Queering the Canon: Defying Sights in German Literature and Culture (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture, 1) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1571131787 ISBN 13: 9781571131782

Publisher: Camden House, 1998

Synopsis

This collection of twenty-three essays sets its sights on the points of queerness, marginality, and alterity already present within the German canon and introduces further difference and deviation in the form of openly gay German literature in order to promote the always-ongoing shift in cultural representation. Queering the Canon provides new analyses, from queer perspectives, of texts by authors whose names are familiar to canonical lists, including Goethe, Schiller, Thomas and Klaus Mann, Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Reinig, and Elfriede Jelinek. It also makes welcome room for discussions of literary works that have seldom received scholarly attention.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A wonderfully rich collection of important new work in gender, sexuality, lesbian and gay studies, and queer theory applied to German culture, literature, and film.
This important work will mark an end to German studies' reluctance to ask questions about sexuality, a strange elision in the field that can legitimately be said to have begun it all.  This is a book anyone interested in current debates on gender and the body will find indispensable. (Robert Martin, Université de Montréal)

This anthology offers the first comprehensive collection of queer readings in German Studies, spanning a vast field of scholarly interests. From medieval poetry to contemporary film; from Thomas Mann to Rosa von Praunheim; from 19th-century demographical views of homosexuality to the (Judith) Butler boom in Germany today, it covers all the bases.
Queering the Canon is truly mandatory reading for anyone interested in contemporary theorizations of German culture. (Marcia Klotz, University College Irvine)

From the Inside Flap:

An introduction of what it means to 'queer the canon' opens the volume. The first section investigates the recent impact of queer theory on literary studies and the German academy, the connections between musicology and sexology, and the debates on legalizing homosexuality at the turn of the century. The second section considers lesbian, gay, and transgendered themes in canonical and marginalized works dating from the Middle Ages to the present. The third section explores the development and sociocommercial effects of queer practices as they encounter - and evolve into - convention in film, film soundtracks, and fine art. All the essays - written by an international group of scholars - offer unique, often radical insights in their fields.

About this edition

• Publisher: Camden House
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1571131787
• ISBN 13: 9781571131782
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 524
• Editor: Lorey Christoph, Plews John L.