The Text as Daemonic Theater
The Transformative Poetics of The Marquise of O
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9854820 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William Quirk (American University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3-19 |
| Publication date | 2010-01-29 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Germanic Review Literature Culture Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-8890 • E-ISSN: 1930-6962 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00168890903446666 |
| OpenAlex | W2084860489 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Arguing against the idea of a “true, underlying story,” this article proposes using the concept of transformative poetics to understand Heinrich von Kleist's The Marquise of O—. According to this concept, the novella does not narrate an indubitable story, but creates or invents itself as it proceeds, as can be shown in different aspects of the story, such as the way in which the text implicitly treats its characters as actors and the Count's unexpected return after his alleged death. One consequence of this approach to the novella is that the references to biblical or mythological models lend themselves as tropes for the creative, transformative power of the poetic text. The text itself, in its poetic activity, becomes a kind of ironic daemon. Moreover, in this story about an instance of sexual violation, a positive type of violation is suggested—a violation of emptiness and silence—and the text itself is the guilty party
Aesthetics · Art · Emptiness · Epistemology · Literature · Mythology · Novella · Physics · Poetics · Poetry · Power (physics · Psychoanalysis · Silence · Transformative learning · German Literature and Culture Studies · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|