Poet, dramatist, and literary critic, Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg was best known to his contemporaries as the author of the polished and popular collection of anacreontic verse titled Tändeleyen (Flirtations, 1759) and of the drama Ugolino (1768), a gruesome tragedy of imprisonment and starvation. His innovative Gedicht eines Skalden (A Skald's Poem, 1766) is credited with initiating the craze for bardic poetry in the late 1760s. His greatest and most lasting accomplishments, however, were his various contributions to the theoretical positions of the Sturm und Drang movement. In the single decade of his creative productivity between 1759 and 1771 he formulated, together with Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder, the major premises of the new literary aesthetics. An enthusiastic advocate of Shakespearean drama and promoter of lyric poetry, Gerstenberg used his reviews and critical letters to champion original genius and to reject the norms of rationalist poetics. After 1771 Gerstenberg's productivity...