BREITINGER, JOHANN JAKOB

born March 1, 1701, Zrich, Switz. died Dec. 13, 1776, Zrich Swiss-German writer, one of the most influential 18th-century literary critics in the German-speaking world. He studied theology and became professor at the Collegium Carolinum in Zurich. He lectured on Hebrew, Greek, Latin, logic, and rhetoric; showed excellence as a philologist in many editions; and advocated education on humanist lines (Zrich school reform, 176575). Under the inspiration of The Spectator papers of England's Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Breitinger founded and wrote essays for the weekly Discourse (172123). The most important of his many publications was the Critische Dichtkunst (1740), in which he attacked the narrowly rationalist Dichtkunst of the Leipzig literary pope Johann Christoph Gottsched (1730). Breitinger stressed the place of the imagination and the wonderful in poetry; fired the German-speaking public with enthusiasm for Homer; and spread the ideas of John Locke, Lord Shaftesbury, and Alexander Pope. He was visited by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and others, and his pupils included the poet and prose writer Johann Kaspar Lavater and the writer and educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.