Browsing by Subject "Germanic Studies"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    The 13th-century “Constance” tales.
    (2009-11) Leek, Thomas R.
    Four texts from the 13th century make up the first attestations of the "Constance" plot, a version of ATU 706 "The Father who Wanted to Marry his Daughter." This dissertation harmonizes a comparative investigation of these tales with an analysis of the cultural milieu of the Middle Ages. The figure of the sexually persecuted and exiled daughter comes to the forefront of popular culture as discourse on repentance centers around the correction of monstrous sins. In the "Constance" tales, the daughter reconciles her repentant father and husband, between whom power is transferred on account of the heroine's suffering. A thematically similar anecdote in the Chronicle of Morea points toward an international motif of an errant daughter benefiting the man she marries against her father's initial wishes.
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    Palatalization in West Germanic
    (2010-08) van der Hoek, Michel
    This dissertation examines the palatalization of consonants in historic and living dialects of three West-Germanic languages: Dutch, German, and Frisian. Palatalization was a common feature of the West-Germanic phonological system and can be found in some form in all West-Germanic languages of the present. It is argued that the extent of its presence and its importance in the development of West-Germanic phonology has been underestimated, and that it played a central role in the rise of i-umlaut. In the first chapter, the term palatalization is defined and the most important research problems in several areas, including phonological theory, historical linguistics, paleography, and dialectology, are outlined. The dissertation dis-cusses the terms that have been in use in different traditions for consonant palatalization (especially German Mouillierung and English palatalization and the problems created by the fact that the modern term palatalization encompasses several related phenomena. The different treatments of consonant palatalization in phonological theories of the past century are examined; weaknesses in the description of palatalization within current theoretical frameworks are noted. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 discuss the existence and role of consonant palatalization and palatal(ized) consonants in the past and present dialects of Dutch, German, and Frisian, respectively.
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    The pedagogy of pop: implicit codes of conduct in the Weimar novels of Vicki Baum and Irmgard Keun.
    (2009-04) King, Adam Ryan
    Far from avoiding the controversies of contemporary reality and providing merely a means of pleasurable "escape" from one's dreary life--a characteristic that the cultural critic Siegfired Kracauer attributes to popular literature--I argue that the candid representation of controversial women's issues in Vicki Baum's stud. chem. Helene Willfueer and Menschen im Hotel, and Irmgard Keun's Gilgi, eine von uns and Das kunstseidene Maedchen provided a well-informed social critique to many non-university educated working- and middle-class women. I introduce the figures of the Kalte Persona, the Radar Type, and the Creature, which the German scholar Helmut Lethen argues emerge in the literature of the Weimar Republic and illustrate the desire for masking as a form of protection from the perceived dangers of society. I then apply Lethen's characterization to the protagonists of Baum's and Keun's novels in order to show that the presence of these figures are not limited to the realm of canonical literature from which Lethen draws his examples. Next, I argue against the gender bias of Lethen's analysis by showing how the women protagonists of Baum's and Keun's novels actively adopt the characteristics of the Kalte Persona that Lethen attributes only to men. The most pedagogically beneficial aspect of these novels, I argue, is that instead of telling their readers what to believe, both Baum and Keun give their readers the opportunity to formulate their own views on these complex issues. The public discussion of these novels provided women with the opportunity not only to discuss the novels themselves, but also to discuss the controversial issues raised. In my analysis of the critical and popular reception of Baum's and Keun's novels, I illustrate how these writings fostered a great deal of debate in the press about many contemporary controversies, allowing women to add their own often suppressed voices to the raging debates about the changing roles of women in the Weimar Republic.
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    The philosophic game: eighteenth-century masquerade in German and Danish literature and culture.
    (2012-05) Wallen, Anne Beryl
    My dissertation is titled "The Philosophic Game: Eighteenth-Century Masquerade in German and Danish Literature and Culture." Masked balls were one of the most popular forms of entertainment in eighteenth-century Europe, and appears frequently as a motif in the period's literature and arts. Analyzing court journals, newspaper reports, and works of art in combination with literary and philosophic texts, I present a picture of masquerade as experienced and as imagined by eighteenth-century participants and observers in Danish and German lands. I argue that the apparent triviality of masked balls belies the complicated rule systems that governed them, and that the motivations for its performance are tied to many of the era's concerns, raising questions about the individual's place in society, and the individual's relationship to sex, class, and nationality. In the first chapter, "The Rules of the Game," I trace the origins and influences of masquerade in Northern Europe, and explore the complex systems of conventions and publicized rules that governed this reputedly carnivalesque practice. I analyze how masquerades are organized and discussed by writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and consider participants' motivations in light of philosophic texts by Ludvig Holberg and others. The second chapter looks at the masquerade's reputation as a "Wunder-Land" (Carl Gustav Heräus), especially as it appears in comedies by Holberg, Johann Elias Schlegel, and Theodor Körner. Here the masquerade appears as a kind of Foucauldian heterotopia, where everyday norms are suspended and personal liberty can be expressed. The third chapter, on the other hand, tackles the masquerade as a site of "Misfortune" in terms of potential moral and sexual danger, particularly for women. I focus on two longer prose works by Sophie von La Roche and Charlotte Dorothea Biehl that contain pivotal scenes of masquerade. In the final chapter, I analyze the "afterlife" of the masquerade in nineteenth- through twenty-first-century historical fiction. In each chapter I follow case studies of masquerades held during the Struensee period at the court of Danish King Christian VII. Throughout the dissertation, I consider how masquerade and the discourse surrounding it relate to contemporary notions of metaphorical "masquerade."
