Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture: Literary Joint Ventures, 1750–1850 ed. by Laura Deiulio, John B. Lyon

Abstract

MLR, .,   creative aspects of Italian director Cottafavi’s intriguing apolitical approach to Lope’s Las famosas asturianas in I cento cavalleri (), which chose to read the Reconquest as an anti-historical tragicomic ‘fable’, are relinquished in order to concentrate on frictions with the Spanish censors arising from Franco’s contemporaneous attempts to open diplomatic links with Arab regimes. Likewise, the treatment of Miró’s irredeemably ‘light’ reading of El perro del hortelano, which excises all trace of Lope’s cynical satire of social mores—an approach Carmona conjectures was copied from Frid’s musical Sobaka na sene for Soviet TV (), ‘designed to transport its audience from an asphyxiating political reality (p. )— skirts the question of how far repackaging Lope as a writer of slushy Mills & Boon romance truly serves the cause of culture, history, or Golden Age drama. In this respect one may regret that the author chose not discuss what is by far the best screen rewriting of a Golden Age drama so far, Iborra’s La dama boba (), electing instead to devote her last chapter to superficial recent TV biopics of Lope. Nonetheless, the book fully realizes its aim: clear, concise, its muster of new facts both provoking and illuminating. It makes a worthy addition to Peter Lang’s new series, and le this reader eagerly looking forward to more. U  O J L Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture: Literary Joint Ventures, –. Ed. by L D and J B. L. (New Directions in German Studies, ) New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic. . xiv+ pp. £ (ebk .). ISBN –––– (ebk ––– –). is volume considers twelve representative examples of same-sex or male–female partnerships ranging from spouses, lovers, and friends to teachers and students, charlatans and victims. Starting with the Francophile Gottscheds, a husband-andwife team whose translations, plays, and critical essays were the enduring offspring of the childless couple, the case studies extend as far as Bettina von Arnim’s Die Günderode, Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan, and beyond. Most chapters are of a respectable length, averaging around – pages apiece, accompanied by extensive bibliographies. Earlier scholarship tended to investigate direct influence, such as that of Herder on Goethe, while shying away from partnerships of equals, not least because the cult of the towering genius was fundamental to understandings of German culture in the wake of the Sturm und Drang. Despite male adulation of schöne Seelen and hyperbolic compliments (‘daß Sie [. . .] alle Dichter und Dichterinnen der ganzen Welt übertreffen’—Wieland to Sophie von La Roche, cited on page ), most women of the period were only too willing to submit their writings to masculine oversight. ere was little interest in the contributions made by wives and partners to their companions’ work, and it would have been thought downright heretical to salute them as equals. For Schopenhauer, woman was intellectually somewhere  Reviews halfway between the child and the adult man. e editors of this volume demonstrate that intergender collaboration was more frequent and more significant than is generally assumed, in line with what has been common knowledge since Roland Barthes unmasked the image of the solitary, godlike creator as a social construct. Not all collaborations were successful or equally productive. e Schumanns’ diaries, here examined by Brian Tucker, began with a commitment to equality of input, but eventually their gaps and imbalances came to reflect an uneven distribution of power within the family. Elisa von der Recke’s entanglement with the notorious impostor ‘Count’ Cagliostro turned sour and led to a publication that was read by Goethe, Schiller, and Empress Catherine the Great, effectively ruining his phenomenal success as a Spiritualist. A positive note is struck by Adrian Daub in his assessment of Friedrich and Dorothea Schlegel’s joint projects. In contrast to the conventional view that Dorothea faded into obscurity aer the publication of her novel Florentin, Daub shows that their relationship remained fruitful until and indeed beyond Friedrich’s death, when Dorothea ensured that her husband’s legacy would be preserved. Among the less obvious relationships is the ‘virtual collaboration’ (p. ) between erese Robinson (née von Jakob) and Goethe, here based not, as one might expect, on Robinson’s Volkslieder der...