German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature ed. by Edith Hoshino Altbach, Jeanette Clausen, Dagmar Schultz, and Naomi Stephan (review)

278Rocky Mountain Review plies, the author alludes to all of English literature in the context of his concerns, drawing parallels from other literatures and arts as well. Each subdivision of each chapter calls single poets, movements, or eras to the fore. These are not examined in chronological order, however. Along with Shakespeare, Eliot and Yeats receive the most analysis throughout the book. Albright seldom cites academic scholarship , even in the bibliography, preferring instead to cite the critical as well as the poetical, the minor as well as the major works of the poets. As has been suggested, Albright's study cannot be categorized as strictly conventional , despite the solid research and valid logic that it manifests. It is as if the subject of lyrieality led him to deliberately avoid or modify the more prosaic dimensions of academic writing. For example, one consequence of his playfulness and audacity is humor, as when he explains the origin of the book to be his attempt and failure to answer the question he had used for years to disconcert degree candidates during their orals, "what is a lyric?" (xii-xiii). A rather antic style also allows humor to defuse too great a sobriety. One stylistic trait is the use of farfetched or irreverent figures: "Eliot seems to think of the stuff poetry is made on as a tapeworm or tubal pregnancy" (16) or "FOr Yeats such speculations belong to his project of affiliating himself as intimately as possible with an exterior anima mundi, the warehouse of symbols" (18). Another is his use of divergent levels of diction: "satirical poetry is governed by two somewhat opposing tendencies, which may be called the analogical and the excrementitious. What can I do if I wish to deride someone? I can call him an ape, or I can call him a turd" (135). As readers can tell by analyzing their own responses to the examples given above, the book sometimes succeeds but sometimes merely startles. The reader responds in the same way to the substance of the book. Albright's work with the passages that he cites is detailed and consistent with his thematic purposes. Developing those purposes can twist one's view of a cited passage either to a moment of genuine revelation or to frustration. The treatment of Prufrock (225-26), for example, involves a necessary but not completely satisfying simplification of the motives for that figure's behavior in the poem. On the whole, however, the revelatory moments are more frequent. At the end, the paradoxes must be resolved. The book, weighty and yet light, objective and yet expressive, serious and yet amusing, specifically focused and yet widely ranging, should be read, not not read. DALE K. BOYER Boise State University EDITH HOSHINO ALTBACH, JEANETTE CLAUSEN, DAGMAR SCHULTZ, and NAOMI STEPHAN, eds. German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. 389 p. Die Herausgeber legen mit dieser Teamarbeit eine Anthologie von fast sechzig Texten im weitesten Radius neuer deutschsprachiger Frauenprosa und kommerzieller , linker, und feministischer Veröffentlichungen vor. Das hochgesteckte, oftmals erreichten Ziel der Anthologie ist es, Literatur und Politik zu amalgamieren. Die ständige Interpolierung von keineswegs gleichwertigen realistischen und phantastichen Einzelgeschichten und Romanauszügen, Dokumentationen und verstreuten Artikeln muß jedoch Leser, auf Grund eben dieser nicht immer Book Reviews279 überzeugenden Zusammengewürfeltheit, frustrieren. "So fühlt man Absicht, und man ist verstimmt," wird ein männlicher Leser mit Tasso (II, 1) sagen. Dies liegt, nota bene, am Thema und kann durch die heutige feministische Perspektive noch nicht überwunden werden. Die kluge und wohl fundierte Einleitung von Altbach gibt eine Übersicht über die historische Entwicklung der neuen Frauenbewegung in den deutschsprachigen Ländern. Daraus geht hervor, wie unabhängig von der viel prominenteren Entwicklung in den USA und wie viel jünger diese Bemüngen sind, da besonders nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg Frauen in Europa zuerst mit Überleben und Wiederaufbau beschäftigt waren. Noch immer gibt es keine nationale Organisation die NOW entspricht, obwohl gerade deutsche Feministinnen wie Louise Otto Peters oder Hedwig Dohm bereits Mitte des vorigen Jahrhunderts in den Frauenvereinen größeren Einfluß ausübten als ihre damals noch Suffragetten genannten Schwestern hierzulande. Die Themenkreise...