Mererid Puw Davies

Beth V. Linklater

Gisela Shaw

This varied and challenging collection of contributions written in German and English surveys a wide range of literature in German from a new perspective, namely that of autobiographical writing by women. In sixteen detailed analyses by an international team of scholars the volume explores theories of autobiographical writing and the heterogeneous ways in which texts by women from the Middle Ages onwards have used autobiographical material. The book addresses theoretical issues and thematic complexes as well as uncovering obscured texts and genres, providing both comparative and individual readings of texts as diverse as the spiritual writings of medieval nuns, diaries of the early modern period, and Holocaust memoirs. The book exposes and re-explores received ideas about women and the practice of autobiographical writing and, in doing so, redefines the terms of current debates in the field of autobiography. Beyond that field, it will appeal to those interested in the broader issues of writing by women, German literature and literary theory.

Autobiography by Women in German

'The majority of her [Davies's] readings are perceptive and provocative... her considerable expansion of the corpus of Bluebeard tales to some 70 texts and operas is commendable, especially as many of them have been forgotten for more than a century.' -Times Higher Education Supplement'One seldom encounters a work of literary cricicism that makes such compelling reading as this investigation of the Bluebeard motif in modern German literature... it combines thorough scholarship with imaginative intepretation and intellectual sophistication... this is an exciting book that deserves to be widely read and influential, both within and beyond German studies.' -Journal of European Studies'Bluebeard', in which women are slaughtered and hidden in a horrible chamber by a monstrous husband, is hair-raising; yet its happy ending gives it a utopian force. Davies's book focuses on literature in German from the eighteenth century to the 1990s, and is the first full-length study of the history of Bluebeard published in any language.

From the Eighteenth Century to the Present

The Tale of Bluebeard in German Literature

Sonu Shamdasani

Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World is the first volume dedicated to exploring the interface of medicine, the human and the humane in the German-speaking lands. The volume tracks the designation and making through medicine of the human and inhuman, and the humane and inhumane, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Eight individual chapters undertake explorations into ways in which theories and practices of medicine in the German-speaking world have come to define the human, and highlight how such theories and practices have consolidated, or undermined, notions of humane behaviour. Cultural analysis is central to this investigation, foregrounding the reflection, refraction and indeed creation of these theories and practices in literature, life-writing and other discourses and media. Contributors bring to bear perspectives from literary studies, film studies, critical theory, cultural studies, history, and the history of medicine and psychiatry. Thus, this collection is historical in the most expansive sense, for it debates not only what historical accounts bring to our understanding of this topic. It encompasses too investigation of life-writing, documentary, and theory and literary works to bring to light elusive, paradoxical, underexplored – yet vital – issues in history and culture.

Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World

The 1960s protest movements marked an astonishing moment for West Germany. They developed a political critique, but are above all distinctive for their overwhelming emphasis on culture and the symbolic. In particular, reading and writing had unique prestige for protesters, who produced an extraordinary textual culture which was by turns polemical, witty, provocative, reflective and offensive. The avant-garde roots of anti-authoritarianism are often as palpable within it as a debt to high literature; but due to its sometimes (apparently) vehemently anti-literary tone, it is frequently overlooked by traditional criticism. This volume outlines an anti-authoritarian poetics by presenting close readings of some emblematic texts, many of them forgotten, others better known. The study embeds its analyses in historical, cultural, political and aesthetic contexts, in order to illuminate some representative moments and preoccupations in protest writing, and it argues that this prolific textual culture exists in a complex tension between utopian impulses and the shadows of the past.

Mererid Puw Davies

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