Description
Book SynopsisComprehensive view of Andreas-Salomé's fictional works, focusing on her depictions of women and questions of narrative and identity. The writer and intellectual Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) fascinates scholars of German literature because of her associations with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud and because she was active in the cultural and intellectual vanguardof late 19th- and early 20th-century Germany and Austria. Recent editions of her fictional works have garnered wider attention from scholars of literature and theory, particularly those interested in women's studies, identity politics, and narrative theory. This study analyzes how Andreas-Salomé depicted women in her fictional works just as feminism was emerging, revealing a complex engagement with questions of narrative and identity. More than mere thematic explorations of women's changing roles in society, her works investigate the concept of identity and its relationship to gender, sexuality, and narrative representation. She is as concerned with a cultural crisis of femininityand masculinity as with the identity crises of her individual women characters. This book offers the best account of Andreas-Salomé's literary works, de-emphasizing biographical and psychoanalytical perspectives but taking into account the sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts in which they were written. It also adds to contemporary theoretical discourses on gender, feminism, and identity. Muriel Cormican is Professor of German at the University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia.
Trade ReviewLucid, convincing study. * CHOICE *
Cormican's study contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the importance of the extraordinary individual that was Lou Andreas-Salomé. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Woman versus Women: Gender, Art, and Decadence in "Der Mensch als Weib" and Eine Ausschweifung Articulating Identity: Narrative as Mastery and Self Mastery in Fenitschka Marriage and Science: Discourses of Domestication in Das Haus Untamed Woman: Talking about Sex and Self in Jutta Motherhood, Masochism, and Subjectivity in Ma: Ein Portraet Returning the Gaze: Uppity Women in Menschenkinder
