Nature's hidden terror: Violent nature imagery and social change in eighteenth century German writings

Few studies have focused on nature's dark or violent side: the storms, floods, and deep forests featured in eighteenth-century works. Since the Fall and the Flood, violent nature imagery has signalled (and punished) challenges to authority. In eighteenth-century Germany, a "new-bourgeois" literary public articulated nature images that challenged traditional corporative society ("Standegesellschaft") while exploring the implications of modern change.; The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 indirectly contributed to this discourse by confounding belief that God's benevolence is revealed in nature. During a debate stimulated (but not caused) by the disaster, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and others abandoned faith in the ability to deduce reality from metaphysical axioms. By the 1760s, German writers were interrogating nature in terms of their own experience of social marginalization rather than moral or philosophical precepts.; In Gerstenberg's Ugolino, an intimate family circle confronts public authorities in the storm outside the tower. In the shelter of prison, the Gherardescas explore non-corporative identities. However, their isolation and deprivation turns them into wild animals that prey on each other. The conflicts in both private and public that eventually destroy them appear as violent nature.; Goethe radicalizes the problem of isolation in his Werther. Lotte represents Werther's "patriarchal ideal:" harmony among the estates under a benevolent central authority. However, Werther's competition with Albert for Lotte undermines the ideal. The competitive struggle among isolated individuals transforms idyllic into violent nature, destroying Werther.; In Schiller's Rauber, the intimate family circle in the "Schlos Moor" is demolished by Franz's egoism. His violation of "das Band der Natur" is avenged by Karl's bandits, ending any hope of restoring family integrity. As agents of violent nature, the bandits corrupt the old, "natural" order of corporative harmony in the very act of avenging it.; All three works feature a traditional ideal of corporative harmony reformed to give absolutism a "friendly face." Associated with family and idyllic nature, this ideal is undermined in each work by the violent "nature" of non-corporative aspirations and conflicts. Violent nature imagery reveals the terror of modern change implicit in some of the eighteenth century's most "radical" writings.