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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Federfuchser/Penpusher from Lessing to Grillparzer: A Study Focused on Grillparzer's Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg

The Federfuchser/Penpusher from Lessing to Grillparzer: A Study Focused on Grillparzer's Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg

Reeve, William

Hardcover

Literary CriticismPlays

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ISBN10: 0773512985
ISBN13: 9780773512986
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: Jun 14 1995
Pages: 184
Language: English

Concentrating on Klesel's role in Franz Grillparzer's Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg, William Reeve argues that Klesel represents the culmination of a literary type - the Federfuchser, or pen-pushing secretary. Evolving out of the political and social conditions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the secretary is an intellectually gifted individual who acts as the agent of a less-gifted, usually aristocratic, patron. In the secretary's hand, the pen proves mightier than the sword.

Reeve provides a detailed discussion of Klesel's importance in Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg and examines possible predecessors for the Federfuchser: Wurm from Friedrich von Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, the Sekretär in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die natürliche Tochter, and Leonhard in Friedrich Hebbel's Maria Magdalene. He focuses on the features they share, such as deep-seated resentment of social superiors who, by a mere accident of birth, have power over them and, above all, the cunning that they use to overcome their social disqualifications.

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