Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:16:17.644Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Monstrous Women, Sublime Pleasure, and the Perils of Reception in Lessing's Aesthetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Karen J. Kenkel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Enlightenment intellectuals viewed the moral cultivation of the individual through aesthetic pleasure to be a crucial means for regulating social relations in bourgeois civil society. G. E. Lessing's drama criticism and plays reveal how important reshaping women's social identity was to the definition of morally productive aesthetic pleasure in the Enlightenment. Drawing on contemporary feminist theory, this essay explores how and why the tension between aesthetic pleasure and morality that runs through Lessing's work centers on developing bourgeois norms of femininity and on their violation in French classical and epic dramas. The essay reveals how the gender-specific moral demands placed on cultural pleasure in Lessing's drama criticism helped lay the foundation for a cultural crisis in the late eighteenth century, as well as for a divided public sphere. Lessing's plays, however, offer a more complex vision of the audience's interests and needs and a more open vision of women's possible social roles.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 116 , Issue 3 , May 2001 , pp. 545 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2001

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.)

References

Works Cited

Bobo, Jacqueline. “The Calor Purple: Black Women as Cultural Readers.” Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television. Ed. Pribram, E. Deidre. London: Verso. 1988. 90–109.Google Scholar
Bovenschen, Silvia. Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979.Google Scholar
Brown, Christiane. “‘Der widerwärtige Mißbrauch der Macht’ or ‘Die Verwandlung der Leidenschaften in tugendhafte Fertigkeiten’ in Lessing's Emilia Galotti.” Lessing Yearbook XVII. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1985. 21–43.Google Scholar
Bürger, Christa, Bürger, Peter, and Schulte-Sasse, Jochen, eds. Aufklärung und literarische Öffentlichkeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980.Google Scholar
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. Phillips, Adam. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Gode von Aesch, Anna Johanna, trans. Emilia Galotti. Nathan the Wise, Minna von Barnhelm, and Other Plays and Writings. By G. E. Lessing. Ed. Demetz, Peter. New York: Continuum, 1991, 75–135.Google Scholar
Gustafson, Susan E. Absent Mothers and Orphaned Fathers: Narcissism and Abjection in Lessing's Aesthetic and Dramatic Production. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Hart, Gail K. Tragedy in Paradise: Family and Gender Politics in German Bourgeois Tragedy, 1750-1850. Columbia: Camden, 1996.Google Scholar
Hull, Isabel V. Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700-1815. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Kronauer, Ulrich. “Der kühne Weltweise. Lessing als Leser Rousseaus.” Rousseau in Deutschland. Neue Beiträge zur Erforschung seiner Rezeption. Ed. Jaumann, Herbert. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995. 23–45.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E. “An Elise Reimarus.” 7 May 1780. Letter 1557 in Werke und Briefe. Ed. Kiesel, Helmuth. Vol. 12. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker, 1994. 325–27.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E. Emilia Galotti. Werke. Ed. Wölfel, Kurt. Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Insel, 1982. 399–466.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E. Hamburg Dramaturgy. Trans. Helen Zimmern. New York: Dover, 1962.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E. Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Werke. Ed. Wölfel, Kurt. Vol. 2.1. Frankfurt: Insel, 1982. 121–533.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E. Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Trans. Edward Allen McCormick. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. 1984.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E. “Lessing an Mendelssohn.” 28 Nov. 1756. Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai 62–67.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E. “Lessing an Nicolai.” Nov. 1756. Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai 52–57.Google Scholar
Lessing, G. E., Mendelssohn, Moses, and Nicolai, Friedrich. Briefwechsel über das Trauerspiel. Ed. Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. Munich: Winkler, 1972.Google Scholar
Nisbet, H. B. “Lessing and Misogyny: Die Matrone von Ephesus.” Texte. Motive und Gestalten der Goethezeit. Ed. Hibberd, John L. and Nisbet, . Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989.Google Scholar
Roetzel, Lisa C. “Aesthetic Experience as Imaginary Experience: Masculinity and the Regulation of Sentiments in Emilia Galotti.” Lessing Yearbook XXVIII. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. 83–104.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile: or, On Education. Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic. 1979.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques The First and Second Discourses. Ed. Masters, Roger D. Trans. Masters and Masters, Judith R. New York: St. Martin's, 1964.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theatre. Politics and the Arts. Trans. Allan Bloom. Glencoe: Free, 1960.Google Scholar
Sauder, Gerhard. Empfindsamkeit. Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiller, Friedrich. “Über Bürgers Gedichte.” Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 5. Munich: Hanser, 1993. 970–85.Google Scholar
Schreiber, S. Etta. The German Woman in the Age of Enlightenment. New York: King's Crown, 1948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. “Das Konzept bürgerlich-literarischer Öffentlichkeit und die historischen Gründe seines Zerfalls.” Bürger. Bürger, and Schulte-Sasse 83–115.Google Scholar
Stephan, Inge. “Frauenbild und Tugendbegriff im bürgerlichen Trauerspiel bei Lessing und Schiller.” Lessing Yearbook XVII. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1985. 1–20.Google Scholar
Straayer, Chris. “The Hypothetical Lesbian Heroine in Narrative Feature Film.” Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism. Ed. Carson, Diane, Dittmar, Linda, and Welsch, Janice R. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. 343–57.Google Scholar
Sturges, Beate. Lessing als Wegbereiter der Emanzipation der Frau. New York: Lang, 1989.Google Scholar
von Mücke, Dorothea E. Virtue and the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the Pedagogical Project in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Wurst, Karin A. “Abwesenheit-Schweigen-Tötung: Die Möglichkeiten der Frau? Lessings Funktionalisierung literarischer Klischees.” Orbis Litterarum 45.2 (1990): 113–27.Google Scholar
Wurst, Karin A. Familiale Liebe ist die “Wahre Gewalt”: Die Repräsentation der Familie in G. E. Lessings dramatischem Werk. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.Google Scholar