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The Early Romantic Comedy of Aesthetic Disobedience

This article exposes a tension between politics and aesthetics in the development of early Romantic comedy. In his essay ‘Vom ästhetischen Wert der griechischen Komödie’ (1794), Friedrich Schlegel states that Aristophanes’ Old Comedy evoked pleasure by transgressing societal norms, thereby epitomizing civic liberty. Deviating from Schlegel’s political vision of the comedy, the humour of early Romantic comedies is primarily based upon the transgression of the aesthetic rule of the fourth wall, as Clemens Brentano’s Gustav Wasa (1800) and Ludwig Tieck’s Prolog (1796) illustrate. Looking at Schlegel’s dualistic anthropology, which suggests that the audience is not prepared for a comedy that challenges norms as long as they cannot control their sensuality, closes the ostensible discrepancy between Schlegel and the Romantic playwrights’ preoccupation with the fourth wall. The aesthetic disobedience of early Romantic playwrights can thus be seen as an endeavour to represent liberty without appealing to the sensuality of the audience.