| dc.description.abstract |
One of the most far-reaching consequences of the French Revolution was the spread
of
political debate. Across Europe, people of all sorts — not just princes, but peasants
and peddlers as
well— started talking politics. When, in the face of this, the princes of the German
states censored
traditional modes of public discourse including newspapers other print media, the
burden of sociocritical
discourse fell to an unlikely place: ridiculing entertainment in the form of satire
and, more
specifically, satiric theater. Not a place of reasoned discourse seeking the expression
of consensus,
satire attacks and ridicules its object, making it a fitting forum for the dawn of
partisan politics.
This dissertation traces the historical and cultural conditions peculiar to German
dramatic
satire between 1790 and 1848 as it compensated for a lack of political debate elsewhere.
Looking at
how satire in the public space of the theater became one of the premier channels of
political debate
in an age of revolutionary change and heavy-handed censorship, the work chronologically
surveys
the most important satiric dramas of the era, including works by August von Kotzebue,
Ludwig
Tieck, Joseph von Eichendorff, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer,
Johann
Nestroy, Georg Büchner, and Karl Gutzkow. Through careful explication of the sociopolitical
crises
in which dramatic satirists intervened, we see how they tried to help the German people
laugh their
way to liberation.
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