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The reading of gender relations in texts that are over four hundred years old is fraught with difficulties. Similarly, the problems that emerge from attempts to categorise sexuality in the early modern context are considerable. In Marlowe’s plays, issues of gender are rarely central in the way that they frequently are in Shakespeare’s work, the comedies in particular. Marlowe’s plays do not contain very challenging roles for women (with the sole exception of Isabella in Edward II). Zenocrate in the Tamburlaine plays has some fine speeches, but she could hardly be described as a detailed character study. Abigail has some nice comic moments in The Jew of Malta, but is essentially lightweight, rarely much more than a foil for her father Barabas (there is some discussion of her death scene in the next chapter; see pp. 176–81). Nevertheless, the female characters in Marlowe’s plays are not totally devoid of interest: the figure of Helen in Faustus is a curious, conflicted persona: a paragon of beauty, but seen as an insidiously destructive force, both in history and, possibly, in terms of her role in Faustus’s damnation. Abigail is apparently a ‘good’ Jew (as opposed to the irredeemably evil Barabas) because she converts to Christianity. Zenocrate is idealized and deified by Tamburlaine; at the same time, she works at crucial moments in the plays to invite the audience to critique her husband’s behaviour. In Edward II, Isabella plays a number of different ‘roles’ (female stereotypes), shifting from passive dependence, to wronged wife, to deceitful adulteress, to vengeful predator.

This chapter examines the role of gender and myth in the Swedish novel Hertha, which is often identified as the “first emancipatory women’s novel.” Combining Bruce Lincoln’s insights into myth with an experimental, self-reflexive writing style (suited to Hertha’s own experimental style), the chapter explores the ways in which the novel combines Christian and Norse religious narratives in order to imagine a radical new form of female identity and a utopian future. While Hertha might ultimately be read as a “failed novel,” the chapter suggest, it can also be seen as a kind of revolutionary myth that helped inspire change.

Between 1820 and 1850, nearly all major Danish authors (e.g. B.S. Ingemann, C. Hauch, H.C. Andersen, Th. Gyllembourg and St. St. Blicher) chose Jewish characters, mainly “noble Jews”, as protagonists for short stories and novels. This “boom” was on the one hand a direct rejection of the overtly anti-Semitic discussions in the literary jodefejden of 1813 and a reaction to the pogrom like attacks on Jews in Denmark in 1819. It can thus be understood as a favorable contribution to the discussions on Jewish emancipation in Denmark. On the other hand, this article demonstrates how the Jewish literary characters serve as the stereotypical “Other” that has to be assimilated and can prove the integrative and harmonizing abilities of the emerging Danish bourgeois society. A contrasting reading of the Danish-Jewish author M.A. Goldschmidt’s debut novel En Jode ( A Jew , 1845/1852) reveals the inner contradictions of these idealizations and the ensuing irreconcilable and ultimately lethal double-binds a Jewish individual who is willing to integrate.

Le but de cette etude est de decouvrir un nouvel aspect du role et de la fonction de Loki dans l'unique texte qui decrit tout un ensemble de mythes de Loki dans leur contexte : Edda de Snorri Sturluson. A cette fin, l'A. propose d'abord un bref expose sur les plus importantes sources ecrites en vieux norvegien ou Loki joue un role, et commente la valeur de source de Edda. Il resume ensuite certaines des positions erudites les plus pertinentes sur Loki en general avant de discuter de facon plus detaillee la figure de Loki dans Edda.