While attending a ball he meets Charlotte, a young woman who cares for her younger siblings since her mother has passed away.
Werther has recently left his hometown and taken up residence near the village of Wahlheim. The book is an epistolary novel, meaning it is written in the form of letters, mostly from the young protagonist Werther to his friend Wilhelm. In hindsight, The Sorrows of Young Werther may not be one of the greatest books in Western literature, but it is likely one of the more important books for the profound influence it had on subsequent authors who either tried to emulate or repudiate it. Though Goethe would later distance himself from Romanticism, in many ways this book was the flagship publication that launched the movement, much in the same way that Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) was the flagship publication of American literary naturalism. This novel epitomizes the sturm und drang period in German literature that presaged Romanticism, the dominant literary movement of the 19th century. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the book, his first novel, at the age of 24, and it immediately catapulted him to stardom. When published in 1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther caused a literary sensation throughout Europe.
0 kommentar(er)
