A person · 1774 · Enlightenment
Werther
The young man of Goethe's novel who reads too much, loves a woman who does not love him back, and kills himself, in a book that made that behaviour fashionable across Europe for a decade.
The prototype of the reader who goes looking for a character in order to feel something, and then brings the feeling home. Published in 1774; within two years the resulting condition had a name, Wertherfieber, and ministers of religion were issuing warnings about it.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Where it sits
1700 1700-1799 · 1774 1799
Provenance · 1 source record(s)
- needs-sourceGoethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774; the Werther fever it provoked is documented in the reception history of the period.Goethe, J. W. von, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 1774; reception documented in the standard accounts of European sensibility.
CHARACTER The written character
Connected · 4 out, 5 in
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