NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Novellenschatz. Searching For
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NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Novellenschatz. Searching for Treasure in the Novellas of Gottfried Keller and George Eliot A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of: Comparative Literary Studies By Teresa Ritterhoff EVANSTON, ILLINOIS June 2007 2 Copyright 2007, Teresa Ritterhoff 3 ABSTRACT Novellenschatz. Searching for Treasure in the Novellas of Gottfried Keller and George Elio t Teresa Ritterhoff This dissertation is composed of readings of four novellas: two by the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller and two by the English novelist George Eliot. It focuses on the motif and concept of treasure ( Schatz ). Beginning with the figura tive and rhetorical employment of “treasure” in the stories, each reading proceeds to identify traces of authorial anxiety concerning the status of literature itself as a fetishized object of desire. In their novellas, the study shows, Keller and Eliot sta ge a dramatic struggle between two broad concepts of desire, one that would underwrite the subjective authenticity of treasure and one that undercuts it by pointing up desire’s implication in an irreducibly intersubjective dynamic of mimesis. In contradis tinction to their common mentor, the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, Keller and Eliot can here be seen to anticipate certain strains of psychoanalytic thought, particularly the Freudian theory of narcissism. This is established not only by way of the themes and representational strategies of the stories, but through consideration of issues surrounding textual identity and integrity. It is moreover in this theoretical context that Keller and Eliot’s insistent return to femininity is placed. Alongside the rep resentation of a fundamental female conservatism, even fetishism -- a tendency to cling to things or forms that have outlived their usefulness and are valued only for 4 their own sake – the novellas of Keller and Eliot simultaneously conceive of femininity a s a fount of generosity. This gendered notion of gift is deeply implicated in the genre of the novella itself, which is postulated as a treasure beyond price by the same token that its most characteristic temporal gesture is (fruitless) repetition. While thus self -consciously failing to represent something fundamentally new, the novellas of Keller and Eliot are deeply invested in delineating the conditions for the emergence or appearance of novelty. With a particular eye to textual excesses, surpluses, and above all remainders, the “search” for treasure in the novellas of Keller and Eliot yields insight into their realist representations of fetishism as well as a certain fetishization of literature that their texts both exemplify and diagnose. 5 TABLE OF CO NTENTS Page Number Introduction 6 Chapter One. Judging a Book by Its Cover: 35 Humor and Shame in “Die drei gerechten Kammacher “ Chapter Two. Mirroring Mimesis Through the Ages: 99 “Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe“ Chapter Three. Idiocy and the Gift: 145 “Brother Jacob“ Chapter Four. Curtain Up: 188 “The Lifted Veil“ and the Spectacle of Character References 239 6 Introduction Theoretical Investments Erudition and philosophy are to me only the means by which I bring to light the treasure hid in man. -Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (George Eliot translation) 1 This dissertation is comprised of readings of four novellas, two by the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller and two by the English novelist Ge orge Eliot, née Mary Ann Evans. Eliot and Keller were exact contemporaries: both share their year of birth, 1819, with the English queen who gave her name to the age. Both began writing realist fiction relatively late in life, and both are considered maj or figures in their respective language traditions. 2 Of the many good reasons that could be given for juxtaposing the work of these two authors, this dissertation focuses on the motif and the concept of “treasure” ( Schatz ). The set of concerns provoked by treasure provides, I will argue, a uniquely productive means of grasping Eliot and Keller’s practice of short fiction. The “search” for treasure consequently underlies both the decision to concentrate on the novella genre and the choice of individual text s to be read. At the same time, treasure is a name for that which is to be found, or established, in and through these readings. This introduction will develop each of these points in turn. 3 1 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. George Eliot, trans. