Shedding, Witchcraft, and the Romantic Subject: Feminist Appropriation of the Witch in Sarah Kirsch’s Zaubersprüche (1973)
Against a background of the feminist appropriation of the witch taking place concurrently in second-wave American, French and West German feminism, the paper examines Sarah Kirsch’s appropriation of the witch as a subversive figure in her poetry cycle Zaubersprüche ( Conjurations , 1973). In subvert...
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| Published in: | Neophilologus 2009-10, Vol.93 (4), p.675-689 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Against a background of the feminist appropriation of the witch taking place concurrently in second-wave American, French and West German feminism, the paper examines Sarah Kirsch’s appropriation of the witch as a subversive figure in her poetry cycle
Zaubersprüche
(
Conjurations
, 1973). In subverting the traditional image of the witch, Kirsch establishes a new one: that of a feminist witch and a feminist witch-writer. The witch is both the fictive character created by Kirsch, and her own self-designation; in the latter case, writing, especially writing in the experimental fashion, is a form of witchcraft. The paper analyzes the poems using the theoretical concept of magical realism. Although magical realism is mostly associated with post-colonial studies, it proves to be an apposite mode for feminist studies as well. The magical realist modality contradicts the state-sanctioned aesthetic of socialist realism, a fact that makes Kirsch one of the subversive “GDR-Witches.” |
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| ISSN: | 0028-2677 1572-8668 1572-8668 |