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MOVEMENT AND EMBODIMENT IN KLOPSTOCK AND GOETHE
Author(s) -
Lee Charlotte
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/glal.12172
Subject(s) - poetry , embodied cognition , metaphysics , dance , philosophy , prosody , literature , dimension (graph theory) , aesthetics , epistemology , art , linguistics , mathematics , pure mathematics
Poetry is both physical and mobile: it moves us, and moves in us. This essay focuses on the role of the moving body in the work of Klopstock, with a brief excursus into Goethe's poetry. Klopstock conceived of poetry as a kind of dance, and his innovations in prosody consisted of an intensification of the physical dimension of poetry. He consistently challenged the assumption underlying dualistic philosophies: namely, that the physical and the metaphysical, the tangible and the intangible, are ultimately separate. In his work, it is precisely the substance and weight of language which allows poetry to spin into the realms of the spiritual. His theory and practice is, therefore, thoroughly in tune with the premises of the modern notion of embodied cognition.