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1989, p. xxii. All further references to this edition will be given in the text. 2 For a general comparison of Eliot and Keller, see H.R. Klieneberger, “ Gottfried Keller and George Eliot.” ( New Ger man Studies, 5, 1977, pp.9 -23); and The Novel in England and Germany. A Comparative Study. (London: Oswald Wolff, 1981). For an analysis of the influence of Keller’s novellas on Eliot, see James Diedrick , “Eliot’s Debt to Keller: Silas Marner and Die dr ei gerechten Kammacher ” ( Comparative Literature Studies, 20, Winter 1985, pp.376 -387); and “George Eliot’s Experiments in Fiction: ‘Brother Jacob’ and the German Novelle” ( Studies in Short Fiction XXII, 1985, pp.461 -468). 3 With its focus on treasure, thi s study joins a tradition of “economic” research into Keller and Eliot. Keller has been a favorite of Marxist and/or materialist critics at least since Georg Lukács’ homage to him in Deutsche Realisten des 19.Jahrhunderts ( Bern: Francke Verlag, 1959 ); the peak of this trend was reached in the early 1970s with works like 7 The identification of literature with (a) treasure has a long tradition. Already the act of opening a book suggests the imminent dis -covery of something valuable. It is in part this conventional association that Hermann Kurz and Paul Heyse call upon with the choice of title for their late nineteenth -century anthol ogy, Deutscher Novellenschatz (“German Novella Treasury”) .4 The twenty -four volumes began appearing in 1871, followed, in quick succession, by a “foreign” and a “new” edition. 5 In the final pages of the third volume, George Eliot, who notes reading the Novellenschatz in her journals, would certainly have recognized Keller’s most famous novella, “Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe.” 6 Whether she (re)read the tale at this Gert Sautermeister’s “Gottfried Keller – Kritik und Apologie des Privateigentums“ (in: Gert Mattenklott und Klaus R. Scherpe, eds. Positionen der literarischen Intelligenz zwischen bürgerl icher Reaktion und Imperialismus. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor Verlag, 1973, pp.39 -102), which analyses the same two novellas to be read here. Adolf Muschg’s well -known Keller biography ( Gottfried Keller. München: Kindler Verlag, 1977) is also of interest in t his context; its organizing motif and principle is the concept of guilt/debt ( Schuld ). On the economics of Seldwyla, see Richard Hacken, “Gottfried Keller’s Realism: The Socio -economic Ground between Switzerland and Seldwyla” (in: John F. Fetzer et. al., e ds. In Search of the Poetic Real. Essays in Honor of Clifford Albrecht Bernd on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag, 1989, pp.151 -168) and Willi Goetschel, “Love, Sex, and Other Utilities: Keller’s Unsettling Account” ( in: Raymond A. Prier and Gerald Gillespie, eds. Narrative Ironies. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997, pp.223 -235) . On Der grüne Heinrich , see, above all, Jochen Hörisch, “Geld, Gott und verunglücktes Dasein im ‚Grünen Heinrich’“ (in: Hörisch, Gott , Geld, und Glück. Zur Logik der Liebe in den Bildungsromanen Goethes, Kellers und Thomas Manns, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1983, pp.116 -179). Eliot’s reputation among English Marxist critics (e.g. Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton) has never been a matc h for the attention lavished on Keller by German leftists, but her engagement with economic themes has begun to receive more serious attention in the last several years. In addition to chapters devoted to Eliot in Jeff Nunokawa, The Afterlife of Property: Domestic Security and the Victorian Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) and Catherine Gallagher, The Body Economic. Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy and the Victorian Novel (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), see the important articles by Deanna Kreisl, “ Superfluity and Suction: The Problem with Saving in The Mill on the Floss ” ( Novel, Fall 2001, pp.69 -103); Susan Stewart, “Genres of Work: The Folktale and Silas Marner ” ( New Literary History, 34: 2003, pp.513 -533); and Daniel Siegel, “Losing for Profit” (in: Karen Chase, ed. Middlemarch in the Twenty -First Century. London: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.157 -176). Tim Dolin’s recent overview of Eliot’s life and work also includes a helpful section on her relationship to money; see Dolin, George Eliot (London and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 130ff. 4 Paul Heyse and Hermann Kurz, ed. Deutscher Novellenschatz. 24 vols. (München: Oldenbourg, 1871 -1876). This was hardly the first “Novella Treasury,” but it was the most popular. The favored Romantic term for a novella collection was a “wreath” ( Novellenkranz ). 5 Novellenschatz des Auslandes (14 vols. München: Oldenbourg, 1872 -1875).; and Neuer Deutscher Novellenschatz (Paul Heyse and Ludwi g Laistner, eds. 24 vols. München: Oldenbourg, 1884 -87). 6 See also Nietzsche in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II, 109 (in: Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe. Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, eds. München, Berlin, New York: dtv/de