Military Men of Feeling? Gender Boundaries and Military–Civil Encounters in Two German Soldier Plays (1760‐80)

Abstract

AbstractThe eighteenth‐century culture of sentimentality, especially in its literary form, is often associated with questions of gender and sexuality. This article investigates the effects of literary sentimentalism on the reformulation of acceptable modes of masculinity, which tends to be neglected in scholarly literature about the period. To do so, it analyses two popular eighteenth‐century German soldier plays against the background of a clash between two gendered emotional communities. These plays enabled audiences to reflect on the ways in which changing conceptions of gendered identity inform military–civil encounters and the affective bonds between soldiers and citizens.