From Goethe To Gide: Feminism, Aesthetics and the Literary Canon in France and Germany, 1770-1936

From Goethe to Gide brings together twelve essays on canonical male writers (six French and six German) commissioned from leading specialists from Britain and North America. These essays, aimed at final year undergraduates and postgraduates, focus on Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Hoffmann, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Heine, Fontane, Zola, Kafka, and Gide. The collection therefore foregrounds the major authors taught in British university BA courses in French and German. Working with the tools of feminist criticism, the authors demonstrate how feminist readings of these writings can illuminate far more than attitudes towards women. This book brings together specially commissioned essays on twelve canonical male writers from the later Enlightenment to the beginnings of Modernism - six French and six German.

Working with the tools of feminist criticism, leading specialists in Britain and North America demonstrate how feminist readings of key works by Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Hoffmann, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Heine, Fontane, Zola, Kafka, Gide illuminate far more than attitudes to women. The volume raises fundmaental aesthetic questions regarding creativity, genre, realism and canonicity and shows how feminist criticism can revitalize debate on these much-read writers. It therefore foregrounds the major authors who shaped the dominant aesthetics, philosophy and bourgeois culture of European literature between 1770 and 1936.

"This collection of essays provides a major reassessment of those literary figures from the later Enlightenment to the beginnings of Modernism who are most studied on French and German courses in Britain and around the world today." "By investigating the works of these canonical male French and German writers through the optic of feminist criticism, the contributors lay bare some of the fundamental aesthetic questions raised by these works: the function of art and of the artist; the limits of Realism; the relation of gender and genre. Readers new to French and German can study one author in depth or engage in comparative analysis, while specialists will find much to stimulate their critical thinking."--Jacket __From Goethe to Gide__ brings together twelve essays on canonical male writers (six French and six German) commissioned from leading specialists from Britain and North America. These essays, aimed at final year undergraduates and postgraduates, focus on Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Hoffmann, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Heine, Fontane, Zola, Kafka, and Gide. The collection therefore foregrounds the major authors taught in British university BA courses in French and German. Working with the tools of feminist criticism, the authors demonstrate how feminist readings of these writings can illuminate far more than attitudes towards women.