Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T05:42:00.200Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Blaming the Other: English Translations of Benedikte Naubert's Hermann von Unna (1788/1794)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Silke Arnold-de Simine
Affiliation:
University of London
Andrew Cusack
Affiliation:
Humboldt-Universität Berlin
Barry Murnane
Affiliation:
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
Get access

Summary

Benedikte Naubert's important role in the development of the historical novel and the fairy tale as literary genres has been highlighted in recent years; her importance for the formation of gothic fiction, however, has for the most part been either ignored or denied. One reason for this reticence seems to be a fear among scholars of an almost automatic association of the gothic with what Germans pejoratively term “trivial” literature and the concomitant debasement of Naubert as a leading female writer of the eighteenth century that such an association incurs. In contrast, the proximity of her texts to the so-called Ritter-, Räuberund Schauerromane (novels of chivalry, banditry, and horror) in terms of motifs and form has been noted both by Naubert's own contemporaries and latter-day scholars alike, albeit without analyzing these connections in any great depth. Peter Haining referred to Naubert as “Germany's most prolific female Gothic novelist … dubbed by at least one authority as ‘Europe's Mrs. Radcliffe.’” For Victoria Scheibler, Naubert was a “Wegbereiter … des aufkommenden Genres der Schauerliteratur” (laid the ground for the new genre of the gothic novel), and Robert Ignatius Le Tellier has posited Friedrich Schiller's Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer) and Naubert's Hermann von Unna as the dual origins of the German gothic novel.

The motif of the secret society that features prominently in these novels is a potent paradigm for anxieties relating to the French Revolution, but also to the perceived obscure nature of increasingly complex political and economic structures and networks exemplified in secret societies such as the Illuminati.

Type
Chapter
Information
Popular Revenants
The German Gothic and its International Reception, 1800–2000
, pp. 60 - 75
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×