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Goethe released occasional poetry from the heteronomous dictates of political interests by extending the traditional representative function of court poetry and using it as a vehicle both for criticism of courtly life and for literary self-advertisement. His texts of this kind display not only a high degree of individualization and a marked instrumentalization of the genre but also a shift of functional emphasis away from aristocratic (self-)glorification and toward literary publicity. For a limited period, occasional poetry was thus (re-)discovered and newly defined as a genre of high literary distinction.