These studies open up perspectives on a network of highroads and byroads painstakingly drawn by Lessing the flâneur , revealing the entanglement of socio-historical, poetological, and anthropological aspects of his European-oriented panorama of theater. Lessing is portrayed as an authority whose case studies of drama left distinct marks on later discourse about theater's tasks.

Wolfgang Friedrich Bender, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster