Synopses & Reviews
When Goethe christened the 1700's "the Century of Winckelmann" and Kant dubbed it "the Century of Frederick the Great," they invoked two notorious figures in gay history. This collection of twelve essays reclaims "the Age of Goethe"To call upon a literary designation of roughly the same period - as a time when same-sex erotic attraction suffused artistic production from Winckelmann's art treatises and Goethe's plays to Friedrich Schlegel's self-reflexive novel Lucinde and Kleist's letters.
This volume employs historical, biographical, and textual evidence to paint a cohesive picture of the incontrovertibly sexual nature of male-male and female-female relationships in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Germany. The literature of this era bequeathed to us the cultural inventions of Romantic love, classical femininity, the marriage partnership, and the aesthetics of beauty - all, as this volume demonstrates, via and despite the ever-resurgent erotic desire for one's own sex. In the process, it offers radically new readings of canonical authors - including Wieland, Lenz, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, and Kleist in light of the eroticized same-sex relations in their works.
Synopsis
This collection of twelve essays reclaims "the Age of Goethe"to call upon a literary designation of roughly the same periodas a time when same-sex erotic attraction suffused artistic production from Winckelmann's art treatises and Goethe's plays to Friedrich Schlegel's self-reflexive novel Lucinde and Kleist's letters.
Synopsis
An assessment of art and society in the 'age of Goethe' from a gay and lesbian perspective.
Synopsis
This collection of twelve essays reclaims 'the age of Goethe' as a time when same-sex erotic attraction suffused artistic production from Winckelmann's art treatises and Goethe's plays to Friedrich Schlegel's self-reflexive novel Lucinde and Kleist's letters. This volume employs historical, biographical, and textual evidence to paint a cohesive picture of the incontrovertibly sexual nature of male-male and female-female relationships in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Germany. The essays show how sexual and gender orientation during the age of Goethe, though blurred, was constantly being restructured, often in a way that coopted 'queerness' into reifying heterosexuality. As a result, around the first decade of the nineteenth century the contours of 'the closet' began to form. The book as a whole testifies to the centrality of this period for gay and lesbian archaeology, offers ways to read for homosexuality in pre-twentieth-century authors, and argues strongly for 'the birth of aesthetics out of the spirit of homoeroticism'.
Table of Contents
Contributors; Abbreviations; Introduction Alice A. Kuzniar; 1. Winckelmann's progeny: homosocial networking in the eighteenth century Simon Richter; 2. Wieland and the homoerotics of reading Simon Richter; 3. Homosocial necrophilia: the making of man in Jung-Stillings's idyllic patriarchy Stephan K. Schindler; 4. The homosexual, the prostitute, and the castrato: closet performances by J. M. R. Lenz Roman Graf; 5. In and against nature: Goethe on homosexuality and heterotextuality Robert D. Tobin; 6. Male desire in Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen Susan E. Gustafson; 7. Amazon, agitator, allegory: political and gender cross(-dress)ing in Goethe's Egmont W. Daniel Wilson; 8. Psy fi explorations of out space: on Werther's special effects Laurence A. Rickels; 9. 'Confessions of an Improper Man': Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde Martha B. Helfer; 10. The 'third sex' in an age of difference: androgyny and homosexuality in Winckelmann, Friedrich Shclegel, and Kleist Catriona MacLeod; 11. Friendship and gender: the aesthetic construction of subjectivity in Kleist Joachim Pfeiffer (translated by Robert D. Tobin); 12. Eternal love or sentimental discourse? Gender dissonance and women's passionate 'friendships' Susanne T. Kord; Notes; Works cited.