The Ut Pictura Poesis- Controversy in Eighteenth-Century England and Germany

The thesis deals in four chapters with an interesting aspect of the aesthetic theories of the eighteenth century. For many years critics generally assumed that the idea of Horace's ut pictura poesis essentially held away throughout the eighteenth century and that the theory developed by Lessing in his Laokoon was quite exceptional. This thesis, however, shows that there was a steadily increasing opposition to be reckoned with.