Werther and Wilhem Meister: the conflict between individual and society in two novels of Goethe

Authors

  • Pedro Giovanetti Cesar Pires Doutorando em Sociologia. USP - Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas - Pós-Graduação em Sociologia. São Paulo - SP

Keywords:

Novel, Self-cultivation, Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,

Abstract

This article aims to draw a comparison between the two first novels of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The sorrows of young Werther and Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, in the interest to see the way in which these two novels interpreted fundamental questions of the arising modernity, especially with the political rise of the bourgeoisie. These questions are related with the conflicts between individual and society, to thebarriersimposed by the social reality against the aspirations of the personality. Both novels are revealing, at the same time, of Goethe’s biographical trajectory and the historical conflicts he faced. It is possible to espy between the first and the second novel an apprenticeship that reveals the hard process of personal self-cultivation in the shock against the social reality.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Pedro Giovanetti Cesar Pires, Doutorando em Sociologia. USP - Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas - Pós-Graduação em Sociologia. São Paulo - SP

Doutorando em Sociologia na Universidade de São Paulo. Possui graduação e mestrado em Sociologia pela mesma Universidade.

Published

18/01/2017