Date of Award

Spring 5-10-2024

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Germanic Languages and Literatures

Degree Name

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

This Master's thesis undertakes a close reading of Heinrich von Kleist's Die Herrmannsschlacht, focusing explicitly on the female characters and placing the character Hally, who does not even appear in the dramatis personae, at the center of its considerations. It also takes a look at Thusnelda, who is the princess of the Cherusker and central to the plot and the outcome of the play, examining her in relationship to Hally. Relying on textual evidence, it carries out a character analysis that focuses on the female charac ters while considering them in the context of the play as a whole. This contextualization also means that their relationship to male characters such as Arminius or Ventidius becomes an im portant aspect of the analysis. The play is furthermore parsed by means of various topoi as out lined in the title—hunting, dying, killing—that inform the presentation of the female characters. In doing so, it musters theories of gender to focus on the motif of visibility and invisibility and its meanings. On the stage Hally is never shown as a human because her body is covered by a cloth after she was raped. Thusnelda is presented in the opposite way. She is always present and exposed to the male gaze. I argue that the female figures are designed to contrast with one another but are also connected to each other. While Hally as character and woman is becoming vis ible over the course of the play, Thusnelda as princess is disappearing so that her femininity is veiled. Both women are going through a metamorphosis and therefore a development. At the end of the play, they are superior to the male figures in their own special way. In particular, this closer look at Hally brings new insights into the play as she has rarely been the focus of research on Die Herrmannsschlacht. The aim of the work is, finally, to illustrate and analyze the importance of the female characters and their influence on the plot of a play that has been seen to glorify the Germanic hero, Herrmann, but that, as I show in this Master's thesis, does quite the opposite.

Language

German (de)

Chair and Committee

Prof. Lynne Tatlock

Committee Members

Dr. Caroline Kita, Dr. Matthew Erlin

Download

Share

COinS