Beauty or Beast?

The Woman Warrior in the German Imagination from the Renaissance to the Present
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-0-19-955823-0
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 652 g

Exciting material that deals with sex, violence, and gender concepts
Explores literature, art, theatre, and opera
All quotations and titles are translated into English

A regiment of women warriors strides across the battlefield of German culture - on the stage, in the opera house, on the page, and in paintings and prints. These warriors are re-imaginings by men of figures such as the Amazons, the Valkyries, and the biblical killer Judith. They are transgressive and therefore frightening figures who leave their proper female sphere and have to be made safe by being killed, deflowered, or both. This has produced some compelling works of Western culture - Cranach's and Klimt's paintings of Judith, Schiller's Joan of Arc, Hebbel's Judith, Wagner's Brünnhilde, Fritz Lang's Brünhild. Nowadays, representations of the woman warrior are used as a way of thinking about the woman terrorist. Women writers only engage with these imaginings at the end of the 19th century, but from the late 18th century on they begin to imagine fictional cross-dressers going to war in a realistic setting and thus think the unthinkable. What are the roots of these imaginings? And how are they related to Freud's ideas about women's sexuality?

Zielgruppe

Students and scholars of German studies, women's studies, gender studies, cultural historians, and historians of war.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Watanabe-O'Kelly, Helen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Opernmusik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen: Menschen, Häusliches Umfeld
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction and Acknowledgements
I: Angels of Death - German Culture, Women Warriors, and Heroes
II: Amazons - Warriors or Women?
III: Many Ways to Die - Women Warriors and National Myth
IV: Judith - Asking the Big Questions
V: Death and the Maiden - Heroic Maidens from Schiller to Brecht
VI: Unbecoming a Woman - the Woman Warrior as Cross-Dresser
VII: Women's Imaginings - Warriors in Fiction
VIII: Women's Voices - the Amazons, Judith, Charlotte Corday
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly, Professor of German Literature, Oxford University and Fellow, Exeter College, Oxford