Harmony in Discord: German Women Writers in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

This volume assembles the selected proceedings of a conference held at the University of Glasgow in May 1999 on women writers from L.A.V. Gottsched to Annette von Droste-Huelshoff. These women wrote at a period when writing by women first began to be a strong force in the German-speaking public sphere. As Women’s Studies enters the twenty-first century, these writers can be approached from a variety of angles, which reveal the complexity of their participation in the public discourse from which they are also partially excluded by reason of their gender. As the women writers investigated here largely eschewed outright rebellion against the norms of femininity, their voices might be said to be in harmony - different but not contrary - but moments of discordance can be made out as well. It has been the (explicit or implicit) task of the contributors to this volume to pick out this other voice in contexts where it has not been heard, whether because it has been drowned out by louder voices or because its difference has not before seemed worthy of note.