drang, and, although the detail of scholarly argument is not placed in the foreground, it is hoped that the volume conveys something of the complexity, the uncertainty, and the excitement of all historiography.