In the Company of Men by Elisabeth Krimmer
This volume examines the motif of cross-dressing in 18th-century German literature and culture to gain a deeper understanding of concepts of body, gender and identity. In the wake of the revolutionary wars, the figure of the cross-dressed woman proliferated in novels, plays, popular tales and real-life accounts that circulated throughout Germany. Sometimes appearing in soldier's garb and engaging in battle like Joan of Arc, other times donning overalls and plying a trade, the female cross-dresser tested the revolutionary ideas of freedom and equality, Perhaps her most provocative challenge, however, was to contemporary notions of what it meant to be a woman or a man. cross-dressing in novels and plays by 18th-century German writers. Revolutionary ideology wasn't the sole motivation for the presence of cross-dressed female characters in literary works. Many writers were responding to a paradigm shift in the definition of gender, whereby female and male bodies were no longer considered merely different configurations of identical physical structures, but as wholly different from one another. Analysing the figure of the cross-dresser allows insights into the discursive strategies and vagaries that surrounded the introduction of the new gender model, in which women's bodies became the primary anchors of their underprivileged position. body-gender axis through their portrayal of cross-dressed characters. By creating heroines, whose gender identity is defined through performance, not biology, women writers refuted a theory that conceives of anatomy as destiny. Revealing the similarities between this concept and postmodern ideas of gender performance, Krimmer brings our 18th-century heritage to bear on current issues of body politics.
Krimmer, Elisabeth: - ELISABETH KRIMMER is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of In the Company of Men: Cross-Dressed Women around 1800 (Wayne State UP, 2004), The Representation of War in German Literature: From 1800 to the Present (Cambridge UP, 2010), and German Women's Life Writing and the Holocaust: Complicity and Gender in the Second World War (Cambridge UP, 2018). She has also co-edited a number of books on German literature and culture, including Enlightened War: Theories and Cultures of Warfare in Eighteenth Century Germany; Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe; Realities and Fantasies of German Female Leadership: From Maria Antonia of Saxony to Angela Merkel; Writing the Self, Creating Community: Germany Women Authors and the Literary Sphere 1750-1850, and Contested Selves: Life Writing and German Culture, all published with Camden House.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780814331453 |
| ISBN 10 | 0814331459 |
| Title | In the Company of Men |
| Author | Elisabeth Krimmer |
| Series | Kritik: German Literary Theory And Cultural Studies Series |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Wayne State University Press |
| Year published | 2004-07-19 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |