This dissertation focuses on the emergence of self-awareness in women of the early 17th
century as exemplified by Sibylle Schwarz (1621-1638), a native of Greifswald in North
Germany. It analyses the feminist components of her work. Her poetic production,
preserved in the anthology Deutsche Poetische Gedichte (1650), consists of 105 poems,
four prose introductions and three letters. It is the output of a writer whose short life of
17 years plays itself out against the backdrop of a century shattered by the Thirty Years'
War, religious strife, the plague, oppression and social unrest.
Topics such as friendship, love, female self-awareness, or the contrasting realities of
women and men are the themes through which she explores an androcentric society
and establishes herself as an advocate for the acceptance of women as full members of
society. With her motto Du solst mich doch nicht unterdrucken ("You shall not suppress
me") she insists on her equality as a woman and a writer. The defiance of her "natural"
role as a woman expresses itself ambivalently, through observing social conventions
while at the same time striving to undermine them. Sibylle Schwarz, unlike any other
German bourgeois woman author between 1550 and 1650, has written poetry engaging
in social criticism that corroborates and at the same time transcends the inferior status
of women within a patriarchal structure. This unique nature of her writings makes
them an important milestone in the emergence of female intellectual autonomy.
The first two of six major sections state the goals of my research, a survey of the
materials used and the methodology to be followed. Part III sets the context of a society
in which women were limited to a narrow range of roles. In Part IV the conditions in
which women lived, worked, and were brought up, from the institutionalised lack of
educational opportunity to social, conventional and legal barriers to their full
participation in society are being explored. Part V gives an extensive analysis of Sibylle
Schwarz's work, relating it to her personal situation and to the themes already
developed, with an accounting of her thoughts and ideas about her culture, her society
and her gender. Part VI summarises the work and states its conclusions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8501 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Ganzenmueller, Petra |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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