Women and Death 3: Women's Representations of Death in German Culture since 1500 (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

236 Pages·2010·1.16 MB·English

by  Clare Bielby

Women and Death 3
Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture
Women and Death 3
Women’s Representations of
Death in German Culture
since 1500
Edited by
Clare Bielby
and
Anna Richards
Rochester, New York
Copyright © 2010 by the Editors and Contributors
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2010
by Camden House
Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.camden-house.com
and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978–1–57113–069–3
ISBN-10: 1–57113–069–1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Women and death 3 : women’s representations of death in German culture
since 1500 / edited by Clare Bielby and Anna Richards.
p. cm. — (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-439-4 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-57113-439-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. German literature—History and criticism. 2. German literature—
Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Women and literature—
Germany 4. Women in literature. 5. Women and death. 6. Death in
literature. I. Bielby, Clare, 1981– II. Richards, Anna, 1962– III. Title:
Women and death three. IV. Series.

PT151.W7W59 2010
830.9'3522—dc22
2010000983
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Clare Bielby and Anna Richards
1: Practicing Piety: Representations of Women’s Dying in
German Funeral Sermons of the Early Modern Period 12
Jill Bepler
2: “Ich sterbe”: The Construction of the Dying Self in the
Advance Preparations for Death of Lutheran Women in
Early Modern Germany 31
Judith P. Aikin
3: The “New Mythology”: Myth and Death in Karoline
von Günderrode’s Literary Work 51
Barbara Becker-Cantarino
4: The Murderess on Stage: Christine Westphalen’s
Charlotte Corday (1804) 71
Stephanie Hilger
5: “Ob im Tode mein Ich geboren wird?”: The Representation of
the Widow in Hedwig Dohm’s “Werde, die du bist” (1894) 88
Abigail Dunn
6: The Figure of Judith in Works by German Women Writers
between 1895 and 1921 101
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly
7: Lola Doesn’t: Cinema, Jouissance, and the Avoidance
of Murder and Death 116
Simon Richter
8: Death, Being, and the Place of Comedy in
Representations of Death 134
Stephanie Bird
(cid:2)
vi CONTENTS
9: “Liebe ist ein Kunstwerk”: The Appeal to Gaspara Stampa
in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Todesarten 152
Áine McMurtry
10: TV Nation: The Representation of Death in Warfare in
Works by Peter Handke and Elfriede Jelinek 174
Elisabeth Krimmer
Works Cited 193
Notes on the Contributors 213
Index 217
Illustrations
1.1 Detail from the epitaph for Markgräfin Sophia 16
von Brandenburg-Ansbach in the Lorenzkirche,
Nuremberg.
1.2 Detail from engraving in Johann Saubert, 22
Currus Simeonis, Nuremberg, 1645.
2.1 Death’s-Head, frontispiece engraving from 40
Christoph Sommer, Epilogi Pie Demortuorum,
Oder: Exemplarische Sterbe-Schule, 1676.

Acknowledgments
THIS VOLUME IS THE THIRD of a series of three to emerge from the
three-year research project Representations of Women and Death in
German Literature, Art, and Media after 1500. We would like to thank
Professor Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly of the University of Oxford and Pro-
fessor Sarah Colvin of the University of Edinburgh, who led the project,
for their inspiration and for their practical assistance in compiling this vol-
ume. We would also like to thank the other members of the project’s steer-
ing committee for their helpful advice and support, the core group of
scholars who attended the project’s four colloquia for their stimulating
discussions, and, in particular, the ten contributors for their flexibility and
their commitment to the volume. Madeleine Brook was the project’s
professional and able editorial assistant. We are grateful to Jim Walker of
Camden House for his constructive involvement with the volume from the
earliest stages. The School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture at
Birkbeck College, University of London, and the Department of Modern
Languages at the University of Hull kindly contributed to the publication
subvention for the volume. Our greatest debt is to the British Arts and
Humanities Research Council for funding the research project.