Tragedy in Paradise: Family and Gender Politics in German Bourgeois Tragedy, 1750-1850Camden House, 1996 - 136 sider Examination of the German genre of `bourgeois tragedy', bringing out its underlying characteristics. Bürgerliches Trauerspiel' or bourgeois tragedy is the most popularly acclaimed and critically documented form of German drama. From the mid-eighteenth century, some of Germany's greatest dramatists turned away from classical subjects to focus instead on the intricate internecine struggles of the middle-class family. This book views bourgeois tragedy and related forms of 'family' drama as depicting the enactment of a threat to stability and domestic order, organised so that the threat is defeated and the anxieties of the predominantly middle-class audience relieved; the author argues that these threats are represented as emanating from female figures who oppose and challenge the authority and order of a father or husband. Texts examined include Klinger's Sturm und Drang, Goethe's Stella and Die natürliche Tochter, Kleist's 'Über das Marionettentheater' and Hebbel's Maria Magdalene. |
Indhold
The London Merchant Lessings Critical Detour from | 24 |
StarGazing Authority Instinct and the Womens World | 41 |
Das Wesen wär es wenn es nicht erschiene? | 55 |
Kinder der Einsamkeit Goethes Variations | 70 |
Kleists Über das Marionettentheater and the | 91 |
Sara and Klara The Anachronistic Agonies of Hebbels | 107 |
Conclusion | 126 |