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    Singing Arminius, imagining a German Nation:narratives of the liberator Germaniae in Early Modern Europe
    (2012-05) Skarsten, Roger Christian
    This dissertation investigates early modern European musical/dramatic narratives of the ancient Germanic chieftain Arminius, a figure onto which cultural discourses and images of Germanness continue to imprint themselves today. Just as modern historians characterize the post-Westphalian Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation as an active (if not always amicable) interdependence between the states and the imperial institutions, so do the Arminius narratives of this era demand re-evaluation apart from the nineteenth-century nationalistic ideologies that have colored the figure's reception. This investigation accordingly contextualizes the Arminius figure in the company of the Holy Roman Emperor as well as the German princes whose sovereignty had received official confirmation after 1648. The first part explores the notion of a Roman-German identity as it relates to the Habsburg dynasty's self-representations, and the ways in which an understanding of this duality affects interpretations of operatic/dramatic works on the subject of Arminius that were dedicated to representatives of the Habsburg family or performed in territories where Habsburg influence was immediate. The second part turns to the princes of the Empire and considers how narratives of Arminius and the ancient Germanic tribes function within contexts of political particularism. Through concepts linked with geographical space, the continuity of ancestral ties, and the essential nature of the German character, these works construct and advocate cohesive notions of an imagined German social identity among their audiences while also upholding the affirmed freedom of the princes. A series of case studies (focused on the performance of Arminius narratives at various courts) builds on a referential network between the cultural reception of the figure (including the legacies of the ancient Germanic peoples in general) and other literary, pedagogical, and pictorial sources that were produced for the benefit of German princes. The case studies reveal the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which these narratives interacted with contemporary political and cultural worldviews concerning the manifestation of the German nation within the Holy Roman Empire. The dissertation contains a substantial annotated catalog of musical/dramatic works on the subject of Arminius.
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    Towards a multiculturalism for the 21st century : German and Scandinavian literary perspectives, 1990-2005.
    (2008-08) Karlsson, Elisabeth Helena
    This dissertation is a reading of literary texts from 1990-2005 by four authors of immigrant extraction in Germany and Scandinavia. I ask how these authors engage in both a reality of multiculturalism and a discourse of multiculturalism. The project is organized around the tension in these texts between negative experiences of ethnic and global disadvantage and positive representations of minority identity and cultural mixture. I argue that the four writers-Feridun Zaimoglu (Germany), Bertrand Besigye (Norway), Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Sweden) and Emine Sevgi Özdamar (Germany)-combine in their texts a serious critique of the dominant culture with a playful, critical, often provocative outlook on identity. In light of recent theoretical critiques of the terms "multiculturalism" and "minority", I defend the value of minority perspectives and sensibilities to contemporary German and Scandinavian society, identity and culture. I start my discussion with an analysis of the Kanak identities in two of the Turkish-German Feridun Zaimoglu's texts. I discuss how Zaimoglu's appropriation of the derogatory word for foreigner in Germany serves a critique of a dominant German culture reluctant to embrace its new ethnic minorities. Then I analyze the Ugandan-Norwegian Bertrand Besigye's prose poetry. I show how cultural and racial difference can be used playfully to insert difference into a national identity too narrowly and homogenously defined. In Jonas Hassen Khemiri's texts, I discuss how Khemiri criticizes the ethnic definitions assigned to immigrants by the Swedish majority culture and how he pushes for a more open, cosmopolitan national identity. Engaging with the Turkish-German Emine Sevgi Özdamar's texts, lastly, I examine how the author's conciliatory and humorous attitude toward the reality of multiculturalism potentially fosters cross-cultural identification and more open and generous identities. In the end, I show that a multiculturalism worth defending is one that acknowledges persisting ethnic and racial inequalities and prejudices while it at the same time expands the horizons of our cultural, national and individual identities.