The Circular Structure of Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell
The Circular Structure of Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell

Author : Aleks Matosoğlu
Number of pages : 17-27

Abstract

The Structure of Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell complies with the theme and at the same time the reader is made to explore the theme on the structural level. Lessing’s protagonist, Charles Watkins, a Professor of Classics, goes through an inner journey to see the depths and heights of all living, ironically through forgetting what orthodoxy have taught him. This journey, unexpectedly neither follows a linear order nor has a fragmentational nature. As Lessing signals in the title and the epitaph, it is a movement directed to inside of oneself, it is thus knowing oneself and through oneself every other being. In this respect the journey, as theme, structure and symbolism feverishly point, is circular.

Keywords

structuralism, lessing, symbolism

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