Goethe's 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, about a young man's unrequited love and suicide, set off a wave of copycat suicides and imitation in Europe, so that young men dressed like its hero. Within weeks of publication, several suicides were recorded, and the book was blamed by some for them. Within a year, the publisher Friedrich Nicolai released The Joys of Young Werther, a parody in which Werther survives a shot from a pistol loaded with a chicken's blood-filled bladder and ends up married, prosperous and content on a small farm. The parody started a literary feud that lasted decades, with Goethe mocking Nicolai in verse and in Faust.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.