Open Access

Franz-Josef Deiters

• This essay is concerned with the state of the concept of »work« in the realm. of literature. Around 1800, "work" becomes a central reflective category in the field of literature, as well as in philosophical and literary aesthetics. In the last two decades of the 18th century, especially within Goethe's and Schiller's classicist concepts of literature, "work" and "art"/"poetry" are generally considered unconnected, as is an economic and aesthetic attitude towards nature. Where the spheres of "art"/"poetry" and "work" are linked to each other this relationship is defined as one of opposition, as can be seen especially in Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and in Schiller's essay Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. This changes significantly with the re-conceptualization of literature by the German Early Romantics. Not only does the sphere of "work" - now regarded as something meaningful - become at this moment in the course of the· evolution of the literary system an eminent topic within literature and literary aesthetics, the poetic activity itself becomes - suddenly - conceptualized as "work" and the writer thought of as a "worker". This essay first raises the question of what cultural changes might follow the approaching end of the "working society" in Western societies before proceeding to this important turning point in the self-conceptualization of the literary system in relation to the modem concept of "work".