SOURCE: Madland, Helga. “Imitation to Creation: The Changing Concept of Mimesis from Bodmer and Breitinger to Lenz.” In Eighteenth-Century German Authors and Their Aesthetic Theories: Literature and the Other Arts, edited by Richard Critchfield and Wulf Koepke, pp. 29-43. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1988.

In the following essay, Madland analyzes Lenz's theory of literary creativity.

Eighteenth-century poetics from Bodmer and Breitinger to Lenz represent a reaction against the aesthetic theories of Johann Christoph Gottsched whose thought dominated the early decades of the eighteenth century. According to Gottsched, the best rule for the dramatist is to observe and copy reality and let nothing “improbable” (Unwahrscheinliches) penetrate his composition. In other words, art must correspond to nature (die Uebereinstimmung der Fabel mit der Natur); above all, art must always remain within the realm of probability.¹ Gottsched's limited interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of mimesis demanded a crude naturalism and disregarded...