The Soldiers

Jakob Michael Reinhold LenzProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
97K words
Chapters
10

Tags

Dramatic Literature Foreign Literature Theatrical ClassicSoldier TragedyCommoner and NobleLove EntanglementsPaternal ControlSocial Critique18th Century GermanySturm und DrangFemale Tragedy

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Die Soldaten by Jakob Michael Reinhold LenzAuthor: Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold, 1751-1792,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Nov 1, 2004

Editor's review

Die Soldaten is a representative play by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, a dramatist of the German Sturm und Drang movement, presented here in the original German in Project Gutenberg's free electronic edition. Its value lies in its structure, which breaks with classical dramatic conventions: scenes shift rapidly, the cast is large, and the dialogue is blunt, presenting an almost fragmented picture of society that would prove influential for later Expressionist drama. The plot revolves around the emotional entanglement between a middle-class woman and the officer class, critiquing hierarchy and male privilege in vivid, abrasive language. The Gutenberg edition is easy to search and cite, making it suitable as a primary text for German literature courses or theater history research. Reading it requires some command of German and familiarity with eighteenth-century German society; otherwise one may see only the plot and miss the formal experimentation and the edge of social critique.

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Reading tips

  1. Read through once to grasp the character relationships and scene transitions, then return to analyze the fragmented structure
  2. Read alongside the background of eighteenth-century German hierarchical society and the Sturm und Drang movement to understand the social roots of the conflict
  3. Read in comparison with Schiller's Intrigue and Love to compare how the two handle bourgeois tragedy
  4. Use the electronic edition's search function to organize key scenes and character lines and take thematic notes

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10

FAQ

Is this a Chinese translation? No. The version provided by Project Gutenberg is the original German text, with the language marked as German. It contains no Chinese translation or annotations; readers need some German, or should read it alongside a dictionary or another translation.
What background knowledge is needed to read this play? It helps to know about eighteenth-century German hierarchy, the differences between the officer class and the middle class, and the Sturm und Drang movement's breaking of classical dramatic rules. Without this background, one may take the work for a mere love story and miss its social critique and formal experimentation.
Is this electronic edition suitable for direct academic citation? It can be cited as a textual source, but the Gutenberg edition is a free electronic text and usually lacks scholarly annotations and textual notes. For formal papers, check authoritative critical or print editions and note the source and access date of the electronic version.
Why does the play's structure seem so scattered from scene to scene? Lenz deliberately breaks the unity of classical drama, using rapidly shifting scenes and a large cast to present a cross-section of society. This fragmentation reinforces the universality of hierarchical oppression and also makes reading harder; it helps to group the scenes and trace the characters' threads.

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About the author

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz Author · German · 1751–1792

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792) was a leading writer of the German Sturm und Drang movement, born in Livonia (present-day Latvia). He maintained close ties with Goethe and Herder, and his major works, Der Hofmeister and Die Soldaten, break free from the constraints of the dramatic unities, exposing social injustice in a realistic vein and anticipating naturalism and expressionism. Seven of his works are held in this collection, including the two plays above, a polemical defense of Wieland, the novel Der Waldbruder written as a counterpart to Werther, and Der Engländer, Der Landprediger and Zerbin, oder die neuere Philosophie. After 1778 he suffered from mental illness and died in poverty in Moscow; public information on his life is limited, while his works, often centering on lower-class figures, are passionate and direct in style.