The Rhetoric of Lament: A Reassessment of Nikolaus Lenau

Lenau is generally taken at his word as a sincere romantic Weltschmerzler. This article reveals the extent to which he, in fact, still operated within the old rhetorical tradition. It is shown how coldly and deliberately he set out to “affect” his audience, for instance, and how knowingly he exploited the eighteenth‐century convention of Erhabenheit to his own ends. The rhetorical interpretations of letters, lyric poems and epics uncover a new common denominator in Lenau's oeuvre and provide a new critical approach to supplement biographical, Marxist and Existentialist readings of the poet.