SOURCE: Lenckos, Frauke E. “The Sublime, Irony and ‘das Wunderbare’ in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's Poetry.” Colloquia Germanica 29, no. 4 (1996): 303-21.

In the following essay, Lenckos explores how Droste-Hülshoff was able to enter into the sublime, a poetic genre long assumed to be available only to men. Lenckos suggests that Droste-Hülshoff's engagement with the sublime reflects her engagement with the poetic concerns of her peers as well as her ability to create a “natural” universe in poetry.

The relationship between feminism and aesthetics, especially the nineteenth-century aesthetics of the sublime, has always been contentious. Recently, Barbara Claire Freeman has argued that in the nineteenth century “the genre of sublime poetry was effectively closed off to women.”¹ In contrast, Anne K. Mellor advances the thesis that nineteenth century British women writers “domesticated” the sublime in gothic novels and travel journals.² Similarly, Christine Battersby finds in the works of...