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- Title
Multi-Layered Conflicts with the Norm: Gender and Cultural Diversity in Two Comedies of the German Enlightenment.
- Authors
Pailer, Gaby
- Abstract
This essay explores two comedies of early German Enlightenment that deal with encounters of two religious or national cultures. Luise Gottsched's Die Hausfranzösinn (The French Housekeeper) unfolds a struggle between French and German culture; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Die Juden (The Jews) presents a strange encounter between Judaism and Christianity. Based on theoretical crossings in theories of the comic and comedy, gender theories and colonial discourse analysis, which all address the potentials of subverting socio-cultural norms, the investigation concludes that both comedies suggest a new concept of cultural diversity and a more palimpsestual vision in their subversion of heterosexual and monolithic cultural norms. They differ, however, in terms of gender in that Gottsched's subversive power is a comical one, whereas Lessing's play ends with a rather serious plea for tolerance.
- Subjects
THEORY of knowledge; HOUSEKEEPERS; COMEDY; CHRISTIANITY; JUDAISM
- Publication
Cross / Cultures: Readings in the Post / Colonial Literatures in English, 2018, Vol 203, p141
- ISSN
0924-1426
- Publication type
Article