José Lourenço’s film adaptation of German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther opens with a line on screen stating it is “based on the smash hit 1774 novel of tragic romance”. Set in contemporary Canada, it revolves around Werther (Douglas Booth), who falls tragically in love with Charlotte (Alison Pill), who is already engaged to Albert (Patrick J. Adams).
Goethe’s “smash hit” was written in a new literary landscape, where both readers and writers increasingly belonged to the growing middle class. It was one of the most influential works of the Sturm und Drang movement, also called Geniezeit (the age of genius), which cultivated individual emotion and expression, rejecting antiquated class structures in favour of an “aristocracy of feeling”.
The movement’s interest in the individual’s inner life was revolutionary at the time. Today, it has become an integral part of western ideology and culture, and is arguably part of the reason that romantic comedy is such a popular genre.
