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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 AMAZON FIGURES IN GERMAN LITERATURE: THE THEME AND ITS VARIATIONS IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Rebecca Williams-Duplantier, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1992 Dissertation Committee: Approved by M. Roche H. Bekker Adviser Department of German G. Vitt To The Memory Of Judith C. Helm and Henry J. Schmidt ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express sincere thanks to those people vho assisted in the preparation of this document. I thank my advisor, Dr. Mark Roche, for his thoughtful reading and insights. I am indebted to him for remaining critical yet open. I am also grateful to the other members of my advisory committee, Drs. Hugo Bekker and Gisela Vitt, vho provided valuable comments and recommendations. I gratefully acknowledge the late Dr. Henry J. Schmidt, whose enthusiasm, intellect, curiosity, and integrity continue to inspire me. Special thanks to my parents who taught and believed in me, and to my grandparents for their support. I am grateful to Barbara Gianneschi, and Timothy and JoAnn Bennett who kept my sense of humor and perspective throughout. Most of all, sincere thanks to my husband Crozet for his unfailing patience, support, irony, love, and friendship, without which this project would have been infinitely more difficult. VITA May 20, 1958 ________________________ Born - Tiffin, Ohio 1991-1992 ___________________________ Southern California Regional Fellowship, Freie Universitat, Berlin 1982 _________________________________ B.A., University of California, Los Angeles 1983 _________________________________ M.A., University of California, Los Angeles 1984-1986 ___________________________ Alumni Federation Fellowship, Louisiana State University 1986-1987 ___________________________ University Fellowship, The Ohio State University 1988-1991 ___________________________ Instructor, Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia 1991-Present ________________________ Assistant Professor of German, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: German TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................... iii VITA ....................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .............................................. 1 PART ONE: THE AMAZONS.................................. 16 CHAPTER I ANTECEDENTS TO THE LITERARY TRADITION................................ 17 PART TWO: MODERN VARIATIONS OF THE CLASSICAL AMAZON. 46 CHAPTER II PENTHESILEA .............................. 48 CHAPTER III ANTIOPE ................................ 104 PART THREE; THE INTELLECTUAL AMAZON .................. 143 CHAPTER IV KAROLINE VON GONDERRODE .............. 152 CHAPTER V CLARA S ...................................... 178 PART FOUR: THE AMAZON AS OIORPATA....................... 225 CHAPTER VI CHARLOTTE CORDAY .................... 244 CONCLUSION...................................................287 NOTES ....................................................... 306 LIST OF WORKS C I T E D ....................................... 319 v INTRODUCTION The Amazons arouse fear, horror, and admiration when she bursts upon the battlefield. She is defined by her incontrovertibly capable female presence within a sphere recognized as uniquely male. Her success within the masculine domain paradoxically focuses attention on her womanhood, which must be called into question when she proves herself among men. Traditionally masculine aptitudes housed in a female form constitute the Amazon's androgyny, that is, her failure to conform to accepted gender models. By entering the battlefield, the Amazons defy the taboo against female participation in the public arena. This, in concert with their refusal to submit to a traditional marital relationship raises the specter of an autonomous feminine presence that threatens the cultural order. The Amazon mythology is founded on the apprehension of autonomous women who appear as menacing, exotic, dangerously alluring, unnatural (unnaturally strong, unnaturally sexual, unnaturally intelligent, unnaturally gifted for women), and culturally impossible. The Amazon figure carries with her a distinct set of denotations and connotations, the symbolic content of the myth. The Amazon is an archetypal image. The ancient 1 warrior woman is an allegory for any woman who exits the domestic realm and leaves a portion of her womanhood behind. Thus, while literal Amazons have populated the pages of literature since they first appeared in the songs, epics, vase paintings, and friezes of the ancients, Amazon figures have also often appeared incognito, without the badges of monomastia and instruments of war. Beneath the superficial appurtenances of their historical garb lie the unmistakable marks (sometimes scars) of the ancient women of arms. Part One and Chapter I, "The Amazons: Antecedents to the Literary Tradition," reviews the history and derivation of the Amazon myth. It focuses primarily on the Greek sources, their interpreters and interpretations. This section establishes the field of inquiry that attends each appearance of the Amazon figure. The literary texts chosen for this study have been culled from two centuries of literary production in German speaking countries. Because of their divergent temporal origins, these texts vary greatly in style and approach. Despite this superficial heterogeneity, the deeper thematic similarities unify the works under consideration. Because of the thematic nature of the study, a chronological ordering of texts was not the most practical or illuminating. Instead, they have been grouped according to broader interpretive categories: the Classical Amazon, the Intellectual Amazon, and the Amazon as Oiorpata. Part Two, "The Classical Amazon," focuses on two chronologically disparate texts, both of which take literal Amazons as their subject. Chapter II provides a reading of Kleist's Penthesilea (1807), the aesthetic cornerstone of the dissertation. It demonstrates the full gamut of Amazon iconography that recurs in the remaining texts. It looks back to Chapter One to connect with the ancient tradition and projects forward to anticipate the interpretive strategies developed in the following chapters. Chapter III focuses on Stefan Schutz's Die Amazonen (1976), also published under the title Theseus und Antiope. This drama focuses on another Amazon from the ancient tradition. The Antiope story draws attention to aspects of the Amazon myth that complement the Penthesilea myth. Whereas Penthesilea meets Achilles on the battlefield, Antiope actually accompanies Theseus back to Athens; Schutz's drama illustrates the consequences of the Amazon actually entering the arena of culture. The ancient Amazon was involved in governance and warfare, the activities that defined independence and self- determination within the Greek milieu. The intellectual Amazon is a modern adaptation of the ancient scenario; in this manifestation, the Amazon imagery is transferred from the woman warrior onto the woman artist and intellectual. The themes and underlying logic developed in Parts One and Two are clearly evidenced in the treatments of these "Intellectual Amazons." Chapter IV addresses the poetry, correspondence, and biography of Karoline von Gunderrode (1780-1806) as they are captured in Per Schatten eines Traumes, a collection edited by Christa Wolf. Despite the methodological difficulties in circumscribing exactly what constitutes a text in this instance, the correspondences to the Amazon myth evoked by the Gunderrode material justify the undertaking. Chapter V treats Elfriede Jelinek's Clara S. (1984). As