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Dissertation Information for Catherine Marshall

NAME:
- Catherine Marshall

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Germanic Languages and Literatures

SCHOOL:
- University of Cincinnati (USA) (1995)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Men and women, goddesses and mortals: A thematic study of Ilse Langner's mythological dramas

Abstract: "Ilse Langner (1899-1987) completed a wide variety of fictional works throughout her very prolific, but largely unpublicized literary career. In addition to her prose and poetry, she also demonstrated her skills as a dramatist, for which she is certainly best known. While her dramatic themes are incredibly diverse, it is the six published mythological dramas that are of interest here. These works, dating from 1932 to 1977, span Langner's career and offer compelling examples not only of twentieth-century adaptations of classical Greek myth, but also of Langner's own attitudes towards gender relations and her vision of a harmonious, peaceful society, based on the synthesis of the mother and father worlds.

The drama titles--Amazonen, Dido, Klytamnestra, Iphigenie und Orest, Iphigenie kehrt heim, and Iphigenie Smith kehrt heim--all conjure up images long an integral part of western civilization. Langner's goal is to reconsider these myths by bringing the women, often neglected if not condemned in the past, to the fore. By doing so, she is calling war and heroics, as well as the entire patriarchal structure of western society into question. The earlier dramas deal with different forms of matriarchies and their viability as alternatives to Greek, and in extension modern, patriarchy. The Iphigenia dramas depart from this focus to ask if a humane society is at all feasible, or if humans, like the house of Atreus, is damned.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to introduce these dramas, none of which has as yet received significant scholarly attention, and to place them into the larger context of Langner's own feminist thought. Understanding the constructs of matriarchy and patriarchy is central to this endeavor. To this end, J. J. Bachofen's theories on the development of society are important. Langner by no means accepts his assessment of patriarchy as the highest form of society; she does, however, use the symbols he put forth in Das Mutterrecht in her consideration of a truly humane form of society."

MPACT Scores for Catherine Marshall

A = 0
C = 2
A+C = 2
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2012-08-15 18:54:41

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