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The Quest for German Nationhood and the Reception of Women in Histories of German Literature, 1835–1872
Author(s) -
Whittle Ruth
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0483.2007.00415.x
Subject(s) - german , unification , narrative , history of literature , german literature , order (exchange) , literature , history , construct (python library) , german history , happening , sociology , art history , art , performance art , archaeology , finance , computer science , economics , programming language
Writing literary history has been understood as giving a politicised historical account of German culture ever since the inception of this genre in Germany with the publication of the Geschichte der poetischen National‐Literatur der Deutschen by Georg Gottfried Gervinus in 1835. 1 The concerted view today is that it was the ‘shockwaves’ of the Napoleonic Age which had fuelled a desire to construct an order and propose a unity, at least in book form, which would prevent similar chaos ever happening again, and this intention informed the first histories of German literature. 2 This paper will explore the role women were accorded in such histories, and the selection criteria which contributed to their exclusion or gave them the best chance to be included. It examines the intersection of the narrative of German literary history in the service of nation building, women's writing, and ‘Wissenschaftsgeschichte’ from a gendered perspective by comparing how women writers fared in notable works of contemporary literary history just before the events of the German Revolution of 1848/49 (Gervinus) until the unification of Germany in 1872 (Prutz, Gottschall and Kreyßig).