SOURCE: Pascal, Roy. “Jeremias Gotthelf 1797-1854.” In The German Novel: Studies, pp. 101-42, 312-15. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956.

In the following essay, Pascal offers a historical and biographical perspective on Gotthelf's fiction.

The Parson's Aesthetic

If Gotthelf is to be labelled, he must be called a realistic novelist, the first in German literature. A contemporary of Balzac and Dickens, this Swiss writer strikes off from the track of the Romantics, Tieck, Novalis, Arnim, Hoffmann, in whose work the world of fantasy takes precedence over the world of social experience and reality. He also stands in opposition, formally as well as in social attitude, to the ‘Young German’ novelists of the 1830s, with their concern for social theories. Of all contemporary German writers, Immermann comes nearest to the realistic novel in his description of peasant life and industrial conditions, but his realistic bent is fatally twisted by Romantic...