4. Laocoon, Dante, Shakespeare, August Wilhelm Schlegel and the overcoming of Tragedy

Fig. 4 Laocoon and his Sons, also known as the Laocoon Group. Marble, copy after an Hellenistic original from ca. 200 BC. Found in the Baths of Trajan, 1506, Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laocoon_Pio-Clementi no_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg, public domain. A more precise title for this chapter would be simply ‘Overcoming Tragedy Around 1800. A German View’. To a scholar of German, the idea of overcoming tragedy would have immediate associations. We think of disc.