Büchner, Georg - Kathryn R. Edmunds (essay date summer 1996)
Kathryn R. Edmunds (essay date summer 1996)
SOURCE: Edmunds, Kathryn R. “Lenz and Werther: Büchner's Strategic Response to Goethe.” Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und Literatur 88, no. 2 (summer 1996): 176-96.
[In the following essay, Edmunds contrasts the narrative structure and effects of Lenz with those of Goethe's novel Werther, asserting Büchner's tacit rejection of Goethe's literary worldview in his novella.]
In Dichtung und Wahrheit (Book XIV, published 1814) Goethe explicitly diagnoses Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's anti-social self-absorption as a result of his Werther-like suffering: “[er] litt … im allgemeinen von der Zeitgesinnung, welche durch die Schilderung Werthers abgeschlossen sein sollte,”1 but Goethe is careful to distinguish Lenz from the truly Werther-like “redliche Seelen” to the extent that Lenz's behavior seemed exaggerated and...
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