Title: The tale of Bluebeard in German literature
Description: "'Bluebeard', in which women are slaughtered by a monstrous husband and their bodies hidden in a horrible chamber, is the most hair-raising of tales; yet with its happy ending, it also has a utopian force."

"Using the idiom of literary criticism, the study considers Bluebeard texts as a seismograph of gender politics and of the process of civilization from seventeenth-century France to 1990s Germany, in a broad range of canonical and non-canonical, often forgotten texts. The study discusses Charles Perrault's French version of 1697, through Ludwig Tieck's versions of 1797 and classic versions by the Grimms and Ludwig Bechstein, to nineteenth-century romantic fiction, the savagery of High Modernism, and twentieth-century versions such as that of the Surrealist Unica Zurn."

"While the focus is on literature in German, this is the first full-length published study in English, French, or German devoted entirely to the history of Bluebeard, and it redefines the canon and our interpretations of this tale."--Jacket.
Subjects: German literature, History and criticism, Bluebeard (Legendary character) in literature, German literature, history and criticism, German literature, history and criticism, 18th century, German literature, history and criticism, 19th century, German literature, history and criticism, 20th century, In literature
Time periods: 20th century, 19th century, 18th century