The Saturnine Vision:Walter Benjamin on Sovereign,Allegory and Natural History in German Baroque Tragedy
In his seminal habilitation thesis,Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels,Walter Benjamin provided an allegorical and historical-philosophical interpretation of German baroque tragedy.Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty,Benjamin demonstrated the paradoxical role of the baroque sovereign within the secularized world of history.As a representative of both history and the state,however,the sovereign is characterized by his inability to make decisions and his melancholy in the face of the state of emergency.This leads to an immanence between monarch and martyr.Against this backdrop,the history represented by the sovereign is understood as a natural history that touches on the historical constitution of secularization as a dialectical entanglement of nature and history.The baroque world is thus to be seen as a dialectical image that can reveal a new conceptual space for understanding the origins of modernity.
BaroqueTrauerspielsovereignallegorynatural history
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