Besprechungen / Reviews 275 1920s would not have been possible without the insight, gained during his writing of Felix Krull, that art depends on its audience’s assent. Such assent figures in chapter 3, too. This chapter shows how formal elements of Felix Krull «reinforce its exploration of art’s contribution to both individual identity and community» (131). It is both a Bildungsroman and a Gesellschaftsroman, for example, and its narrator addresses its reader in increasingly intimate terms - though it may be going too far to speak of Krull’s «seduction of the reader» (162). In short, «the narrative mode functions as a correlative of the theme, and as a reflection of it and upon it» (168). Put a different way, the main idea of this chapter is that «in Felix Krull, form mirrors content» (152). The conclusion underscores the importance of the scene in which Felix Krull sees the actor Müller-Rosé backstage, out of costume and out of character. That scene shows art working «not as an imposed illusion, but as a mutually agreed, deliberate pretence,» not as a deception, that is, but as «an imaginative exchange which relies upon an inter-subjective arrangement» (185). Thus implying its reader’s freedom, Mann’s novel harks back to Schiller’s aesthetics. With its emphasis on art, it can also be linked to the «great tradition of German philosophical aesthetics» (186). It lightens or relaxes that tradition; indeed, «its profundity resides in its lightness» (187). In the course of these several chapters, Schonfield draws on various theories and concepts, most notably on Judith Butler’s «performative theory of identity» (44), Walter Benjamin’s description of fascism as «eine Ästhetisierung des politischen Lebens» (121), Susan Sontag’s definition of camp (148), and Roland Barthes’s effet du réel (163). He does so judiciously, noting both the usefulness and the limits of each as it pertains to Mann’s specific case. He is similarly cautious about reading Felix Krull as an example of extreme postmodern notions of the self. Although he often calls the novel ludic, his approach to it is thus admirably eclectic. His study is not perfect, of course. His diction is not always as precise as it could be, his assertions sometimes abut each other rather abruptly, and his quotations are not always sufficiently introduced and interpreted. There are some unnecessary repetitions, moreover, and both art and aesthetics sometimes seem described too broadly. There are also far too many instances of phrases such as «In this section I will argue that […]» or as «What I intend to do here is […].» These phrases may be meant to help readers follow the argument, but when repeated so often they just get in its way. In sum, and despite some minor faults, this book merits its inclusion in both the MHRA and the Bithell dissertation series. Dartmouth College Ellis Shookman K ARIN B AUMGARTNER : Public Voices. Political Discourse in the Writings of Caroline de la Motte Fouqué. North American Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature 44. Bern & New York: Peter Lang, 2009. 276 pp. $ 61.95. Karin Baumgartner’s study is a welcome addition to the growing literature on women’s literary and social politics in the early nineteenth century and on Caroline de la 276 Besprechungen / Reviews Motte Fouqué (1773/ 5-1831). Much of the groundwork on Fouqué’s literary works had been laid by Jean Wilde (The Romantic Realist: Caroline de la Motte Fouqué, 1955), Birgit Wägenbaur (Die Pathologie der Liebe: Literarische Weiblichkeitsentwürfe um 1800, 1996), and Elisa Müller-Adams («… daß die Frau zur Frau redete» - Das Werk der Caroline de la Motte Fouqué als Beispiel für weibliche Literaturproduktion der frühen Restaurationszeit, 2003). The Fouqué Gesellschaft e.V. Berlin (promoting the work of both Fouqués) publishes a yearbook, and a reprint edition of Caroline de la Motte Fouqué’s major works appearing between 1811 and 1820 is now available. 1 In her innovative approach Baumgartner goes beyond the confines of a monograph on one woman author and focuses on Public Voices, on «how women writers seized the opportunity for political debate in the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars» (10). Baumgartner considers Fouqué’s and contemporary German women writers’ access to the literary market as an important venue to voice social and political ideas. Baumgartner deftly situates Fouqué into the socio-political life during the decades following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and foregrounds her contributions to the ideas and ideologies of German nationhood formation. Fouqué was already known as a novelist and story writer when she found a public voice in her early writings such as Briefe über die griechische Mythologie für Frauen (1812) and Briefe über Zweck und Richtung weiblicher Bildung (1811) together with other essays on education, history, and fashion. Baumgartner rightly highlights Fouqué’s concern for the Prussian state and her commitment to political agency and rescues her from the reputation of being merely a conservative Prussian aristocrat, a reputation that self-styled progressive literary critics of the late twentieth century had attached to Fouqué and to all ‹Prussian Junkers.