Karoline von Günderrode
Philosophical Romantic

Joanna Raisbeck

Germanic Literatures 26

Legenda

8 October 2022  •  272pp

ISBN: 978-1-839540-25-7 (hardback)  •  RRP £85, $115, €99

ISBN: 978-1-839540-26-4 (paperback, forthcoming)

ISBN: 978-1-839540-27-1 (JSTOR ebook)

Access online: Books@JSTOR

RomanticismGermanPoetry


Karoline von Günderrode’s biography – and in particular her early death – have long overshadowed an appreciation of her literary works. Closer attention to her poems, prose writings and plays reveals Günderrode’s remarkable engagement with the philosophical, literary, and scientific debates of her age. Joanna Raisbeck’s study is the first to uncover a consistent theme throughout Günderrode, one which stems from the desire to combat the prevalent philosophical dangers of both materialism and atheism. Günderrode, it emerges, is the most consistent thinker of Spinozist pantheism – the idea that God and nature are the same – not just in German Romanticism, but in her age. Günderrode uses a new interpretation of Spinoza as a means to write about questions of determinism, autonomy, and what differences there might be, if at all, between humankind and nature.

Joanna Raisbeck is Lecturer in German at St Hilda's College and Wadham College, University of Oxford. She is the winner of both the Klaus Heyne-Award for Research in German Romanticism (2021) and the Novalis Prize (2022) for her work on Günderrode.

Reviews:

  • ‘Joanna Raisbeck has written a wide-ranging, deeply learned, lucid and philosophically stimulating account of the works of Karoline von Günderrode. The book can be counted as one of the crowning achievements of a recent wave of scholarship in English that grasps Günderrode as a key thinker of German Romantic philosophy... It is a groundbreaking book, and one can only hope that the potential she unearths in Günderrode will continue to animate the imaginations of generations of readers to come.’ — Gabriel Trop, Modern Language Notes 138.3, April 2023, 1248-52 (full text online)
  • ‘The scope of this study is vast and ambitious... The book makes a very fine contribution to the scholarship on ideas and conceptualizations in Günderrode's works.’ — Barbara Becker‐Cantarino, German Quarterly 96.2, 2023, 287-89 (full text online)
  • ‘It is hard to review a book as excellent as this one, but at least I can try to recapitulate the main reasons why this book is well worth the read for anyone interested either in the literature of Romanticism (and its philosophical implications), the dissemination of Spinozism, or women philosophers of the early 19th century.’ — Anne Pollok, Symphilosophie 5, 2023, 460-66
  • ‘What is under review here is an outstanding scholarly achievement—a book of great clarity in thinking and presentation, of formidable, impeccable research, a monograph displaying sovereign command of her material as well as an enthusiasm that never obscures but always illuminates what it examines... To sum up: this is indeed a landmark publication not only in Günderrode studies, but, because of its wider implications, in studies in Romanticism generally. It is the summa of Raisbeck’s research, which meets the highest standards of international scholarship and fully deserves the exceptional recognition it has already received.’ — Christoph Bode, European Romantic Review 35.1, 2024, 159-65 (full text online)

For a contents listing, see this volume at JSTOR.

Bibliography entry:

Raisbeck, Joanna, Karoline von Günderrode: Philosophical Romantic, Germanic Literatures, 26 (Legenda, 2022)

First footnote reference: 35 Joanna Raisbeck, Karoline von Günderrode: Philosophical Romantic, Germanic Literatures, 26 (Legenda, 2022), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Raisbeck, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Raisbeck, Joanna. 2022. Karoline von Günderrode: Philosophical Romantic, Germanic Literatures, 26 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Raisbeck 2022: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Raisbeck 2022: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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