Werther in High Society

Abstract

ABSTRACT The essay discusses the divide between political/sociological approaches to Werther and psychological ones, and proposes a synthesis based on the modern classification of mental disorders and the eighteenth-century social matrix. Courts exercised a magnetic attraction, but in Goethe’s case also aroused persistent impulses to social flight, and the episode in which Werther is excluded from a gathering of aristocrats is examined from this perspective. The tension between Empfindsamkeit and courtly manners and the question of the ethical status of these manners are taken to be neglected aspects of the text.