Review of Women and Writing in the Works of Novalis: Transformation Beyond Measure? By James R. Hodkinson. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007. 271 pages. $75.00. (original) (raw)
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2019
This thesis explores the status of German women writers in the 18 th century during the era of Enlightenment and Romanticism. I will examine the philosophical ideas and beliefs during these times, and the impact these ideas had on La Roche and Schlegel specifically, as well as society as a whole. While studying the life style, upbringing, and the most important literary works of the two women writers, I will show the advancements made by them towards greater autonomy for other women writers emphasizing their courage, alongside the hardship they often endured. Seeking greater recognition and freedom from male tutelage, La Roche and Schlegel took their destiny into their own hands, yet often retained, and even chose their traditional roles in life over a complete need to change their status. The question if these courageous women actually achieved advancement for future women writers is explored in detail.
Neophilologus, 1995
has been described as the most radical German woman writer of the period around 1800, a yet for over 150 years her work was virtually forgotten. In spite of contact with the Danish poet Jens Baggesen and a short-lived second marriage to a minor writer, Christian August Fischer, she had no connections with the important literary circles of her age or with any major German author. As a result her writings, although well received at the time, were afterwards neglected and were not reissued until the late 1980s, when her most important works began to appear in photographic reprint. 2 Since then, they have generated considerable interest, giving rise to a doctoral thesis, several scholarly articles, an entry in an American reference work, and a translation in an American anthology of German women writers. 3 However, while an investigation of the portrayal and function of male figures in Fischer's major novels and stories has been identified as a desideratum, 4 no such study has hitherto been undertaken. The present article constitutes a first attempt to remedy this deficiency.
Women, Women Writers, and Early German Romanticism
The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy, edited by Elizabeth Millán, 2020
This paper considers how women and gender are conceptualised within early German Romanticism and argues that work by early German Romantic women should be addressed in scholarship on this movement. The chapter addresses feminist critiques of early German Romanticism as exemplified by the work of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, concluding that an essentialist view of traditional gender characteristics informs central aspects of these writers’ work, including their view of the relationship between human beings and nature and their theories of language and poetry. The paper argues that a thoroughgoing critique of gender categories and development of the implications of this critique are found in the early German Romantic writings, not of Schlegel and Novalis, but of Dorothea Veit-Schlegel and Karoline von Günderrode.
Studia Neophilologica, 2013
, two noblewomen of German descent in late seventeenth-century Sweden, were both influenced by currents in contemporary theology and piety. Aurora von Königsmarck, her sister, and two of their female cousins formed a circle around the Swedish queen Ulrica Eleonora (the elder). Together they wrote strongly emotional religious poetry in German, which is preserved in an exquisite volume in the Uppsala University Library. Eva Margaretha Frölich expected the Swedish king Charles XI to play a central role in the imminent apocalyptic drama and become the ruler of the world. After she had been exiled from Sweden, she propagated for these views in a number of tracts published in Amsterdam. The present article explores some important paratextual features in 'Nordischer weÿrauch', the manuscript collection of religious poetry written in Aurora von Königsmarck's hand, and in the works by Eva Margaretha Frölich. The discussion shows the importance of paratextual analysis for the interpretation of texts from the literary and intellectual culture of early modern Europe.