``God's little rascal'': A feminist theological view of Else Lasker-Schueler's prose.
Item
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Title
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``God's little rascal'': A feminist theological view of Else Lasker-Schueler's prose.
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Identifier
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AAI9830772
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identifier
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9830772
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Creator
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Tekavec, Valerie Sue.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Tamara Evans
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Date
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1998
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Germanic | Theology | Literature, Modern | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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The German Jewish modernist, Else Lasker-Schuler, was, at heart, a spiritual avant-gardist, or "God's little rascal" as she once called herself in a poem. This study is an inquiry into the author's prose and its relation to the ideologies of traditional, Jewish patriarchal theology and male-dominated German literary culture. In the past, scholars have often presented the profound connection between God and the "maleness" of God too simplistically when discussing Lasker-Schuler's writings, or they have overlooked the androcentrism of Judaism altogether. Through the lenses of feminist theology, Lasker-Schuler's writings show a disruption and subversion of traditional Jewish doctrine and a struggle to articulate her particular feminine marginality within the androcentrism of religion.;The frustration of positioning her spiritual thinking within the dominant discourse of male letters was a problem Lasker-Schuler never escaped, and yet, the bind of the "maleness" of God also compelled her writing. Indeed, Lasker-Schuler's literary production as a whole can be viewed as a search for God and faith in a world of images and meaning controlled and shaped for the most part by men. The author cultivated a fidelity to her Jewish roots through her writing. This was a radical act on her part, for it was a fidelity based not on tradition, learning and ritual, but one based on her own lyric, literary terms.;Like Lasker-Schuler's writings in her own time, Jewish feminist theology, a field of thought still very much in its infancy today, bears marginal status within academia. Without these new theoretical tools of gender inquiry into religion, however, feminist writing on Lasker-Schuler would be incomplete. Her literature begs for such an approach, for it can easily be situated within the history of Jewish spiritual writings by women which have been mapped by feminist scholars thus far.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
