In this text, the author offers a theoretical introduction to the nature of the baroque art of the 16th and 17th centuries, concentrating on the "Trauerspiel". He also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakepeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history.
Walter Bendix Schonflies Benjamin (1892 -- 1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and was also greatly inspired by the Marxism of Bertolt Brecht and Jewish mysticism as presented by Gershom Scholem.
