1701 – 1776
Johann Jacob Breitinger (1701–1776) was a Swiss philologist, literary critic, and theologian based in Zurich. Together with his collaborator Johann Jakob Bodmer, he challenged the rationalist neoclassicism of Gottsched and championed the role of imagination, the marvelous, and emotional force in poetry, helping lay the groundwork for German Romanticism and the Sturm und Drang movement.
Authored Critische Dichtkunst (1740), a foundational treatise on poetic imagination and the marvelous
Led, with Bodmer, the Zurich school of criticism against Gottsched's strict rationalist poetics
Defended the universality of poetic principles across ancient and modern authors, linking figures like Sophocles and Shakespeare
Advanced the aesthetic category of the 'wonderful' (das Wunderbare) as central to literary value
Influenced the development of German Romanticism and the Sturm und Drang movement