Aural Enlightenment: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's Contributions to a New Enlightenment Aesthetics

This article considers Friedich Gottlieb Klopstock as an unlikely contributor to a New Enlightenment. Using Klopstock's work on declamation, orthography, and meter, it argues that Klopstock foregrounds speaking and especially hearing as central to human subjectivity. It demonstrates the importance of hearing and sound in his poem Das Gehor.