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Dialogic Midwifery in Kleist's Marquise von O and the Hermeneutics of Telling the Untold in Kant and Plato
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2020
Abstract
We often speak of a text “pregnant” with meaning. But how does it give birth? Certainly not through the intervention of monologic doctoring but, rather, with the aid of “dialogic midwifery.” In Kleist's Marquise von O, the tale of an unexplained conception and pregnancy, the art of ironic dialogism, though never directly giving expression to the peculiar state of affairs, helps give birth to interpretation and to the genre of the realistic novella. The circuitous narrative technique of telling and untelling, which supplements consciousness as a midwife assists a woman in childbirth, links Kleist's text to a hermeneutic tradition stretching from Plato through Kant (and well beyond).
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985
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