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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.

Historians of religion and adherents of new religious movements in the twentieth century have frequently had intersecting agendas. This article discusses the interactions between scholarship on Germanic myth and culture and the protagonists and belief systems of Germanic neo-Pagan movements (Asatru). It covers the era from the inception of Germanic neo-Paganism in the nationalist, anti-Semitic völkisch movement in Germany in the early 20th century until today. The article traces the appeal of reconstructionist approaches within the study of Germanic myth and culture, and the desire to access a primordial pre-Christian culture back to European National Romanticism. It uncovers the latent anti-Jewish sentiments that often pervade parts of both Germanic neo-Paganism and Germanic and Indo-European studies. At the same time, it accounts for the significant changes in these ideologically tainted patterns of thought within the last two decades, highlighting Germanic neo-Paganism’s development toward respectability and mainstream thought with the help of references to recent scholarship.

Norse Revival examines international Germanic Neopaganism (Asatru). It investigates its origins in German ultra-nationalist movements around 1900, its attempt to gain respectability since the 1970s and its intersections with historical and current debates on race, religion, gender, and aesthetics.

Norse Revival examines international Germanic Neopaganism (Asatru). It investigates its origins in German ultra-nationalist movements around 1900, its attempt to gain respectability since the 1970s and its intersections with historical and current debates on race, religion, gender, and aesthetics.

Norse Revival examines international Germanic Neopaganism (Asatru). It investigates its origins in German ultra-nationalist movements around 1900, its attempt to gain respectability since the 1970s and its intersections with historical and current debates on race, religion, gender, and aesthetics.

Norse Revival examines international Germanic Neopaganism (Asatru). It investigates its origins in German ultra-nationalist movements around 1900, its attempt to gain respectability since the 1970s and its intersections with historical and current debates on race, religion, gender, and aesthetics.

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.

Up until now, Scandinavianist criticism has barely touched the question of a specific literary function of anti-Semitic stereotypes. This paper starts with a discussion of an older but persistent critical controversy about anti-Semitic tendencies in Knut Hamsun’s work. It then focuses on two novels, Siste kapitel (1923) by Knut Hamsun and Lykke Per (1898–1904) by Henrik Pontoppidan. Both depict “the Jew” as the incarnation of capitalist modernity, however arrive at quite different conclusions. This article defends the thesis that Siste kapitel uses a well calculated play by constructing the character Fru Ruben as possibly but indeterminably Jewish. It thus has the potential to activate anti-Semitic pre-dispositions in the reader. Lykke Per on the other hand, depicts stereotypical Jews in a clearly anti-Semitic manner. However, it can be shown that these depictions are used to unveil both the narrator’s, his contemporary society’s and thus potentially also the reader’s own prejudice.

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.

Freud, race, and gender - mit seinen drei pragnanten Schlagworten signalisiert der englische Titel des hier als „Schlusselwerk der Geschlechterforschung“ zu pra- sentierenden Buches das Anliegen des Autors: einen Beitrag zu den intrikaten Zu- sammenhangen zwischen den Kategorien race und gender zu liefern. Die deutsche Ubersetzung des Titels, die das englische race nicht mit dem im Deutschen kaum mehr verwendbaren „Rasse“1 wiedergibt, sondern durch „Identitat“ ersetzt, ver- weist daruber hinausgehend darauf, dass es in Gilmans Buch nicht allein um die Kategorien race und gender geht, sondern auch um deren Zusammenspiel mit an- deren Identitat konstituierenden Kategorien wie Sexualitat, Korper, Krankheit und nicht zuletzt der Wissenschaft.

»Es geht darum, das der Mann uberhaupt zu Wort kommt«1 — so kommentierte der norwegische Autor Knut Faldbakken in einem Interview seinen Roman Der Schneeprinz (1982, dt. 1986). In diesem Werk und in anderen Romanen (Adams Tagebuch, 1978, dt. 1988, Pan in Oslo, 1986, dt. 1987 und Bad Boy, 1988, dt. 1989) griff er Themen auf, die zuvor durch eine im Zusammenhang mit der neuen Frauenbewegung entstandene Frauenliteratur zu ernstzunehmenden literarischen Sujets avanciert waren. Neu an dieser in Skandinavien sogenannten ›neuen Mannerliteratur‹ waren weniger die Sujets — Scheidung, Beziehungs- ¬und Eheprobleme, das Verhaltnis zwischen Eltern und Kindern —, sondern der Umstand, das hier Manner geschildert wurden, die sich selbst als durch ihr Geschlecht gepragte Menschen wahrnahmen und uber ihre Geschlechtsidentitat reflektierten. Und ebenso wie die skandinavische Frauenliteratur erreichten Faldbakken und andere Vertreter der skandinavischen ›neuen Mannerliteratur‹ internationale Geltung. Faldbakkens Romane sind mittlerweile in zahlreichen europaischen Landern und in den USA erschienen, der deutschen Literaturkritik galt er in den 80er Jahren als der norwegische Autor der Gegenwart.2 Die franzosische Soziologin Elisabeth Badinter wertet Bad Boy in einem popularwissenschaftlichen Standardwerk zur Mannerfrage gar als den eindrucksvollen Prototyp eines Romans uber einen von einer ubermachtigen Mutterfigur »kastrierten«, nicht erwachsen gewordenen Mann.3