Not necessarily "Couch Potato", but I have a particular fondness for old writings on "idlers". For example, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an essay, "An Apology for Idlers", in 1876. But my personal favorite is "The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" by Jerome K. Jerome (terrific name). According to the preface, most of the essays in the book were originally letters to friends, which Jerome published at their insistence and his need for money to, well, fuel his idling. The book is full of meandering essays on the joys of smoking, sitting around the flat all day, and how best to waste ones time. His thoughts were that in order to properly idle, one must be actively ignoring other matters. In his words, "Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen". Jerome eventually became an editor for a monthly magazine called "The Idler", but I've never personally read any of it.
In The Red and The Black (1830) fictional character Jean Sorrel was depicted shirking work to read novels. I can't think of specifics this minute, but I'm pretty sure a lot of female characters at that time were depicted as not wanting to do anything but sit around and read and that it was thought to be impacting their health and morals. Is that close enough?
I'd also be very interested if anyone has examples of a radio couch potato.
Nescio ("I don't know" in Latin), wrote one of the greatest stories in the Dutch language about an idealist whose explicit purpose in life was to do nothing but stare at the sea. This is circa 1911 though. A great read and a personal recommendation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nescio#De_uitvreter http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/amsterdam-stories/
19th century Russian literature had a number of characters who fit the idea of the lizhni chelovek, the "superfluous man". Usually wealthy, with no purpose or fulfilling work, they would amuse themselves with gambling, dueling, and generally being idle jerks. You can find examples in Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, to name just a few.
Ivan Goncharov's novel Oblomov has probably the most extreme example. The title character spends the first half of the book barely getting out of bed, occasionally calling for his manservant only to forget why he called for him in the first place.
You are basically talking about the concept of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, which are terms Thorstein Veblen coined in 1899 to describe the growing class of people who don't perform labor or act on the basis of economic utility. The book is available on Amazon and fairly accessible by today's standards. Traditionally something like not doing work, eating crap, and sitting around were status symbols because everyone else had to work. Veblen's theory is that people pursue social status over money or economic utility.
In terms of a couch potato, prior to the 1950s there aren't going to be a lot of people who can afford to sit around doing nothing all day. Once the ability to do this became widespread, the social status perks would also be removed. Wiki tells me couch potato was coined in the 1970s but existed beforehand, but I doubt the concept goes very far back because there aren't enough people who don't have to work for it to be an insult.
Side note on "Idlers". It comes from a Naval term (Of course) meaning;
Idlers: men who did not stand watches, and, except in an emergency or in action, worked by day and slept by night.
In the C18th the word 'idler' did not carry derogatory connotations.
Warrant officers who were 'idlers' included: the surgeon, purser, chaplain, carpenter, sailmaker, armourer, master-at-arms, ropemaker, caulker and cook.
Junior petty officers who were 'idlers' included: the carpenter's mate, gunner's mate, yeoman of the powder room, armourer's mate, ship's corporal, caulker's mate, trumpeter, carpenter's crew, gunsmith, clerk, and steward.
http://www.lib.mq.edu.au/digital/lema/maritime/officers-and-crew.html#f Also referenced in http://www.amazon.com/The-Trafalgar-Companion-Complete-Historys/dp/1845130189
There have been many comments dealing with examples of idlers in the last couple of centuries, but from my experience in medieval literature, the idea of acedia / [sloth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth_(deadly_sin) as a deadly sin was prevalent in didactic literature. I don't have an example of those religious works with me, but the Spanish (Castilian) Libro de Buen Amor from the 14th c. parodies those didactic works which warned against the sins of physical and spiritual laziness. I'm not sure if that's quite what you're getting at with "couch potato," but if it's the idea of pure laziness, I suppose that's been a vice for a very long time.
In late 19th-century Symbolist and Decadent literature, the flaneur definitely represents the retreat to an inner world. Consider Des Esseintes in J.K. Huysmans' masterpiece "Against the Grain":
"Jean des Esseintes is the last member of a powerful and once proud noble family. He has lived an extremely decadent life in Paris, which has left him disgusted with human society. Without telling anyone, he retreats to a house in the countryside.
He fills the house with his eclectic art collection (which notably consists of reprints of paintings of Gustave Moreau). Drawing from the theme of Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet, Des Esseintes decides to spend the rest of his life in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation. Throughout his intellectual experiments, he recalls various debauched events and love affairs of his past in Paris.
He conducts a survey of French and Latin literature, rejecting the works approved by the mainstream critics of his day. Amongst French authors, he shows nothing but contempt for the Romantics but adores the poetry of Baudelaire and that of the nascent Symbolist movement of Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière and Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as the decadent fiction of the unorthodox Catholic writers Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Barbey d'Aurevilly. He rejects the academically respectable Latin authors of the "Golden Age" such as Virgil and Cicero, preferring later "Silver Age" writers such as Petronius and Apuleius as well as works of early Christian literature, whose style was usually dismissed as the "barbarous" product of the Dark Ages. Schopenhauer, he exclaims, has seen the truth, and he clearly expressed it in his philosophy. He studies Moreau's paintings, he tries his hand at inventing perfumes, and he creates a garden of poisonous flowers. In one of the book's most surrealistic episodes, he has gemstones set in the shell of a tortoise. The extra weight on the creature's back causes its death. In another episode, he decides to visit London after reading the novels of Dickens. He dines at an English restaurant in Paris while waiting for his train and is delighted by the resemblance of the people to his notions derived from literature. He then cancels his trip and returns home, convinced that only disillusion would await him if he were to follow through with his plans.
Eventually, his late nights and idiosyncratic diet take their toll on his health, requiring him to return to Paris or to forfeit his life. In the last lines of the book, he compares his return to human society to that of a non-believer trying to embrace religion."
Definitely worth reading!
Czech language had 'pecivál' which roughly translates to 'stove-layer' as in one who lays on the stove all day. "A person who doesn't do anything, even though they could"
I bring Don Quixote having his "brain dried" from reading too much chivalry books.