This interdisciplinary study, situated at the cross-section of music, literature and gender, examines the woman singer and her song as a literary motif in French and German prose fiction from the 1790s to the mid-nineteenth century. The book offers a fresh perspective on canonical singer archetypes as well as considering lesser-known narratives.

Autorentext

Julia Effertz is a comparative literature scholar and an actress who specializes in women in the literature and culture of the nineteenth century from a comparatist perspective. Her work has appeared in the journals Cahiers Staëliens, Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik and French Studies as well as in the collected volumes Staël s Philosophy of the Passions (2013), Musique et littérature: rencontres Sainte-Cécile (2011), Violence in French and Francophone Literature and Film (2008) and Paragraphes: parcours figuratifs et configurations discursives du roman africain (2006).

Inhalt

Contents: Into the Sublime Unknown: Writing Female Song in the 1800s - Archetype or Cliché? Goethe and the Child Singer Mignon in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre - The Plight of the First Woman: Madame de Staël and the Female Performer in Corinne, ou l'Italie - Beyond the Canon: Singing Strategies in the Works of Caroline Auguste Fischer - Between Entgrenzung and Realism: The Romantic Twilight of E.T.A. Hoffmann and George Sand - Realistic Divas: The Singer in the Works of Balzac and Sophie Ulliac-Trémadeure - Finding a Female Narrative: Madame de Thélusson, Madame de Taunay and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore - Hoffmannesque Dénouements: The Nightmare of the Romantic Singer in Hector Berlioz's Euphonia, ou la ville musicale .