However, after being passed among departments, this complex tome was summarily rejected by the traditional academics at the university in Frankfurt. Benjamin had made all the right moves: he found a long neglected area of culture to investigate-German Baroque tragic drama-and analyzed this obscure topic with exemplary and labyrinthine thoroughness. On the surface, the submission was exemplary. Once accepted into the university fold, the Privatdozent has the right to lecture on whatever topic s/he desires. Originally intended as his Habilitationsschrift, or an academic manuscript, submitted to the faculty of a German university as the necessary prelude for being accepted as a Privatdozent. In this notoriously difficult book, Benjamin foregrounded allegory as the structural underpinning of the Baroque épistemé. Walter Benjamin’s Ursprung des deutschenTrauerspiels utilized a thought floated by Marx, that all art would become “allegorical” as a result of commodification and of its transformation into a fetishistic object. Trauerspielbuch ( The Origin of German Tragic Drama), 1925
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