Interiority in German Women’s Writing for the first time systematically gathers and engages with contributions of German woman authors to the discourse on interiority ("Innerlichkeit") from 1750 to 1850. This volume shifts the recent focus on abstract theoretical and medical discourses on inwardness to the origins of interiority in literature and philosophy as written and experienced by women from the Age of Sensibility ("Empfindsamkeit") to the Romantic era. At the same time, it makes a claim for and explores the ramifications of understanding interiority as a feminine discourse. Contributors investigate the works of women authors who searched to find rescue from their cultural and personal entrapment via creative spaces and various modes of interiority in theatrical performances, poetic writings, letters, biographical narratives, prose, and fairy tales. From the case studies and literary analyses in the volume, interiority emerges as a spectrum of approaches to defining, resisting, and transforming the innermost self. 

AMY EMM is Associate Professor and Director of the German Program at The Citadel in Charleston, SC.

BEATE ALLERT is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: Liminality: Getting to the Boundaries
Chapter 1. Amy Emm, Karoline von Günderrode’s Theatrical Interiority
Chapter 2. Liesl Allingham, Interiority, Place, and Female Creativity: Philippine Gatterer Engelhard and Sophie Albrecht
Chapter 3. Francien Markx, Philomela’s Song: The Poetics of Intersubjective Interiority in Selected Works by Caroline Rudolphi and Juliane Reichardt, née Benda

Part II: Entrapment and Escape
Chapter 4. Sara Luly, A Shield and a Grave: The Duality of Gothic Interiority in Caroline de la Motte Fouqué’s “Das Fräulein vom Thurme”
Chapter 5. Christina M. Weiler, Interiority as Impossible Refuge in Sophie Tieck’s Tale “Der Einsiedler und die Nonne” ("The Hermit and the Nun")
Chapter 6. Margaretmary Daley, Interiority and Apotheosis in Three Poetic Idylls

Part III: Private and Shared Communications
Chapter 7. Monika Nenon, Interiority as Goal or Impossibility in Sophie von La Roche’s Rosaliens Briefe an ihre Freundin Marianne von St *** and Friederike Helene Unger’s Julchen Grünthal
Chapter 8. Björn Hambsch, Writing a Life: Caroline Flachsland Herder

Part IV: Interiority and Expression through Materials
Chapter 9. Catriona MacLeod, “O wie herrlich war meine Blütezeit”: The Vocal Paper of Helmina von Chézy 
Chapter 10. Beate Allert, Annette von Droste Hülshoff’s Poem "The Marl-pit”: From Rocks to Wool and Sea Silk

About the Contributors

Index