Schiller's Wound: the Theater of Trauma from Crisis to Commodity (Kritik: German Literary Theory and Cultural Studies Series)

One of the founders of German national literature, Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was that country's most important neoclassical playwright. In Schiller's Wound, Stephanie Hammer shows that Schiller was also one of the first self-conscious explorers of psychological trauma in the theater. In a provocative reading of Schiller, Hammer re-envisions him as a psychologically tormented artist and argues for his pivotal role in the developing relationship between pain, spectacle, and capital in modern Anglo-European drama, literature, and film. Hammer uses Schiller's work to illustrate the ways in which we think about art and money and the ways in which we have come to understand the theater and other media as venues for the display of personal pain. Schiller's Wound is an exciting work that will not only entice scholars but also serve as a useful resource for instructors who wish to reintroduce this important writer into their curricula.