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    The Tableau Effect in German Narrative Prose around 1800

    Cover for The Tableau Effect in German Narrative Prose around 1800
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    Creator
    Finch, John Forrest
    Advisor
    Dupree, Mary Helen
    Abstract
    This dissertation theorizes the concept of the tableau effect in order to investigate the performativity of gendered notions of selfhood in novels as well as short stories, ranging from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809), Heinrich von Kleist’s Der Findling (1811), Joseph von Eichendorff’s Das Marmorbild (1819), and Sophie Mereau- Brentano’s Die Flucht nach der Hauptstadt (1806). The first chapter analyzes the literary representation of performances of tableaux vivants by the female figures Luciane and Ottilie in Goethe’s novel, as it argues that these performances induce divergent notions of feminine selfhood, namely ones that either fall into tendencies of askesis or asceticism. More precisely, the female figures are analyzed in terms of self-indulgence and self- expansion or self-denial and self-sacrifice. This twofold model is condensed into the representation of one female figure, Elvire, in the second chapter, insofar as this woman oscillates between techniques of selfhood that either result in her maintenance of her own internal world of desires or the total renunciation of all desire, particularly when she becomes ensnared as an observer in the performance of a tableau vivant by her stepson, Nicolo. The third chapter extends the critical apparatus of the tableau effect to examine the gendered subject formation of a heterosexual male protagonist in Eichendorff’s novella in terms of his standardization as a subject that conforms to more conservative gender paradigms. This chapter considers moments in which the protagonist encounters tableaux vivants, particularly of women, as formative in his construction as a heterosexual subject. The fourth chapter examines Mereau-Brentano’s novella through the lens of the tableau effect, too; however, through the course of this novella, I argue that the female protagonist empowers herself through the dynamics of self-performance that the tableau effect inculcates as a gendered subject. Ultimately, this dissertation provides insights into the linking of gender performativity, visual media, and subjectivity around 1800, thus creating a new space for analyzing the resonances between contemporary notions of self-performance and self-marketing in social media and earlier modes of self-performance in literary representations of mimoplastics.
    Description
    Ph.D.
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1062652
    Date Published
    2021
    Subject
    Male Gaze; Panopticism; Tableau Vivant; Germanic literature; Literature; Art -- History; German literature; Literature; Art history;
    Type
    thesis
    Publisher
    Georgetown University
    Extent
    307 leaves
    Collections
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - German
    Metadata
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    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2022 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu
    Accessibility