Scattered Thoughts on Current Feminist Literary Critical Work in Nineteenth-Century German Studies

This examination of the current status of feminist scholarly work on nineteenth-century German literature highlights both positive and more problematic developments. It acknowledges the work that is now being done on individual German women writers and the newer scholarship that emphasizes feminist theoretical approaches to a variety of analytical categories. It welcomes the newly emerging evidence of a growing alignment between German Studies and feminist inquiry but also pinpoints such concerns as American indifference to German topics, the continuing ambiguities in the circumscribing of feminist inquiry, the history/theory dichotomy, and the inevitable envious comparisons that must be drawn when feminist Germanists consider nineteenth-century writings by non-German women.