Schiller's Wound

One of the founders of German national literature, Friedrich A. 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 theatre.In a revisionist 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. Each chapter offers an in-depth reading of one of Schiller's plays: The Robbers, Don Carlos, the Wallenstein trilogy, The Bride of Messina and the fragment Demetrius, all of which mark important moments of crisis in Schiller's career.