Women And Writing In The Works Of Novalis

Although more recent critics have discerned an empowered female subject in Novalis, this is the first balanced, book-length study of gender in Novalis in English. It concludes that Hardenberg's Romantic writing began to be successful in reinventing the "fiction" of female identity, and goes further to reveal his extensive interaction with women as intellectual equals."--BOOK JACKET.

Maurice Maeterlinck described his libretto Ariane et Barbe-bleue as "a sort of legendary opera, or fairy [opera], in three acts." In 1907, Paul Dukas finished setting Maeterlinck's libretto to music, and the opera's Paris premiere was lauded as a landmark in operatic history. Ariane & Bluebeard: From Fairy Tale to Comic Book Opera offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary look at this historic opera, including its structure, reception, and cultural implications. This lively collection juxtaposes chapters from experts in music, literature, the visual arts, gender studies, and religion and philosophy with vibrant illustrations by comic artist P. Craig Russell and interviews with performers and artists. Featuring material from newly discovered documents and the first English translation of several important sources, Ariane & Bluebeard allows readers to imagine the opera in its various incarnations: as symbolist show, comic book, children's fairy tale, and more.

Follows the evolution of the Orient as a positive literary device in German literature and demonstrates how it was used to explore subjectivity and the possibility of wholeness. For centuries, Europe's eastward gaze has been wary if not hostile. Medieval man envisaged grotesque beings at the world's edge and scanned the steppes and straits on the immediate horizon for the Asian or Arab hordes that might swarm across them. Through the Crusades, the early modern era, and the age of imperialism, Europeans regarded the Eastern subject as requiring both "discovery" and conquest. Conveniently, the "Oriental" came to represent fanaticism, terrorism, moral laxity, and inscrutability, among other stereotypes. The list of German literary works that reinforced negative clichés about the East is long, but Orienting the Self argues for the presence in the Germanliterary tradition of a powerful perception of the East as the scene of desire, fantasy, and fulfillment. It follows the evolution of the Orient as a literary device and demonstrates how it was used to explore subjectivity and the possibility of wholeness. The five works treated in this study - Parzival, Fortunatus, Effi Briest, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and The Magic Mountain - are narratives of development in which the encounter with the East is central to the progression toward selfhood and the promise of fulfillment. Debra N. Prager is Associate Professor of German at Washington and Lee University.

Ilya Vinitsky's Vasily Zhukovsky's Romanticism and the Emotional History of Russia is the first major study in English of Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852)—a poet, translator of German romantic verse, and, crucially, mentor of Pushkin. It focuses overdue attention to an important figure in Russian literary and cultural history. Vinitsky’s "psychological biography" argues that Zhukovsky very consciously set out to create for himself an emotional life that reflected his unique brand of romanticism, different from what we associate with Pushkin or poets such as Byron or Wordsworth. For Zhukovsky, ideal love was harmonious, built on a mystical foundation of spiritual kinship. Vinitsky shows how Zhukovksy played a pivotal role in the evolution of ideas central to Russia’s literary and cultural identity from the end of the eighteenth century into the decades following the Napoleonic Wars.

Building on recent investigations into affinities between early German Romanticism and French post-structuralism, this study brings together the work of Jacques Derrida with the writings of one of early Romanticisms most important theorists, Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), better known as Novalis. In contrast to recent criticism, which traces the historical path from Romanticism to modern theory in broad strokes, this book undertakes comparative readings of Novaliss and Derridas texts on literature and philosophy. The book focuses on the significance both writers accord to paradox and argues that readings which are attuned to paradox can better appreciate the proximity of Romanticism and post- structuralism. As well as their affirmation of paradox, the texts of Novalis and Derrida testify to a profound respect for the Other, and the close readings of selected texts reveal remarkable similarities in their thinking on literature, philosophy and representation, and on the intricate interrelation between language, identity and desire.

This work examines the integral role that six female authors played in Schiller's ambitious literary journal, Die Horen (1795-97). Louise Brachmann, Friederike Brun, Amalie von Imhoff, Sophie Mereau, Elisa von der Recke, and Caroline von Wolzogen helped put the journal back on track when it floundered fiscally and programmatically and their literary contributions were among the most successful the journal ever received. Beyond a critical discussion of the women's publications in Schiller's journal, this work addresses the range of problems associated with women's writing and publishing during the late eighteenth century, the aesthetics of Weimar Classicism, Schiller, and to a lesser degree, Goethe, as patrons, and the interprettation of literary history.