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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture: Literary Joint Ventures 1750–1850 ed. by Laura Deiulio and John B. Lyon Karin Baumgartner Laura Deiulio and John B. Lyon, eds. Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture: Literary Joint Ventures 1750–1850. New Directions in German Studies, vol. 27. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 332 pp. This collection offers "collaboration" as a lens through which to scrutinize literary production in the long eighteenth century, in opposition to continued [End Page 379] scholarly insistence on single authorship, in particular by the concept of authorship as literature by "a single (male) genius." The editors remind their readers that the model of single authorship is undergirded by capitalist conditions that created both copyright and literary ownership. The editors and the twelve articles "demonstrate that cooperative work is quite common in literary and artistic production" and the "modes of collaboration are as varied as the artist who practice them." Indeed, several of the articles themselves are collaborations between academic authors. Yet, sadly, the volume is theoretically underdeveloped as the editors acknowledge: no single theoretical approach to the concept of collaboration emerges. Accordingly, collaboration is defined broadly; for example, as joint creation within the confines of a marriage with varying degrees of power differentials between husband and wife. Other collaborations might more aptly be called mentorship or intertextuality or even the "sharing of ideas." Some authors define collaboration as two authors working together; others view plurivocality in texts as collaboration. The messy theoretical underpinnings of collaboration are addressed explicitly only in the opening article. As the concept of the single author-genius was just developing in the eighteenth century, Margaretmary Daly argues that the coauthored texts of Johann Christoph and Luise Adelgunde Victoria Gottsched elude the theoretical models that describe single authorship. This model cannot account for the lived creativity shared by the husband and wife team nor can it account for the editing, rewording, and translating that happens between the first draft and publication. Daly appropriately suggests that the work of literature should be viewed as a function (just like the author function) and not an attributable product. Many of the authors grapple with the issue that voice in collaborative texts is problematic. Does collaboration lend itself to a unified voice or does the ensuing product retain its polyphonic structure? In her analysis of Bettina Brentano-von Arnim's work Die Günderode, Karen R. Daubert traces the most innovative model of collaboration presented in this volume. Die Günderode collapses historical authors and fictional characters in a plurivocal work that challenges normative views of authorship, documentary history, and literary transmission. Brian Tucker applies the same concept to the collaborative diary written by Clara and Robert Schumann. While Daly shows that it is impossible to tease apart the voices of the two Gottscheds, Tucker writes that the Schumanns retained their individual voices creating a dialogue rather than one unified voice. The article by Rob McFarland and Michelle Stott James presents a third model of plurivocality, which describes how the author Elise von der Recke created a virtual collaboration with her younger self in her book about Count Cagliostro. Monika Nenon poses the question of how women developed their voices in the eighteenth century. While many women nurtured male authors, she claims that some of these relationships were mutual, as in the case of Sophie von La Roche and Christoph Wieland. Collaboration in this instance led to the publication of La Roche's famous novel. With her network analysis, Nenon shows that women could be powerful members of literary circles. Salons and sociability also emerge as important loci of collaboration in Tom Spencer and Jennifer Jenson's article about Sophie Mereau. Mereau viewed collaboration—defined as sociability—as necessary for the socialization process of her female characters. Several of the essays are engaged in dissecting the works of male authors to find the contributions of women. Adrian Daub and Eleanor ter Horst attempt to [End Page 380] recover the theoretical contributions of the lesser-known partner in a literary marriage. They both argue that the husbands' works were influenced by theoretical ideas developed by their wives. Daub recuperates Dorothea's contribution to Friedrich Schlegel...