Inspiration and Transcendence in the Fiction of Kate Chopin: Echoes of Nineteenth-Century German Women and Women Writers [Hardcover]

Inspiration and Transcendence in the Fiction of Kate Chopin: Echoes of Nineteenth Century German Women and Women Writers marks the first comprehensive study which explicitly links Kate Chopin's work to nineteenth-century German women writers Fanny Lewald, Ida Hahn-Hahn, Malwida von Meysenburg and German women, Antoinette Fehringer and Eleonore Grunow, who served as role models for her fiction. This book (re)-establishes connections to Chopin's contemporaries Nietzsche, Hegel, and Schopenhauer and introduces her indebtedness to the writers of the German Romantic period, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and the politician Carl Schurz. The modernity of her fiction and the radical-progressive tenets established through her transatlantic influences place Kate Chopin's work into the context of major historical, socio-political and philosophical movements of nineteenth-century Europe.This book is a comprehensive account and a compelling new approach to the impact of German influences on Kate Chopin's fiction. Placed into a broad transatlantic context, it will firmly establish Kate Chopin as one of the first American women writers lingering on the brink of modernity.Heidi M. Podlasli-Labrenz has taught at Ball State University in Indiana and the University of Bremen in Germany.

Foreword by Lynne Tatlock
Preface
Chapter 1: Inspired by a Culture and its Women: Kate Chopin's German Influences
Chapter 2: Paving the Way: The Influence of German Role Models on Kate Chopin's Early Short Stories
Chapter 3: The Legacy of Fanny Lewald: Impetus and Influences on the Literary Work of Kate Chopin
Chapter 4: Moral Awareness and Social Reforms: Aspects of Fanny Lewald's Socio-Political Treatises in Kate Chopin's Short Stories
Chapter 5: Moving Towards Moral Liberation: Fanny Lewald's Clementine and the Rebellion of Kate Chopin's Heroines
Chapter 6: Recapturing the Orient: Ida von Hahn-Hahn, Countess Faustina, and the Mystique ol°