The Rhetorical Feminine: Gender and Orient on the German Stage, 1647-1742The Rhetorical Feminine takes a fresh look at theatre - including the important new genre of opera - in early modern Germany. Central to this study is the relationship of the stage with ideas of order or social control. Early German school drama was designed to teach rhetoric to boys: a detail which has up to now been accepted by scholars without further questioning. This investigation focuses on how that rhetoric was used, with particular reference to ideas of the feminine and of the Islamic world. Both are constructed as the potentially threatening others of early modern patriarchal Christendom. In containing the threat, the stage becomes the controllable version of the early modern theatrum mundi. In opera, the dynamic of the text is supported by music. The author has found it necessary to cross the boundary of traditional literary scholarship by looking not only at the libretti, but also at the rhetoric of the score. The suggestion here is not that the construction of alterity is an isolated phenomenon in early modern Germany; men have always used their relative monopoly of the arts for self-definition. While feminist scholarship has tended to concentrate on the relevance of this for women, it has also pertained to non-Christians or `the Orient', which is often portrayed as analogous with the feminine. |
Contents
The Feminized Turk | 29 |
Lohensteins Ibrahims | 43 |
Conclusion | 66 |
Copyright | |
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Abas Andreas Gryphius aria audience auff Béhar Bostel Bostel's Braunschweig butt Cara Mustapha Cardenio carnivalesque Casper von Lohenstein Catharina von Georgien Celinde Chach chaos character Christian Christian Heinrich Postel Christian Weise Christoph Graupner Cleopatra comedy comic Daniel Casper death deutschen dramatist early modern period Elisabeth Epicharis Feind Felicitas female feminine femme forte figure fool Frau Frauen Fredegunda gender German Gryphius Gryphius's Catharina Hallmann Hamburg Hamburger Oper Haugwitz heroine Ibid Ibrahim idea ideal inversion Jahrhunderts Johann Johann Mattheson language Liberata librettist libretto Liebe Lohenstein male Maria Mariamne marriage martyr Masaniello masculine Mattheson metaphor muß Nero non-Christian Octavia opera oriental Ottoman passion play political portrayal queen references are given Reinhard Keiser Reyen rhetorical Roman scene Schein school drama seventeenth century sexual seyn Soliman soll stage Stuttgart suggests Sultan tion Tomyris Trauerspiel Tübingen Tugend Turk Turkish Venus Vernunft Weib Weise Welt Werke Wolfenbüttel woman women