| This dissertation is a study of images of the actress in German literature and culture, and their representation in literary works by women involved with theater, from the Sturm and Drang period to the early nineteenth century. It argues that a new image of the actress as Gefuhlsschauspielerin, or actress of emotion, emerged in Germany in the mid-1770s in response to the death of the Hamburg actress Charlotte Ackermann (1757-1775). This new image was profoundly influenced by the genre of bourgeois tragedy, by eighteenth-century discourses of femininity, and by a gendered theatrical aesthetic that associated women actors with a more "natural," identificatory acting style. The performances of Gefuhlsschauspielerinnen were interpreted as direct revelations of the actress's inner life; conversely, such actresses were often described as doubles of the virtuous heroines they performed on stage. The image of the Gefuhlsschauspielerin was particularly crucial to the literary self-stylization of actress-writers such as Marianne Ehrmann, Sophie Albrecht and Elise Burger.; In the first chapter, I analyze a number of late-eighteenth-century texts and performances that memorialize Charlotte Ackermann; I argue that these texts and performances produce an image of the actress as a Gefuhlsschauspielerin , a model of virtue, and a reader and author of texts. In the second chapter, I introduce the discussion of actress-writers through an analysis of Marianne Ehrmann's novel Amalie. Eine wahre Geschichte in Briefen. Ehrmann's novel mobilizes the discourse of the Gefuhlsschauspielerin polemically in order to make arguments about the role of theater in women's education. The third chapter investigates the reception and self-stylization of the poet and actress Sophie Albrecht; in her lyric poems, Albrecht develops a lyric 'I' that dovetails with her image as a melancholy Gefuhlsschauspielerin . The fourth and final chapter examines the impact of early-nineteenth-century women's salon performances on the image of the actress, concluding with a reading of Elise Burger's literary works that thematize "attitudes" and tableaux vivants. Through these analyses, my dissertation investigates the link between women's writing and theatrical performance, while arguing for the significance of 'actress-writers' in German literary and cultural history. |
