The Sorrows of Young Werther
Goethe’s first major work, a novel of unrequited love, longing, and deterioration into sorrow.
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- Length
- 43,000 words
- Reading time
- About 3 hours
- Format
- EPUB, DRM-free
About the book
The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 leveled the city of Lisbon and surrounding areas, and killed perhaps as many as 100,000 people. It came at a decisive time in the history of western thought: the melding of Faith, Philosophy, and Science into a post-enlightenment rational view of the universe. In some sense mankind had just begun to believe he had the universe figured out when the universe struck back with a tragedy so terrible in scale it could not be fit into any box of understanding. It was not predicted. It could not have been prevented. It was not rational. And it certainly could not have been the will of a benevolent God.
Lisbon was only one moment in a much larger context—industrialization was upending a pre-historic way of life, science was upending nature, and the first great republics in America and France were about to upend previously unchallenged forms of government. It was the awe, inspiration, and uncertainty of all this change that gave rise, ultimately, to Romanticism in art, literature, and music.
This is the Standard Ebooks edition, carefully proofread and typeset, with a table of contents and linked footnotes.
