Week 8
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Central Concepts: Author, Mechanical Media, Public, Narrative
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was one of the founders of the German Sturm und Drang movement (1767-1785), which emphasized emotion, rebellion, and individuality as opposed to Enlightenment emphasis on logic, decorum, rules, and freedom through structure. Sturm und Drang would eventually transform into Romanticism in the early 19th century. If one created a binary between the two, it would look something like the following chart. However, such binaries only go so far in criticism of a literary or artistic work:
Sturm und Drang
- Heart
- Feeling
- Intuition
- Genius
- Freedom (personal)
Enlightenment
- Mind
- Reason
- Logic
- Rules
- Freedom (ideal)
The Sorrows of Young Werther
As an epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) is situated in a time of long and serious letter writing, which is imitated by the main character, Werther, who writes to a friend, Wilhelm. The narrative voice is complicated since first, the reader encounters a detached editor who collects, edits, and arranges these letters with a brief summary of the events at the end. We are reading an incomplete "archive" of Werther's correspondence. Through the letters themselves, the reader has access to written representations of Werther’s thoughts, emotions, and imagination about the past and future, which are full of self-deceptions.
The history of the novel appears in Goethe’s own biography, where in May of 1772, Goethe met and fell in love with a young woman named Charlotte Buff. Like Werther, Goethe escaped from the situation and used his love for Buff as a model for Book One. A second event that influenced the novel is the suicide of a lawyer friend, Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem (1747-1772), which then becomes the model for Book Two.
Below are some important themes in relation to Media Studies.
(Bring your own discoveries between of media and literature to class for discussion)
- Real: Werther often expresses the urge to transgress “reality” which confines the protagonist/ The urge for transcendence/ The longing for the afterlife/Sublime (typical "romantic" themes). “Reality” is that which can be represented in a particular medium.
- Sequence of letters: the reader only has one point of view since there are no replies. The “openness” of the letters allows the reader to experience Werther’s inner thoughts of while also imagining possible replies. The narrative alternates between “sequence” and “tangents,” or the discipline of chronology and the emotion of memory. This tension also appears in the editor's desire to discipline the letters through editing, ordering, printing, and eventually summarizing the events. The emotional and personal expression of writing (One sender, one reader, through the channel of paper and ink) becomes mechanized (One sender, infinite number of reader through the mechanization and "industry" of typography).
- Regimentation (May 17). 18th century German (Prussian) culture was becoming more and more bureaucratic, institutionalized, and “mechanical.” Such a mechanization of the body introduces stress.
- Nature: The projection of self into nature/nature becoming a mirror of the inner self. The description of nature in the beginning is as lively as Werther is happy. There is a spring like mood. Such a mirroring of the self in nature is a remnant of oral culture, where the self is one with nature. Werther seems incapable of separating his identity with nature. Towards the end when Werther becomes more disillusioned, the reader encounters a more gloomy and chaotic description of nature. Look at these letters to see the contradictions: May 10/ Nov 3, August 18/ December 12, July 1/ September 15.
- Symbols: September 15: The falling of the walnut trees is a symbolic act of the obliteration of the magical-animistic aspect. The success of a pragmatist, ordered, economic, and materialistic perspective of 18th century German culture. Nature;Blue Jacket; Dance; Pistols; Day/Night...what other symbols can you find?
- Literacy: the importance of literary modeling in 18th century German culture cannot be underestimated. The juxtaposition of the Homeric world where there is a sense of patriarchal order contrary to the Ossianic world which is chaotic. These two literary models become part of Wether’s own struggle. Print allows for the juxtaposition of many models of reality, none of which are absolute.
- Pay attention to the relationship between “the imaginary” and media. What can each character imagine as possible? How does media offer this possibility through imposing the limits of the impossible?
-Media requires submission to its code: Werther rebels against the aristocratic world of rituals and performance.
-A critique of the aristocratic society with its meaningless rituals /enlightenment decorum/ versus the praising of simple village life and peasants representing innocence. Which media dominate which culture?
-Lotte and Unrequited Love: is this a retelling of a medieval romance? What happens to chivalry in this figure of the ideal woman? For Werther, her image shifts between an ideal, motherly, and seductive figure. Lotte: Werther focuses on the heart/ not the outer characteristics/ always the eyes are implied. Allegorical vision versus the surface and linear perspective.
- The “I” (Werther) as a restless wanderer (passionate and free) is juxtaposed with Albert calm, serene, and reasonable.
-Children as the representatives of innocence and nearness to nature: they have yet to be shaped by adaptation to “culture”
-Reflections of Werther in other minor characters like the mad man plucking flowers or the servant boy who kills the lover of his lady. The reader must make choices: which model is “Werther?”
-The concept of marriage: what does it mean to Werther, Lotte, and Albert? Is it a marriage of convenience? What does the kissing scene signify? Is it a transgression of norms?