Friedrich Schlegel and the rise of modern literary historiography

Abstract

According to Ernst Robert Curtius, the conferences on the history of European Literature, held by Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) in Paris and Wien in the early 19th century are among the founding documents of Western literary historiography. The starting point of these conferences is Schlegel’s pursuit of achieving for the history of literature the same that Johann Joachim Winckelmann had done in the field of plastic arts: a systematic and comprehensive study of literary art. By understanding the literary work of art in it’s historical context, and by using even history as a critical category, Schlegel inaugurates a new kind of literary historiography. This paper analyses the two series of conferences on the history of European literature with the purpose of discussing the role of Friedrich Schlegel in the establishment of modern literary historiography.