Theaters of Error: Problems of Performance in German and French Enlightenment Theater (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)

This book offers provocative readings of canonical Enlightenment dramas that reflect and shape the period’s changing understanding of error. With striking interdisciplinary connections to theater treatises as well as works from the philosophical, legal, and medical discourses, it tracks the relocation of error from the moral to the physical realm, a movement that begins with Lessing and continues through the turn of the nineteenth century.Featuring detailed analyses of Lessing’s __Miß Sara Sampson__, Diderot’s __Le Fils naturel__, Schiller’s __Die Räuber__, and Kleist’s __Die Familie Schroffenstein__ alongside rich close readings of diverse primary sources, ranging from previously untranslated acting treatises by Sainte-Albine and Engel to texts from the German __Archiv des Criminalrechts__, this study introduces the reader to new Enlightenment sources and compellingly concludes that ultimately it is no longer evil, but rather bodily irregularities and mistakes in reading the body that become the driving principle of Enlightenment drama. Acknowledgements 7 Contents 9 Chapter 1 Introduction: Locating and Performing Hamartia 12 1 Omnipresent Error and Aristotle’s Hamartia 12 2 Early Modern Interpretations 16 3 Beyond Poetic Justice: Lessing’s Paradigm Shift 20 4 Hamartia and Performance After Lessing 24 Chapter 2 Error Control in Eighteenth-Century German and French Acting Theory 35 1 Naming the Error, Reforming the Stage: Gottsched’s Imperfect Bodies 35 2 Of Morality and Immorality on the Stage 45 3 Infallible Signs? Sainte-Albine, the Perfection of Signs, and “Reasonable Error” 49 4 Beyond Declamation: Eloquentium corporis and the Error of Emotional Immersion 58 5 Body Semantics: Noverre’s Dancing Mimetic Bodies 67 6 Learning to Lie: Iffland, Engel, Goethe, and the Grammar of Acting 78 Chapter 3 Acting, Error, and the Art of Lying in Lessing’s Work 89 1 Lessing’s Senses of Truth and Error 89 2 Errors of the Senses in Condillac 99 3 Problems of Naturalness: Gesture, Nature, and Lessing’s Semiotics 103 4 Comedies of Error 109 5 The Expressive Paradox and the Sin of Dissimulation 116 6 Lying Signs and the Body as Lying Signifier: Lessing’s Theory of Metaphor 122 Chapter 4 Encyclopedias of Error: Diderot’s Medicalized Bodies and Communication 133 1 “Des personnages réels”: Exploring Diderot’s Bodies 133 2 Pathology, Malady, and the Imperfect Body 140 3 “What Is My Crime?” Searching for Fault in Le Fils naturel 151 4 Constance’s Enlightened Error 158 5 Affect and Diderot’s Revolutionary Society of Error 164 Chapter 5 Beyond Sin: Physiologies of Error in Schiller and La Mettrie 175 1 Mechanics and Economics of Error 175 2 Sünde? Irrtum? Fehler? Mapping Error and Sin in Die Räuber 181 3 Testing Borders: Schiller’s Medicine, Anthropologie, and Physiognomy 191 4 Error and the Visual 200 5 Schiller, the Metaphorical, and the Real 207 6 La Mettrie’s L’Homme machine and Schiller’s Theatrical Mechanics of Revolution 211 7 Truth-Value, Collective Morality, and the Theater as Moral Institution 218 Chapter 6 Legal Fallibility and the Drama of Evidence in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist 229 1 “21⁄2 Beweise”: On the Mathematics of Real and Artificial Evidence 229 2 Of Nature and Error: Natural Law and Criminal Law 238 3 Finding Error: Courtroom Protocol and Gebärdenprotokolle 242 4 Error of the Law in Der zerbrochne Krug and Die Familie Schroffenstein 247 5 Gesture and the Five Senses in Interrogation 260 6 Acting and Error: Kleist’s Marionettentheater 266 7 The “Versehen” of Evidence as Tragic Hamartia 268 Chapter 7 Conclusion 282 Bibliography 292 Index 312 This book offers provocative readings of canonical Enlightenment dramas that reflect and shape the period’s changing understanding of error. With striking interdisciplinary connections to theater treatises as well as works from the philosophical, legal, and medical discourses, it tracks the relocation of error from the moral to the physical realm, a movement that begins with Lessing and continues through the turn of the nineteenth century. Featuring detailed analyses of Lessing’s Miß Sara Sampson , Diderot’s Le Fils naturel , Schiller’s Die Räuber , and Kleist’s Die Familie Schroffenstein alongside rich close readings of diverse primary sources, ranging from previously untranslated acting treatises by Sainte-Albine and Engel to texts from the German Archiv des Criminalrechts , this study introduces the reader to new Enlightenment sources and compellingly concludes that ultimately it is no longer evil, but rather bodily irregularities and mistakes in reading the body that become the driving principle of Enlightenment drama. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction: Locating and Performing Hamartia (Pascale LaFountain)....Pages 1-23 Error Control in Eighteenth-Century German and French Acting Theory (Pascale LaFountain)....Pages 25-78 Acting, Error, and the Art of Lying in Lessing’s Work (Pascale LaFountain)....Pages 79-122 Encyclopedias of Error: Diderot’s Medicalized Bodies and Communication (Pascale LaFountain)....Pages 123-164 Beyond Sin: Physiologies of Error in Schiller and La Mettrie (Pascale LaFountain)....Pages 165-218 Legal Fallibility and the Drama of Evidence in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist (Pascale LaFountain)....Pages 219-271 Conclusion (Pascale LaFountain)....Pages 273-282 Back Matter ....Pages 283-313