The sorrows of Young Werther in the light of the concept of subjectivity

Abstract

This article analyses the parallels between, on the one hand, the portrayal of the 'struggling modern subject' depicted by Goethe in his Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and, on the other, the psychosocial profile of the 'sentimental man' from the 18th century, product of the cultural environment of the Empfindsamkeit. I argue that in this novel, in borrowing the Empfindsamkeit's most traditional literary genre - the epistolary novel -, Goethe ends up mimicking a number of topoi and discursive techniques proper to this tradition, though in a radically heterodox fashion. The approach will lead us to a deduction of Goethe's own views on the modern subject, which situates him as an important figure within the discourse of modernity.

Sentimentalism; Goethe; subjectivity; modernity; epistolary novel