Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/389

 place of feudal individualism ousted by central force, in place of the narrow socialism of the medieval communes, came a conflict between personal and social action and thought on a scale which the world has never before witnessed. Since the close of the eighteenth century vast movements of men in masses have strengthened more and more the social spirit, have deepened more and more, by repulsion where in no other way, the sense of individuality. How this return to corporate life, how this deepening of individuality, have affected and are affecting literature, it would be a life-task to illustrate and explain; we shall here offer only some striking examples of their influences.

In Germany the literary centralism and courtly proprieties of Paris had found from the first a hazardous dominion. Without any definite national centre, and containing marked social contrasts in its local governments, cities, and feudal nobility, Germany could not easily fall in with the stereotyped literary ideas of Paris and her recognition of individual life within a very special and narrow circle as the only proper domain for the literary artist. Besides, what evidence was there, after all, that the models of Parisian taste were really classical? The countrymen of Sachs were not long in putting this question and answering it for themselves in a manner fatal to Parisian pretensions. Hence Lessing's endeayour to establish a truly German drama by criticism such as that of his Dramaturgie, and by creation such as that of his Minna von Barnhelm, "the first truly national drama that appeared on the German stage." Ten years later (1773) appeared Götz von Berlichingen, which displayed German independence not only in a disregard of French dramatic rules, but also in finding materials for a national drama in the old days of the Ritterthum.