Irmtraud Morgner's Postmodern Feminism: A Question of Politics

Taking the contradictory reception of Irmtraud Morgner's novel Life and Adventures of Troubadoura Beatriz, As Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura as a starting point, this essay examines Morgner's novel in the context of feminist debates on the political nature of postmodernist texts. Unlike other feminists in the early seventies, Morgner uses postmodernist strategies in order to promote feminist goals. Morgner discusses questions of representation and the status of the subject, topics that have become key issues in postmodernist texts. In reading Morgner's novel from today's perspective, we can gain important insights into the current debate about the differences between, and the intersections of, postmodernist and feminist theories. (SvdE)