By focusing on Luise Gottsched's extraordinary volume and range of translations, Hilary Brown sheds an entirely new light on Gottsched and her oeuvre. Critics have paid increasing attention to the oeuvre of Luise Gottsched (1713-62), Germany's first prominent woman of letters, but have neglected her lifelong work of translation, which encompassed over fifty volumes and an extraordinary range, from drama and poetry to philosophy, history, archaeology, even theoretical physics. This first comprehensive overview of Gottsched's translations places them in the context of eighteenth-century intellectual, literary, and cultural history, showing that they were part of an ambitious, progressive program undertaken with her famous husband to shape German culture during the Enlightenment. In doing so it casts Gottsched and her work in an entirely new light. Including chapters on all the main subject areas and genres from which Gottsched translated, it also explores the relationship between her translations and her original works, demonstrating that translation was central to her oeuvre. A bibliography of Gottsched's translations and source texts concludes the volume. Not only a major new addition to a growing body of research on the Gottscheds, the book will also be valuable reading for scholars interested more broadly in women's writing, the history of translation, and the literature and culture of the German (and European) Enlightenment. Hilary Brown is Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Both the letters, edited and censored by Runckel, and the plays, commissioned and edited by her husband, reveal a number of intriguing "detours" from the path of conventionality: biographical aberrations in her letters (her chagrined loyalty to her husband, her passionate "friendship" with Runckel) and poetological deviations from her husband's poetics expressed in her dramas."--BOOK JACKET.

Luise Gottsched was one of the most prominent translators in eighteenth-century Germany, bringing her countrymen into contact with the work of many key writers, thinkers and scientists in the European republic of letters. Der Lockenraub (1744) was the first German verse translation of Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock (1714), and an impressive achievement at a time when English was still an exotic language in Germany and England largely a terra incognita. The introduction will outline the circumstances which gave rise to this important text and discuss its influence on the development of mock-epic poetry in Germany. The volume will thus underline the crucial role played by translation in shaping German culture during the Enlightenment.

A new perspective on the principal developments in translation practice and theory in Germany during the Age of Goethe with emphasis on the work of Goethe, Holderlin, and Kleist as translators.

This volume of original essays celebrates Barbara Becker-Cantarino, whose prolific publications on German literary culture from 1600 to the twentieth century are major milestones in the field of German cultural studies. The range of topics in the collection reflects the breadth of Becker-Cantarino’s scholarship. Examining literature from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the contributors explore the intersections of gender, race, and genre, history and gender, and gender and violence. They provide fresh readings of the works of known and lesser-known writers, including Cyriacus Spangenberg, Maria Anna Sagers Luise Gottsched, Heinrich von Kleist, Frank Wedekind, Christa Wolf, Helga Schütz, Terézia Mora, and Martina Hefter. Their discussions explore the possibilities and limitations of theoretical discourses on travel literature, deconstruction, and gender and suggest new avenues of investigation.

Literary Translation: Redrawing the Boundaries is a collection of articles that gathers together current work in literary translation to show how research in the field can speak to other disciplines such as cultural studies, history, linguistics, literary studies and philosophy, whilst simultaneously learning from them.

Diese Studie beabsichtigt, den Beitrag der Gottschedin zum literarischen und geistigen Leben Deutschlands im Zeitalter der Aufklärung neu zu untersuchen und zu bewerten. Bis jetzt hat ihre Arbeit nur wenig kritische Aufmerksamkeit erweckt, da sie lange unter der Geringschätzung litt, die seit Lessing und dem Sturm und Drang der Gottschedschen Literaturreform gegenüber herrschte. Luise Gottsched jedoch spielte in dieser Reformbewegung eine ausserordentliche Rolle, denn sie war eine der fleissigsten Mitarbeiter für die Verwirklichung und Verteidigung der rationalistischen Literaturtheorien ihres Mannes.

"Gottsched's efforts to involve women in this process have been noted, but in Amazons and Apprentices, Katherine Goodman examines for the first time the Gottsched circle's initiatives regarding intellectual women in the context of the broader discourse of which they were an important part. She presents an array of voices and texts from the years 1715 to 1740, including dictionaries, moral weeklies, letters, translations, and literature."--BOOK JACKET.

While eighteenth-century playwright and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing made numerous contributions in his lifetime to the theater, the text that best documents his dynamic and shifting views on dramatic theory is also that which continues to resonate with later generations – the Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 1767–69). This collection of 104 short essays represents one of the eighteenth century’s most important critical engagements with the theater and its potential to promote humanistic discourse. Lessing’s essays are an immensely erudite, deeply engaged, witty, ironic, and occasionally scathing investigation of European theatrical culture, bolstered by deep analysis of Aristotelian dramatic theory and utopian visions of theater as a vehicle for human connection. This is the first complete English translation of Lessing's text, with extensive annotations that place the work in its historical context. For the first time, English-language readers can trace primary source references and link Lessing’s observations on drama, theory, and performance not only to the plays he discusses, but also to dramatic criticism and acting theory. This volume also includes three introductory essays that situate Lessing’s work both within his historical time period and in terms of his influence on Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment theater and criticism. The newly translated Hamburg Dramaturgy will speak to dramaturgs, directors, and humanities scholars who see theater not only for entertainment, but also for philosophical and political debate.

Women and Early Modern Cultures of Translation: Beyond the Female Tradition is a major new intervention in research on early modern translation and will be an essential point of reference for anyone interested in the history of women translators. Research on women translators has often focused on early modern England; the example of early modern England has been taken as the norm for the rest of the continent and has shaped research on gender and translation more generally. This book brings a new European perspective to the field by introducing the case of Germany. It draws attention to forty women who can be identified as translators in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany and shows how their work does not fit easily into traditional narratives about marginalization and subversiveness. The study uses the example of Germany to argue against reading the work of translating women primarily through the lens of gender and to challenge claims about the existence of a female translation tradition which transcends the boundaries of time and place. Broadening our perspective to include Germany provides a more nuanced and informed account of the position of women within European translation cultures and forces us to rethink gender as a category of analysis in translation history. The book makes the case for a new 'woman-interrogated' approach to translation history (to borrow a concept from Carol Maier) and as such it will provide a blueprint for future work in the area.