Tragedy in L. Tieck’s drama. Some aspects

Abstract

The article considers the genre of tragedy in the works of L. Tieck, one of the key figures of German Romanticism. It is known that the tragedy genre among the German romantics is represented mainly by two varieties: the “tragedy of fate” (Schicksalsdrama) and the drama on a religious-historical theme (in literature most often referred to as Universaldrama, “universal drama”). L. Tieck stands at the origins of both genres, while the tragedy “The Life and Death of Saint Genoveva” (1801), to which other religious and historical dramas of German romanticism go back, turned out to be especially influential. Having created examples of those two genres, Tieck rethinks tragic structures, relativizing them in different ways – firstly, by transforming the tragic genre itself, and, secondly, by including tragic elements into the complex genre constructs, mainly into fairy-tale dramas. That rethinking, however, takes place mostly in the mainstream of the parody typical of Tieck’s work – whether it is a parody of the “main” tragedy with a comedy counterpart or the inclusion of parodies of the tragedy, including his own tragedies, in comedy texts. At the same time, however, Tieck’s last dramatic work, “Fortunat”, which has much in common with his fairy-tale dramas and, like them, is a complex genre construct, ends in tragedy in its purest form, the triumph of the tragic substance. In our opinion that testifies to the impossibility of complete relativization of tragedy and to the crisis of romantic drama.