› Baumgartner can show Fouqué’s historical and cultural significance and her arguments for a revision of the prevailing sex-gender system as central to the social imaginary. The chapter on Fouqué’s literary use of and response to the French Revolution contains interesting readings of Magie der Natur (1812), the historical novels Das Heldenmädchen aus der Vendée (1816) and Die beiden Freunde (1824) as political voices. Baumgartner’s critically well-informed and careful analysis of women’s political role in the wake of the Revolution (including works by La Roche, Therese Huber, and Christine Westphalen) brings out the complexity of their arguments in addressing women’s contribution as historical subjects and, most important, the intersection of the public and the private sphere. Of equal interest and importance are the chapters on the role of gender, sociability, and politics and on the historical novel. Baumgartner observes that «Caroline Fouqué’s historical novels illustrate the literary and political tug-of-war between men and women, the state and its citizens, and uncover the many masks author and narratives wore to examine state politics in the public sphere» (198). The use of the term ‹public sphere› as a theoretical frame and the labeling of women’s writings of the era as ‹domestic fiction› are problematic aspects that recall de- 1 Caroline de la Motte Fouqué, Ausgewählte Werke. Nachdruckausgabe, herausgegeben, kommentiert und eingeleitet von Petra Kabus. 3 Bände in 4 Bänden, Hildesheim 2003- 2005. Besprechungen / Reviews 277 bates of the last century. Jürgen Habermas’s paradigm of the ‹public sphere› became popular with literary critics of the generation of ’68 and beyond and enjoyed a short revival in the US with the belated appearance of the English version The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989). In this theoretical framework critics used Habermas’s idea of the public sphere as a distinction between public and private issues thus separating issues that normally affected women around 1800 (aspects of family, reproduction, and nurture). And they continued to assign the label ‹domestic› to women’s fiction, thereby relegating it to the private realm and out of the discussion in the public sphere. This mostly transported, re-inscribed, and reinforced the notions and valuation of separate gender spheres from the 1800s. Replacing the outmoded ‹public sphere› in the twenty-first century with the more open concept of the ‹social imaginary› (as discussed in the wake of Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 2004) has been a step in the direction that Baumgartner’s focus on Public Voices has taken when she concludes that «a new theory of reading such domestic fiction takes these texts as literary and cultural documents involved in complex negotiations regarding the shape their communities needed» (239). Yet vexing questions remain: Why was there such a forceful, dominant tradition to exclude women from the political and the public, and why has this lasted for so long even beyond the rhetoric of the ’68ers? The Ohio State University Barbara Becker-Cantarino M ICHAEL M AREINER (E D .): «Von einer edlen Amme». Eine mittelhochdeutsche Minneallegorie. Wörterbuch und Reimwörterbuch. Mittelhochdeutsche Minnereden und Minneallegorien der Wiener Handschrift 2796 und der Heidelberger Handschrift Pal. germ. 348. Vol. 8. Bern & New York: Peter Lang, 2007. 378 pp. € 64,20. For the past four decades, Michael Mareiner has devoted his energy to preparing for publication the Middle High German Minnereden and Minneallegorien of manuscripts principally in Prague (R VI Fc 26), Vienna (2796), and Heidelberg (Pal. germ. 348). Individual works are presented first in the form of edition and translation, followed by a separate dictionary and rhyme dictionary. The present volume, a dictionary and rhyme dictionary to the allegory «Von einer edlen Amme,» supplements the work’s edition and translation, published in 1993 and based on the Heidelberg manuscript. A brief preface offers minimal context for the present volume’s provenance. Terms are glossed and arranged, with few and so noted exceptions, according to normalized Lexer/ BMZ spelling convention. Entries are followed by the respective Lexer/ BMZ lemmatization and definition, line references, and citations (including variants). The dictionary is supplemented by a rhyme dictionary and index of orphans. A brief bibliography and subsequent listing of Mareiner’s publications concludes the work. A work of this type stands largely on its accuracy and, to a lesser degree, on such aesthetic elements as aid in its ‹user friendliness,› e.g., layout, font type and attributes, formatting, etc.