Abstract:

‘Erkenntniskritische Vorrede’ is the preface of Walter Benjamin’s The Origins of German Tragic Drama. Not just as a philosophical essay, it contains Benjamin’s own method of literary history. By making a distinction between two different kinds of universality in “idea” and “concept”, Benjamin defines his “tragic drama” as an “idea”, accompanying a description of the social and literary historical transformation about its circumstance. His study presents a dialectical synthesis of extremely special details and universal configuration of historical landscape, which is against the linear evolutionary literary historiography.

Key words: tragic drama, idea, concept, linear-evolutionary