Cited by Luk塶s as a principal source of literary modernism, Walter Benjamin study of the baroque stage-form called Trauerspiel (literally, ourning play? is the most complete document of his prismatic literary and philosophical practice. Engaging with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German playwrights as well as the plays of Shakespeare and Calder鏮 and the engravings of Der, Benjamin attempts to show how the historically charged forms of the Trauerspiel broke free of tragedy mythological timelessness. From its philosophical prologue, which offers a rare account of Benjamin early aesthetics, to its mind-wrenching meditation on allegory, The Origin of German Tragic Drama sparkles with early insights and the seeds of Benjamin later thought.