Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim / McCormick, Edward Allen (translator)

ISBN 10: 0801831393 / ISBN 13: 9780801831393

Published by Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984

About this Item

13.5 cm x 20.2 cm. 259 pages. Original softcover. Very good condition with minor signs of external wear. Partially detached endpaper. Inscription by preowner. Some spotting on page-edges. "Originally published in 1766, the Laocoön has been called the first extended attempt in modern times to define the distinctive spheres of art and poetry." (Amazon).

Seller Inventory # 72609AB

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry.
• Publisher: Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication Date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801831393
• ISBN 13: 9780801831393
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Sehr gut
• Weight: 1200 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Varia

About this title

Synopsis

Originally published in 1766, the Laocoön has been called the first extended attempt in modern times to define the distinctive spheres of art and poetry; its author, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, has been called the first modern esthetician. As Michael Fried writes in his foreword, it is Lessing who invented the modern concept of the artistic medium, and it is in the Laocoön, ultimately, that we find the source for modernist assumptions of the uniqueness and autonomy of the individual arts. And, as Fried argues, it is a work that present an impressively coherent esthetic semiotics, a book that at once sums up and moves beyond classical thought about the nature of the sign.

Long a central text for literary critics, art historians, and philosophers, the Laocoön is here returned to print in Edward Allen McCormick's authoritative translation. McCormick's introduction, notes, and biographical appendix have been retained; the new foreword by Michael Fried emphasizes Lessing's current importance for recent trends in art history and literary theory.

About the Author

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, and art critic.