Poetologie der Stimmung: Ein ästhetisches Phänomen der frühen Goethezeit

With the publication of Goethe's `Werther' (1774), a new phenomenon found its way into the history of literature: mood. This feeling - familiar since antiquity - of a fundamental entanglement of self and world, developed in the last third of the 18th century into a formal poetic principal which went on to decisively shape the ensuing epoch of Romanticism. After its emergence in literature, the aesthetic mood also becomes a central medium of expression in music and other forms of art right across Europe. Stefan Hajduk's study systematically fleshes out the phenomenon of mood into a methodologically sound concept of historical literary research, and as such, connects the current theoretical debates around emotions with the practice of the scientific reading of emotions.