PASTORAL FORMS AN IMPORTANT REFERENT for Goethe throughout his work. References to pastoral abound in Faust, from the limited world of Gretchen in Part I, whose attraction for the titanic hero leads to her destruction, to the humble dwelling of Philemon and Baucis in Part II, which is destroyed to satisfy Faust's imperial ambitions. This confrontation between the small world and the great movements of history already hints at the importance of pastoral for Goethe, not as a model to be followed, but rather as a symbol of the certainties and ideals that were coming under threat from the forces of modernity. While this function of pastoral—as a traditional foil, I argue, to the perplexities of the modern world—remains relatively constant throughout Goethe's writing, it also fulfils a whole series of different purposes, from enabling reflection on the relationship between love and freedom to the status of the artist in relation to power. The present chapter begins by looking briefly at three of Goethe's earlier works, before examining in greater detail the two works from the period after the French Revolution. Already in his early play, Die Laune des Verliebten (The Lover's Caprice, 1768), Goethe plays with pastoral models, particularly by reversing the conventions of gendered representation. Goethe's attitude to pastoral in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774) and Torquato Tasso (1789) shows increasing sophistication in its engagement with pastoral intertexts—particularly Gessner's idylls and Tasso's Aminta (1573)—in order to critique the pastoral as a seductive and deceptive genre. Goethe's thematization of pastoral in these texts shows its particular appeal to protagonists excluded from the social elite, for whom pastoral serves as a means of escape.

Social issues become increasingly important in Goethe's writing after the French Revolution, so that the nexus between class and German traditions of pastoral becomes, I suggest, an increasingly important concern. The main part of the chapter examines two of Goethe's responses to the Revolution. In Der Bürgergeneral (The Citizen-General, 1793), Goethe reverts to a less nuanced use of pastoral tropes for anti-revolutionary propaganda, as part of a denial of any just cause for revolt within Germany by establishing an absolute contrast between the harmonious relations enjoyed by peasants and landowners and the ambitious, greedy, middle-class would-be revolutionary of his title.