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AntiHero at All Times: the Story of a Child Murderess in German Literature in the Second Half of the 18th Century

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Abstract. The paper addresses a child-murderess’ plot in German literature of the second half of the 18th century, which is considered to have mythological roots, invariant and variant elements in all epochs of literary development. Apart from this, the paper is questioning the reasons for this very plot’s popularity in Germany of the given period (public interest for trials against child murderesses), and the reasons for refusal of traditional antiquity decorum in a representation of baby killers. New kind of a murderess is usually a working woman or a countrywoman; her fate makes an audience to sympathize with her misfortunes, as she is a victim of external circumstances and her seducer, is feeling ashamed, fallen, pressed with danger of being revealed in public, and responsible for her own and her baby’s disgrace. A selected number of this new variation of infanticide in fiction belong to the prominent representatives of the German “Sturm und Drang” movement. In their preferences of the low character for their fictional plots, we recognize the Enlightenment idea of any single human’s value which does not demand any social grounding. The given plot is interpreted on the material of different genres (Goethe’s tragedy “Urfaust”, Bürger’s ballad “Pastor’s Daughter of Taubenhayn”, Schiller’s poem “The Infanticide”, Wagner’s drama “The Child-Murderess”), which helps to argue that different genres’ framing foregrounds the same motifs’ settings and similar ethical pathos. The genetic history of the plots is given in accordance with the documents referring to trials under child-murderesses, which were real life prototypes for Goethe’s, Bürger’s, and Wagner’s heroines.

Keywords: child-murderess’ plot, German literature of the second half of XVIII century, Euripides, I.W. Goethe, G.A. Bürger, H.L. Wagner, F. Schiller, Medea, Gretchen.

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