Romantic Agony: Young Werther and Jacopo Ortis

Emile DürkheimDürkheim was the first scholar to treat suicideSuicide as a sociological phenomenon, collective rather than private, thus illustrating the failure of modern individualism. This paper intends to demonstrate that the tragic endings of Goethe’sGoethe Werther and Foscolo’sFoscolo Jacopo Ortis1 represent the aesthetic expressions of Dürkheim’sDürkheim suicideSuicide classification. GoetheGoethe and FoscoloFoscolo, accidentally, created heroes whose tragic action aesthetically reproduces the basic elements belonging to Dürkheim’sDürkheim three typologies.