Natürliches Sprechen im belehrenden Schreiben: J. H. Campes »Robinson der Jüngere« (1779/80)

The aims of the book are twofold: (a) to unite language, literature, and history in the framework of a biographically supported and educationally well-founded historiography of language, and (b) to analyze the conversational structure and the lexical particularities of Joachim Heinrich Campe's (1749-1818) writings against the background of the philanthropist reform movement. Campe was a pedagogue and lexicographer from Brunswick, and the study focuses on his »Robinson der Jüngere« (1779/80), the most successful single instance of literature for young people in German. The edifying exchanges to be found in the book are discussed in terms of the principles of historical linguistic pragmatics.