SOURCE: Diffey, Norman R. “J. M. R. Lenz and the Humanizing Role of Literature.” In Man and Nature: Proceedings of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Volume IX, edited by Hans-Günther Schwarz, David McNeil, and Roland Bonnel, pp. 109-17. Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing, 1990.

In the following essay, Diffey explains Lenz's ambivalence, even pessimism, concerning the role of literature in improving society.

The name J. M. R. Lenz stands in a symbolic relationship with the Sturm und Drang. In life and work, his destiny was intimately linked to that of the movement in a way less true of his contemporaries. His provocative plays and theoretical writings sprang from a consuming commitment to the artistic and social ideals expressed in the remarkable eruption of the early seventeen-seventies; thereafter he wrote little of enduring worth. A spent force, he was to incur Goethe's uncharitable assessment as ‘ein vorübergehendes...