La Roche and Goethe: Gender, Genre, and Influence

Abstract:Sophie von La Roche exemplifies the gendered exclusion of eighteenth-century female authors from the German literary canon. Her first novel, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771), has yet to be fully recognized for its generic innovations in the German epistolary genre and for its direct influence on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774). A close side-by-side reading of both novels reveals several similarities that set the German epistolary novel apart from the English and French examples. By taking into account the mutual mentorship and collaboration between La Roche and Goethe in the years leading up to the publication of Werther, La Roche's role in the development of the genre becomes evident. The value of recentering La Roche's Sternheim in this manner lies in the ability to better identify the mechanisms that perpetuate the gendered exclusion of authors like La Roche from the German literary tradition, making visible a path to a more inclusive literary canon.