Re-Viewing the Canon
Feminist Readings of German Literature from the Age of Goethe to the Present

Elizabeth Boa

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Selected Essays 15

Legenda

16 August 2024  •  500pp

ISBN: 978-1-839541-33-9 (hardback)  •  RRP £95, $120, €120

ISBN: 978-1-839541-34-6 (paperback, 10 August 2026  )  •  RRP £24.99, $32.49, €29.99

ISBN: 978-1-839541-35-3 (JSTOR ebook)

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In addition to its original library hardback edition, this title is now on sale in the new student-priced Legenda paperback range.

The essays gathered here reflect changes in German literary studies over more than half a century of political and cultural transformation. Wieland and Goethe, Kafka and Thomas Mann exemplify a still predominantly male canon following the Second World War. The rise of 1980s feminist criticism brought more focus on women authors and on the interplay of sexuality, gender and socio-political power in texts including a weepy and a witty best-seller and a pornographic classic. German re-unification intensified debate over ethno-nationalism in Heimat discourse and, contro­versially, in Zionism. Essays on German-Jewish and on Turkish-German authors touch on migration and hybrid iden­tities; global climate change is a key context to Ulrike Almut Sandig’s stories. Whether there is still an academic canon is questionable, but reading books remains essential to critical thinking and authors such as Kafka belong in the canon of World Literature.

Elizabeth Boa graduated in 1961 in French and German at the University of Glasgow, then studied at Munich and Saabrücken before joining the German Department at the University of Nottingham. A founding member of Women in German Studies (WIGS), she also served as Chair of the Association for German Studies (AGS), and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.

Reviews:

  • ‘At a time when research in modern languages is becoming increasingly imperilled in the UK, Elizabeth Boa’s vibrant 'feminist readings' of German literature serve as a timely reminder of the pertinence of literary inquiry.’ — Claudia Nitschke, Times Literary Supplement 16 May 2025
  • ‘Reading these essays, it becomes clear what a formidable contribution Boa made to a feminist understanding of particularly modernist literature, drawing out the gendered assumptions underpinning the canon of German-language modernist writers from Kafka to Wedekind, and setting it in a wider European context. One of the great pleasures of the collection are the flashes of dark humour and joy in words that shine like points of light within the scholarly prose, disrupting academic gravitas and inviting the reader into the discussion at a more personal level.’ — Helen Finch and Ingrid Sharp, Journal of European Studies 55.3, 2025, 393-95 (full text online)
  • ‘Goethe, Kafka, Tergit, Wolf and other authors included in this collection are lucky to have found a reader as astute as Elizabeth Boa. These are essays which speak to our times. Anyone interested in the sexual politics of modern literature would do well to read this book.’ — Ernest Schonfield, Oxford German Studies 54.3, 2025, 437-39 (full text online)
  • ‘Die vorliegende Monographie fungiert zweifellos als übersichtliche Kollektion von komplexen und ertragreichen Aufsätzen Boas der letzten 40 Jahre, die sich mit Texten der Goethezeit bis zur Gegenwartsliteratur aus feministischer Perspektive befassen.’ — Maria Becker, Germanische-Romanische Monatsschrift 76.1, 2026, 128-130

Bibliography entry:

Boa, Elizabeth, Re-Viewing the Canon: Feminist Readings of German Literature from the Age of Goethe to the Present, Selected Essays, 15 (Legenda, 2024)

First footnote reference: 35 Re-Viewing the Canon: Feminist Readings of German Literature from the Age of Goethe to the Present, elizabeth Boa, Selected Essays, 15 (Legenda, 2024), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Boa, p. 47.

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

Bibliography entry:

Boa, Elizabeth. 2024. Re-Viewing the Canon: Feminist Readings of German Literature from the Age of Goethe to the Present, Selected Essays, 15 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Boa 2024: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Boa 2024: 21.

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

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www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Re-Viewing-Canon
www.mhra.org.uk/publications/se-15