Gottsched's chief work was his _Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen_ (1730), the first systematic treatise in German on the art of poetry from the standpoint of Boileau. His _Ausführliche Redekunst_ (1728) and his _Grundlegung einer_ _deutschen Sprachkunst_ (1748) were of importance for the development of German style and the purification of the language. He wrote several plays, of which _Der sterbende Cato_ (1732), an adaptation of Addison's tragedy and a French play on the same theme, was long popular on the stage. In his _Deutsche Schaubühne_ (6 vols., 1740-1745), which contained mainly translations from the French, he provided the German stage with a classical repertory, and his bibliography of the German drama, _Nötiger Vorrat zur Geschichte der deutschen dramatischen Dichtkunst_ (1757-1765), is still valuable. He was also the editor of several journals devoted to literary criticism. As a critic, Gottsched insisted on German literature being subordinated to the laws of French classicism; he enunciated rules by which the playwright must be bound, and abolished bombast and buffoonery from the serious stage. While such reforms obviously afforded a healthy corrective to the extravagance and want of taste which were rampant in the German literature of the time, Gottsched went too far. In 1740 he came into conflict with the Swiss writers Johann Jakob Bodmer (q.v.) and Johann Jakob Breitinger (1701-1776), who, under the influence of Addison and contemporary Italian critics, demanded that the poetic imagination should not be hampered by artificial rules; they pointed to the great English poets, and especially to Milton. Gottsched, although not blind to the beauties of the English writers, clung the more tenaciously to his principle that poetry must be the product of rules, and, in the fierce controversy which for a time raged between Leipzig and Zürich, he was inevitably defeated. His influence speedily declined, and before his death his name became proverbial for pedantic folly.
His wife, Luise Adelgunde Victorie, née Kulmus (1713-1762), in some respects her husband's intellectual superior, was an author of some reputation. She wrote several popular comedies, of which _Das Testament_ is the best, and translated the _Spectator_ (9 vols., 1730-1743), Pope's _Rape of the Lock_ (1744) and other English and French works. After her death her husband edited her _Sämtliche kleinere Gedichte_ with a memoir (1763).