“A monster in its breadth and length”: Schiller’s Wallenstein and the Poetics of Scale, 1798–2007

What happens when works are expanded or shortened? How does scale relate to literary form, and how do changes in size qualitatively impact a work of literature? This talk will explore the German play most famous for its gigantic length –  Friedrich Schiller’s „Wallenstein“ – and its reception up to the present day, using Schiller’s work as an opportunity to theorize general aspects of scale and scaling in literature.

Carlos Spoerhase is Professor of Modern German Literature at Bielefeld University and has written on contemporary literature and the humanities for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Merkur, and New Left Review. His most recent book is Das Format der Literatur: Praktiken materieller Textualität zwischen 1740 und 1830 (Göttingen, 2018)