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Intertextuality as PowerRosa Mayreder's Response to Goethe's Faust and the Cult of Male Genius
- Journal of Austrian Studies
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 51, Number 2, Summer 2018
- pp. 73-87
- 10.1353/oas.2018.0022
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
This article positions Rosa Mayreder's Faustian tale Anda Renata, ein Mysterium in zwei Teilen und zwölf Bildern within a canon of female Faust narratives and explores what it means for a nineteenth- century female writer to "write back" to one of Germany's most revered and widely read authors, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I argue that Mayreder employs intertextuality as a strategic tool of resistance while writing and operating within a male- dominated literary landscape that relegates women's writings to the periphery. Using Stephanie Hilger and Audre Lorde to frame my theoretical arguments, I explore how Mayreder "writes back" to the male- dominated canon and how her work fits into feminist narratives from the early nineteenThcentury through today.