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.
‘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, Symphilosophie5, 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)
‘Joanna Raisbecks ertragreiche Studie bildet Karoline von Günderrode nicht nur als Schriftstellerin, sondern vor allem als philosophische Figur ab... Mit Karoline von Günderrode: Philosophical Romantic hat Joanna Raisbeck eine umfassende Studie zum Werk Günderrodes unter Berücksichtigung der philosophischen Strömungen der Zeit vorgelegt. Es wird überaus deutlich, dass Karoline von Günderrode nicht nur Dichterin, sondern vor allem Philosophin war, die insbesondere als Vertreterin des spinozistischen Pantheismus sowie Panentheismus um 1800 Beachtung finden muss.’ — Maria Becker, Germanische-Romanische Monatsschrift 74.2, 2024, 251-53
‘Günderrode’s intertwined literary practice and philosophical commitments reveal for Raisbeck a poetics that valorizes poetry as an epiphanic medium. Günderrode’s texts enact and offer a form of knowledge not found in theoretical tracts, Raisbeck suggests, and their serious consideration might counterbalance current approaches to Romanticism marked by an “over-commitment to philosophy.”’ — Claire Baldwin, Goethe Yearbook 31, 2024, 182-85 (full text online)
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