Vorschriften : Geschlechterdiskurs im Europaischen Roman des 18. Jahrhunderts (Richardson, Rousseau, Goethe)

This dissertation analyzes the gender-discourses in Pamela, Volume I and II, Emile ou De l'Education in conjunction with Julie. ou La Nouvelle Heloise, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder Die Entsagenden, and concentrates on the structuring of reading and writing according to gender, the inscription of the (bodily) gap, and the entanglement of desire for and simultaneous repression of an "other" - most notably the subordinate, the woman, the insane. In these novels, writing the "Other", especially inscribing it as a writing figure shapes gender perception in the process of revealing its soc.ietal and aesthetic machinations. The guiding questions for analyzing the textual strategies in these writings are: How do narrative structure and symbolic order interrelate in the educational projects? And how do the sujets of these 18thcentury texts contradict, confirm or subvert concepts such as the historical silence or mouthpiece function of the "other" as it is inscribed in these texts. The attempt to trace ecriture feminine as a subversion of logocentric paradigms in these texts addresses the question if and how these texts contribute to the idea of emancipation as equality not because of sameness, but because of difference. To write requires that those who as inscribed "other" attempt the pen 'mirror' themselves in a language that does not allow for their difference, yet needs them to support a binary and hierarchical system. And to be read requires of those who are subjected that they imitate the proscriptions in order to expose them, to voice their criticism with-in the law - a subterfuge criticism, which still needed to be deciphered after two hundred years of criticism. My study of Richardson's, Rousseau's and Goethe's novels is grounded theoretically in the philosophical and linguistic inquiries of post-structuralist theories, especially as they concern themselves with the interaction between political, historical, sexual and textual phenomena.