Gender, canon and literary history : the changing place of nineteenth-century German women writers / Ruth Whittle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whittle, Ruth, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

German literature.

German literature--Women authors.

German literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Gender identity in literature.

Physical Description:

vii, 199 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2013]

Summary:

It has been shown that the total number of women who published in German in the 18th and 19th centuries was approximately 3,500, but even by 1918 only a few of them were known. The reason for this lies in the selection processes to which the authors have been subjected, and it is this selection process that is the focus of the research here presented. Gender, Canon and Literary History investigates the reception of 19th-century women's writing in German literary histories by way of case studies. It fills a longstanding gap both in the study of gender and literary history. The case studies concentrate on the reception of women writing in the Age of Romanticism (e.g., Rahel Varnhagen) as well as women who were inspired to write by the German Revolution (e.g., Fanny Lewald). Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Discourses of German Femininity in the Long Nineteenth Century 14

1.1 A review of the conceptualization of women's marginalization and agency 14

1.2 The rise of discourses of power and dominance 18

1.3 Case Studies: Positioning exercises in the university in Wilhelm Scherer, August Sauer and Ludwig Geiger's writings on women 21

1.3.1 August Sauer, defender of Germanness at the South Eastern margins of the German Empire 21

1.3.2 An integrative force in the dying Habsburg Empire: Sauer's Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 23

1.3.3 Ludwig Geiger, a German scholar of Jewish denomination in Berlin 24

1.3.4 Bettina von Arnim as Geiger's guarantor of German-Jewish understanding 26

1.3.5 Wilhelm Scherer's defence of Germanness on the western margins of the German Empire 29

1.3.6 Presenting a female model for the German cultured classes: Wilhelm Scherer's "Caroline" 31

1.4 Anti-Semitism and women: female, sick, mad, dangerous and Jewish vs. strong, male, rational and German 37

1.5 Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach on woman's otherness 40

1.6 Conclusion 42

2 Women's Writing and German Femininity in Literary Histories: Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Rudolph Gottschall and August Vilmar 44

2.1 Women's position in early literary histories: Gervinus' fear of a female epidemic 45

2.2 Case Study: absence of gender stereotyping and the politics of the 1840s in Rudolph Gottschall's early poems 49

2.3 The introduction of gender in Gottschall's Deutsche Nationallitteratur 51

2.4 The problem with Romantic women: August Vilmar and Rudolph Gottschall 58

2.5 Conclusion 61

3 The Making of Romantic and Post-Romantic Women Writers in German Literary History: Rahel Varnhagen, Bettina von Arnim and Annette von Droste-Hülshoff 62

3.1 Shifting positions of women in Gottschall's German literary history project 64

3.2 Of gnomes and Norns: Bettina von Arnim and Rahel Varnhagen as creative forces in Germany in Gottschall's literary history project 1855 to 1902 66

3.3 A wild girl and her master: Bettina von Arnim's role in the nationhood project of August Vilmar, Wilhelm Scherer and Julian Schmidt 84

3.4 Sick and lying: Julian Schmidt's dissociation of Rahel Varnhagen from Goethe 86

3.5 A guarantor of German authenticity: Annette von Droste-Htilshoff in Gottschall and Vilmar 90

3.6 Conclusion 97

4 Emancipation as a National Concern: Fanny Lewald and Louise Aston in German Literary History 100

4.1 The wrong kind of emancipation: the undoing of Louise Aston in Gottschall's literary history project 101

4.2 "Die Freidenkerin aus der Stadt der reinen Vernunft": the making of Fanny Lewald in Gottschall's literary history project 104

4.3 Preserving Fanny Lewald for posterity in Gottschall's literary history project after German Unification 113

4.4 Women's ways to national harmony: a comparison of Fanny Lewald in Julian Schmidt and Friedrich Kreyßig 116

4.5 Conclusion 122

5 Gender Dichotomy and Cultural Continuities in Portraits of Women 124

5.1 The significance of the genre of portraits 124

5.2 Romantic and post-Romantic 'Frauenbilder': an introduction 129

5.3 Canonizing Bettina von Arnim 133

5.3.1 "A modern Mignon" and her grandfather 133

5.3.2 From Berlin to Rome and from nature to art 137

5.4 Domesticating Rahel Varnhagen 141

5.4.1 A woman on the threshold to a new world 141

5.4.2 Sage, witch or demon? Taming Rahel Varnhagen 144

5.4.3 Women writers on Rahel Varnhagen: Little woman or freedom fighter? 151

5.4.4 Ellen Key's Rahel Varnhagen and the provocation of the German order 155

5.5 Nationalizing Dorothea Schlegel and Fanny Lewald 160

5.5.1 At the German hearth: Ludwig Geiger on Dorothea Schlegel 160

5.5.2 Another Goethe-prophet: Geiger on Fanny Lewald 165

5.6 Conclusion 167.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9783110259223

3110259222

OCLC:

857407263