Description
Book SynopsisUsing the tools of medicine, literary theory, psychology, psychoanalysis, and etymology, this book probes the breast-related fantasies underlying German culture and literature in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is intended for those interested in German textual studies, the history of sexuality, and theories of psychoanalysis.
Trade Review"Missing the Breast is a valuable contribution not only to German Studies but also to gender and media studies. Although his analysis also stretches back to Greek myth and looks forward to Philip Roth's The Breast . . . Richter consistently ties these varied topics to the discourse of the breast in Enlightenment Germany. He ultimately convinces the reader of the literary and semantic importance of the breast in the patriarchal order."
* German Studies Review *
"Sinuously pleasurable prose. . . . Richter's argument is plausible, thought-provoking, and intellectually stimulating. Missing the Breast will cause scholars to rethink gender and literature not only in the eighteenth-century central European tradition, but also in the West in general."
* Monatshefte *
"Richter convincingly brings insights from previous chapters to illuminate the dynamics and issues in these contemporary texts. Richter's writing is accessible and all quotations are in English..Recommended."
* Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Men With Breasts, Women Without
1. Breasts on a Platter and the Bosom of Jesus: The Parameters of Fantasy
2. Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, and the Breast
3. Ut in pene: The Medical and Moral Discourses of the Breast
4. Wieland's Busted Tropes
5. Sophie von La Roche and the Communities of the Breast
6. Revealing the Phallus, Concealing the Breast: The Revolutionary Fictions of Wilhelm Heinse and Therese Huber
7. The Breast in Ruins: Heinrich von Kleist and the Language of the Breast
8. Being the Breast, Being Without: Philip Roth, Matuschka, and Deena Metzger
Notes
Bibliography
Index
