Helen Bridge

Women's Writing and Historiography in the Gdr

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to explore how literature by GDR women became a forum for critical approaches to history which challenged the official state discourse. An introductory chapter offers broad theoretical reflections on the modes of literature and historiography, and considers the significance of feminism as a tabooed critical discourse in the GDR. The question of why GDR literature and historiography developed so differently in the 1970s and 1980s is then pursued through a series of comparative readings of texts by both prominent writers, such as Christa Wolf, Irmtraud Morgner, and Helga Konigsdorf, and less established authors, such as Helga Schutz, Sigrid Damm, Renate Feyl, and Brigitte Struzyk. This is not only the first study to offer a detailed comparison of historical and literary discourses in the GDR, but also the first to illuminate relations between three topics popular in East German women's writing: the National Socialist past; the lives of historical women; and the use of mythical themes and forms to voice critiques of history.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Sydney University Press
• Seitenzahl: 290
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. Dezember 2002
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 223mm x 146mm x 24mm
• Gewicht: 442g
• ISBN-13: 9780199255924
• ISBN-10: 019925592X
• Artikelnr.: 22438691

Autorenporträt

Helen Bridge received her D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1999. She is currently a lecturer in German at the University of Exeter.

Inhaltsangabe

* Introduction
* I. 'Das Vergangene ist nicht tot': new approaches to National
Socialism in literature of the 1970s
* 1: Historical and literary treatments of National Socialism prior to
the 1970s
* 2: Shifting perspectives on the National Socialist past in 1970s
literature and historiography
* 3: 'Der gewöhnliche Faschismus': Helga Schütz's Jette / Julia novels
* 4: 'Wie sind wir so geworden, wie wir heute sind?': Christa Wolf's
Kindheitsmuster and its reception in the GDR
* 5: Developments in historians' and writers' approaches to National
Socialism after Kindheitsmuster
* II. 'ihre Geschichte wäre noch zu schreiben': biographical fictions
about women
* 6: Women's lives as a challenge to Orthodox historical narratives
* 7: Academic work on women's history in the GDR and feminist debates
in the West
* 8: Writing a woman's life: Christa Wolf; Sigrid Dumm and Renate Feyl;
Brigitte Struzyk
* III. 'Die Welt der unendlichen Möglichkeiten neben dieser einen
Realität': fantastic approaches to history in literature of the 1970s
and 1980s
* 9: Literary treatments of myth in the GDR
* 10: Fantastic approaches to history: Morgner's Trobadora Beatriz and
Königsdorf's Respektloser Umgang
* 11: Myth as history and history as myth: Wolf's Kassandra and
Morgner's Amanda
* Conclusion
* Bibliography
* Index