Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture: Literary Joint Ventures, 1750-1850

by John B. Lyon (Editor), Laura Deiulio (Editor)

Overview

Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture challenges a model of literary production that persists in literary studies: the so-called Geniekult or the idea of the solitary male author as genius that emerged around 1800 in German lands. A closer look at creative practices during this time indicates that collaborative creative endeavors, specifically joint ventures between women and men, were an important mode of literary production during this era. This volume surveys a variety of such collaborations and proves that male and female spheres of creation were not as distinct as has been previously thought. It demonstrates that the model of the male genius that dominated literary studies for centuries was not inevitable, that viable alternatives to it existed. Finally, it demands that we rethink definitions of an author and a literary work in ways that account for the complex modes of creation from which they arose.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501351013
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/22/2019
Series:	New Directions in German Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	521 KB

About the Author

Laura Deiulio is Associate Professor of German at Christopher Newport University, USA. She has published essays on Lou Andreas-Salomé, Esther Gad, and Rahel Levin Varnhagen's correspondences with Pauline Wiesel and Auguste Brede.

John B. Lyon is Professor of German at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is the author of Crafting Flesh, Crafting the Self: Violence and Identity in Early 19th Century German Literature (2006) and Out of Place: German Realism, Displacement, and Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2013).
John B. Lyon is Professor of German at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is the author of Crafting Flesh, Crafting the Self: Violence and Identity in Early 19th Century German Literature (2006) and Out of Place: German Realism, Displacement, and Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2013).
Laura Deiulio is Associate Professor of German at Christopher Newport University, USA.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Laura Deiulio (Christopher Newport University) and John B. Lyon (University of
Pittsburgh)
1. The Gottscheds: Conjugal Authorship as a Disjointed Venture
Margaretmary Daley (Case Western Reserve University, USA)
2. A Dynamic Interplay: Cooperation between Sophie von La Roche, Christoph Martin Wieland, and Goethe on Their Way to Authorship
Monika Nenon (University of Memphis, USA)
3. "Collaborating with Spirits": Cagliostro, Elisa von der Recke, and the Phantoms of Unmündigkeit
Michelle Stott James (Brigham Young University, USA) and Rob McFarland (Brigham Young University, USA)
4. A Freedom Apart: Feminine Bildung in Sophie Mereau's “Marie” and Amanda und Eduard
Tom Spencer (Brigham Young University, USA) and Jennifer Jenson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
5. Scenes from a Marriage: Friedrich and Dorothea Schlegel, Collaboration as Symphilosophy and After
Adrian Daub (Stanford University, USA)
6. Holy Hermaphrodite: The Collaboration Between Caroline and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué
Eleanor ter Horst (University of South Alabama, USA)
7. Concepts of Collaboration: Märchenomas, the Woman Writer, and the Brothers Grimm
Julie Koehler (Wayne State University, USA)
8. A Meeting of Minds? The Dialogue Between Voices Female and Male in the Poems of the West-Eastern Divan
Charlotte Lee (University of Cambridge, UK)
9. The Correspondence of Rahel Levin Varnhagen and Ludwig Robert: Epistolary Writing as a Space for Symphilosophieren
Laura Deiulio (Christopher Newport University, USA)
10. Reflexive Authorship in Bettina Brentano-von Arnim's Die Günderode: Narrative Disunity, Hölderlin, and Günderrode
Karen R. Daubert (Washington University, St. Louis, USA)
11. “Where Words Are Not Enough": Audience and Authorship in the Marriage Diaries of Robert and Clara Schumann
Brian Tucker (Wabash College, USA)
12. Therese Robinson's Die Auswanderer (1852) as Goethe's Future Novel of America
Judith E. Martin (Missouri State University, USA)

Index

Editorial Reviews

Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culturecontains wide-ranging, thoroughly researched, socio-historically informed explorations of writing and publishing practices between 1750 and 1850 that challenge ingrained assumptions about gender and literary production. By framing authorship in terms of collaboration (as opposed to influence or competition), the volume's contributors offer fresh insights into how 'authority' actually worked in the literary world of that period. The essays also provide valuable historical information about the ways in which gender operated in both the production and consumption of literary artifacts.
Laurie Johnson, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Comparative and World Literature, and Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

This collection of essays makes a major intervention into our understanding of the German Sturm und Drang and Romantic periods. The volume offers fascinating insights into literary collaborations between women and men and opens the door to new, complex understandings of 'authorship' that transcend the single-author model. The collaborative projects introduced here enabled women writers to create unique strategies for confronting the power inequities of their time and, by extension, to transform the literary field.
Susan E. Gustafson, Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor of German Studies, University of Rochester, USA

From the Publisher