Abstract
Rereading the canon in the light of recent theory and criticism can turn into a subversive project when one finds that a novel long considered easily accessible and safely categorized may be neither. Such is the outcome of this essay's reading of Theodor Fontane's popular Effi Briest (1894–95). Incomplete stories in the text lead to a reassessment of its ending, of the heroine's position, and of the text's political implications. What emerges is a modern, self-reflexive, incipiently feminist Effi Briest that resists the standard readings and instead moves closer to “shocking” texts of the time (such as Wedekind's first Lulu play and Freud's Studies on Hysteria) than to those texts with which it is traditionally compared.
Publisher
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Subject
Literature and Literary Theory,Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
Cited by
9 articles.
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