Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81)
DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-M029-1
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-M029-1
Version: v1, Published online: 1998
Retrieved July 27, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/lessing-gotthold-ephraim-1729-81/v-1
List of works
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Lessing, G.E. (1886–1924) Sämtliche Schriften, Lachmann; 3rd edn, trans. and ed.
F.
Muncker, Stuttgart, Berlin and Leipzig: Goschen, later De Gruyter, 23 vols. (The standard scholarly edition of Lessing’s writings.) |
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Lessing, G.E. (1766) Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, trans.
E.A.
McCormick, Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, Library of Liberal Arts, 1962. (A central aesthetic text; the first part of an uncompleted three-part work.) |
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Lessing, G.E. (1767–8) Hamburg Dramaturgy, trans.
E.C.
Beardsley and H.
Zimmern, in European Theories of the Drama, ed.
B.H.
Clark, rev. H.
Popkin, New York: Crown, 1965. (Central critical texts. A series of periodical essays and a primary source for Lessing’s dramatic theory and critique of Aristotle’s Poetics in relation to the dramatic unities.) |
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Lessing, G.E. (1769) ‘How the Ancients Represented Death’, in Death and the Visual Arts, trans.
E.C.
Beasley and H.
Zimmern, New York: Arno Press, 1977. (Reprint of 1879 translation. Polemical reply to an attack on Laocoon.) |
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Lessing, G.E. (1785) The Spinoza Conversations Between Lessing and Jacobi, trans.
G.
Vallee, J.B.
Lawson and C.G.
Chapple, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988. (Includes translations and extended introductory discussion of the controversial report by F.H. Jacobi of his 1780 conversation with Lessing.) |
References and further reading
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Cassirer, E. (1951) The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans.
F.
Koelln and J.P.
Pettegrove, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Useful if somewhat exaggerated estimate of Lessing’s influence on the development of aesthetics.) |
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McClain, J. (1986) ‘Time in the Visual Arts: Lessing and Modern Criticism’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
44 (1): 41–58. (Discussion of Lessing’s influence on critical treatment of time.) |
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Mendelssohn, M. (1757) ‘Reflections on the Sources and Combinations of the Fine Arts and Letters’, in Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1971. (A primary source for Hendelssoton’s distinction between natural and conventional symbols and for his attempts to classify the arts.) |
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Mendelssohn, M. (1771) ‘On the Chief Principles of the Fine Arts and Letters’, in Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1971. (A revised version of the 1757 essay.) |
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Robertson, J.G. (1965) Lessing’s Dramatic Theory, New York: Benjamin Blom. (Extended technical discussion of Lessing’s stage theory.) |
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Rudowski, V.A. (1986) ‘Lessing contra Winckelmann’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
44 (3): 235–244. (Lessing’s relation to Winckelmann.) |
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Rudowski, V.A. (1971) Lessing’s Aesthetica in Nuce, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. (Includes text of 1769 letter to Nicolai.) |
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Wellbery, D.E. (1984) Lessing’s Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Theory is heavily semiotic, but also includes very good discussion of philosophical background. Citations from Mendelssohn above are Wellbery’s translations.) |
Citing this article:
Townsend, Dabney. Bibliography. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-M029-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/lessing-gotthold-ephraim-1729-81/v-1/bibliography/lessing-gotthold-ephraim-1729-81-bib.
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