Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther and the Revaluation of Romantic Love

Abstract

Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774 and revised 1787), stands at the very beginning of the modern period, and offers a dramatic story of passionate love, which is still profoundly relevant. As a popular bestseller, this book is a response to emerging romantic themes. It seems to affirm romantic experience, while it initiates a critique of many of its typical forms at the point when these stereotypes were first beginning to appear. Through a close examination of Goethe’s text, this article considers (1) Werther’s self-destructive passion; (2) romantic love as a heroic response to the alienation of modern society; and (3) the problem of gender, which Werther ignores. In this novel, Goethe begins a philosophical conversation on love that we are bound to continue: What is romantic love, and in what way does it liberate or constrain us? And given some of the problems of romantic love, what would a “post-romantic” love be like?