Gender, Laughter, and the Desecration of Enlightenment: Kleist's Penthesilea as `Hundekomödie'

Author: Griffiths, Elystan¹

Source: The Modern Language Review, Volume 104, Number 2, 1 April 2009 , pp. 453-471(19)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

The article reads Kleist's play Penthesilea (1808) against the nexus of discourses of Enlightenment and gender. It proposes that the Greeks represent views that Kleist had espoused in his youth, but that these are not only the target of some comedy, but are shown to cause ongoing detriment to the Amazon state. The play is interpreted as an attack upon both Enlightenment rationalism and the humanist impulses of Weimar Classicism. This attack entails a reassessment of language as a medium of human communication and historical progress, which is expressed both in and through the language of the play.

Keywords: Kleist; Penthesilea; Enlightenment; gender; rationalism; Weimar Classicism; language

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Birmingham

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