Marriage as a National Fiction: Represented Law in the Modern Novel

Description

There is a prehistory of the adultery novel, which became a pan-European literary paradigm in the second half of the 19th century. In the wake of the French Revolution, secular marriage legislation emerges, producing a metaphorical surplus that is still effective today. Using legal history and canonical literary texts from Rousseau to Goethe and Manzoni to Hugo and Flaubert, this book traces how marriage around 1800 became a figure of reflection for the modern nation-state. In the process, original contributions to the philology of the individual texts emerge. At the same time, law and literature are made fruitful for a historical semantics of society and community. This book is a translation of an original German 1st edition “Ehe als Nationalfiktion” by Dagmar Stöferle, published by J.B. Metzler, imprint of Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). The author (with the support of Chris Owain Carter) has subsequently revised the text further in an endeavour to refine the work stylistically. Contents Abbreviations 1: Introduction 1.1 Novel and Marriage 1.2 Marriage and Nation 1.3 Couple and Community 1.4 Text Corpus and Structure of the Work 2: Marriage Around 1800: Between Contract and Sacrament 2.1 Secularization of Marriage? Sacramentality and Jurisdiction Marriage as Metaphor and Dispositive Visibility, or Pauline Mystery Process of Making Visible: The Couple Consensus Between Sacrament and Contract From the Sacred State to the Moral State Purpose 2.2 Band of Division: The Revolutionary Marriage Legislation Divorce Marriage Marriage Practice: Festival, Law, Origin 2.3 Two or Many: Rousseau Between Social and Marriage Contract Julie as the General Will Personified Modern Art of Government: Julie and Wolmar Julie’s Death and the Question of Justice The Politics and Religion of Civil Marriage 3: Manzoni: Law and Novel 3.1 Couple Poetics 3.2 Renzo in the Process of Profanation Storia della Colonna Infame: Intertextual Self-Assertion The Narrator as the Judges’ Judge Metapoetics: Logic and Rhetoric of Improbability Legal Poetology: Earthly Criminal Law and Marriage Law Renzo’s Irony Ambivalent Politics of Affect Between Mass and Power: Renzo’s Disappointed Revolution Conversion, Impure and Natural Nascitur Renzo: The Dream of the Profane Narrative 3.3 Lucia in the Process of Sacralization Marianna de Leyva as Geltrude/Gertrude Included and Excluded Passion Gertrude, la Signora Between Action and Language: On the Question of Guilt Latent Love: Gertrude – Lucia Lucia’s voto: Conversion as an Error The Solution of the Vow, Critical of Law Communauté Inavouable 4: Between Märchen and Novel: Goethe’s Marriage Experiments 4.1 From the Marriage Novellas of the Ausgewanderten to the Utopia of Domination Revolutionary Passions and Troubled Marriages Spouses and Legal Entities 4.2 Excursus: Romantic Mating, Transcending Marriage (Novalis) 4.3 Herrmann und Dorothea: Epic Disguise Marriage Idyll and Patriarchy (Voß’ Luise) From Dressing Gown … … to Revolution Marriage of Love and Revolution Apotropaic Pairing Engagement as a Touching of Opposites ‘Purely Human’: Between Aesthetic and National Norm 4.4 Die Wahlverwandtschaften: Representation of the Production of a (Decision Not to) Divorce From the Attempt to the Fall Escalations Divorce Prevention The Ottilie Case: Double Law and Asymmetrical Appearance 5: Novels on Trial: Notre-Dame de Paris and Madame Bovary 5.1 Dynastic Nuptials 5.2 Marriages of Convenience 5.3 Quasimodo’s Wedding 5.4 Production and Presentation 6: Close 6.1 Novel and Marriage 6.2 Marriage and Nation 6.3 Couple and Community References Text Editions of the Authors (Rousseau, Manzoni, Goethe, Hugo, Flaubert) Other Sources Secondary Literature Index