Women and death : representations of female victims and perpetrators in German culture 1500-2000 / edited by Helen Fronius and Anna Linton.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fronius, Helen, 1975-

Linton, Anna, 1975-

Series:

Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture (Unnumbered)

Studies in German literature, linguistics and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women and literature--Germany--History.

Women and literature.

Women--Germany--Social conditions.

Women.

History.

Germany.

Social conditions.

Women and death.

Women in literature.

Violence in literature.

Suffering in literature.

Physical Description:

viii, 267 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Women & death

Place of Publication:

Rochester, N.Y. : Camden House, 2008.

Summary:

The theme of women and death is pervasive in the German culture of the past five centuries. With the conviction that only an interdisciplinary approach can explore a typology as far-reaching and significant as this, and in accordance with the feminist tenet that images are accountable for norms, this volume investigates how iconic representations of women and death came about and why they endure. Traditionally, representations of women as agents of death - when they have been considered at all - have been considered separately from women as victims, as though there were no shared thematic ground. Here, familiar depictions of female victims are examined alongside the more unsettling spectacle of women as killers, exposing cultural assumptions. Essays explore, among others, the themes of virgin sacrifice and female infanticides, "Death and the Maiden" in art, female vampires in literature, and women killers in the media. Others compare cultural practices such as female mourning across historical contexts, examining change and the reasons for it. The authors' judgments eschew the simplistic and programmatic, contributing not just to current research in German literature, but also to an understanding of cultural history in general.

Contents:

1 Death and the Maiden: A German Topic? / Stefanie Knoll 9

2 Murdering Mothers in Bible Stories and Fairy Tales in Germany, 1550-1900 / Ruth B. Bottigheimer 28

3 Virgin Sacrifices: Iphigenia and Jephthah's Daughter / Anna Linton 43

4 Mourning and Violence: Kriemhild's Incorporated Memory / Bettina Bildhauer 60

5 Narratives of Dismembering Women in Northern Germany, 1600-1800 / Mary Lindemann 76

6 Images of Infanticide in Eighteenth-Century Germany / Helen Fronius 93

7 Mourning with a Female Heart? Grief and Gender in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany / Anna Richards 113

8 Female Vampires, Victimhood, and Vengeance in German Literature around 1800 / Jurgen Barkhoff 128

9 Murderous Women in German Opera / Lawrence Kramer 144

10 Constructing the femme fatale: A Dialogue between Sexology and the Visual Arts in Germany around 1900 / Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius 157

11 Media Representations of Vera Bruhne as femme fatale / Clare Bielby 187

12 Gender in the Work of Grief and Mourning: Contemporary Requiems in German Literature / Gisela Ecker 203.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [221]-255) and index.

ISBN:

9781571133854

1571133852

OCLC:

185033043