Ebook: Fürstenpreis und Kunstprogramm: Sozial- und gattungsgeschichtliche Studien zu Goethes Gelegenheitsdichtungen für den Weimarer Hof

Goethe released occasional poetry from the heteronomous dictates of political interests by extending the traditional representative function of court poetry and using it as a vehicle both for criticism of courtly life and for literary self-advertisement. His texts of this kind display not only a high degree of individualization and a marked instrumentalization of the genre but also a shift of functional emphasis away from aristocratic (self-)glorification and toward literary publicity. For a limited period, occasional poetry was thus (re-)discovered and newly defined as a genre of high literary distinction.