Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Haunting (Literary) History: An Introduction to German Gothic
- 2 “The echo of the question, as if it had merely resounded in a tomb”: The Dark Anthropology of the Schauerroman in Schiller's Der Geisterseher
- 3 Blaming the Other: English Translations of Benedikte Naubert's Hermann von Unna (1788/1794)
- 4 Scott, Hoffmann, and the Persistence of the Gothic
- 5 Cultural Transfer in the Dublin University Magazine: James Clarence Mangan and the German Gothic
- 6 In the Maelstrom of Interpretation: Reshaping Terror and Horror between 1798 and 1838 — Gleich, Hoffmann, Poe
- 7 Popular Ghosts: Heinrich Heine on German Geistesgeschichte as Gothic Novel
- 8 The Spirit World of Art and Robert Schumann's Gothic Novel Project: The Impact of Gothic Literature on Schumann's Writings
- 9 About Face: E. T. A. Hoffmann, Weimar Film, and the Technological Afterlife of Gothic Physiognomy
- 10 Of Rats, Wolves, and Men: The Pied Piper as Gothic Revenant and Provenant in Wilhelm Raabe's Die Hämelschen Kinder
- 11 The Lady in White or the Laws of the Ghost in Theodor Fontane's Vor dem Sturm
- 12 On Golems and Ghosts: Prague as a Site of Gothic Modernism
- 13 “Ein Gespenst geht um”: Christa Wolf, Irina Liebmann, and the Post-Wall Gothic
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
11 - The Lady in White or the Laws of the Ghost in Theodor Fontane's Vor dem Sturm
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Haunting (Literary) History: An Introduction to German Gothic
- 2 “The echo of the question, as if it had merely resounded in a tomb”: The Dark Anthropology of the Schauerroman in Schiller's Der Geisterseher
- 3 Blaming the Other: English Translations of Benedikte Naubert's Hermann von Unna (1788/1794)
- 4 Scott, Hoffmann, and the Persistence of the Gothic
- 5 Cultural Transfer in the Dublin University Magazine: James Clarence Mangan and the German Gothic
- 6 In the Maelstrom of Interpretation: Reshaping Terror and Horror between 1798 and 1838 — Gleich, Hoffmann, Poe
- 7 Popular Ghosts: Heinrich Heine on German Geistesgeschichte as Gothic Novel
- 8 The Spirit World of Art and Robert Schumann's Gothic Novel Project: The Impact of Gothic Literature on Schumann's Writings
- 9 About Face: E. T. A. Hoffmann, Weimar Film, and the Technological Afterlife of Gothic Physiognomy
- 10 Of Rats, Wolves, and Men: The Pied Piper as Gothic Revenant and Provenant in Wilhelm Raabe's Die Hämelschen Kinder
- 11 The Lady in White or the Laws of the Ghost in Theodor Fontane's Vor dem Sturm
- 12 On Golems and Ghosts: Prague as a Site of Gothic Modernism
- 13 “Ein Gespenst geht um”: Christa Wolf, Irina Liebmann, and the Post-Wall Gothic
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Der Aberglaube ist nie mit sich selbst einig. Man darf sich also nicht wundern, daß uns außer der Böhmischen Gräfin Perchta von Rosenberg noch andere Frauenzimmer genannt werden, die nach ihrem Tode die Rolle der weißen Frau zu spielen übernommen.
[Superstition is never in agreement with itself. For that reason we should not be surprised that, apart from the Bohemian Countess Perchta von Rosenberg, one hears of other ladies who assumed the role of the Lady in White after her death.]
— Friedrich Gedike, “Nachtrag zu der Legende von der weißen Frau”To begin with a caveat, Theodor Fontane is not a gothic novelist. References to the gothic and the uncanny are central to many of his works, however; indeed perhaps the most famous revenant of all, the ghost, appears over and over again. Actually, it is the ghost of a ghost that materializes in Fontane's texts. In terms of a functional analysis of German gothic writing, this re-apparition marks an historical modification of the topos of the ghost. The following essay will trace this functional modification by focusing on the theme of the woman in white in Fontane's first novel. It is interesting to note that her apparition in Vor dem Sturm (Before the Storm, 1878) was not her first appearance in Fontane's oeuvre, nor would it be her last. She never appears on her own, however, for Fontane always portrayed the lady in white as part of a discourse, that is to say, as the subject of stories, images, and folklore.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Popular RevenantsThe German Gothic and its International Reception, 1800–2000, pp. 200 - 221Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012