A regiment of women warriors strides across the battlefield of German culture - on the stage, in the opera house, on the page, in paintings and prints. This book examines representations of the transgressive figure of the woman warrior from Cranach's painting of Judith, to Schiller's Joan of Arc, Wagner's Brünnhilde, and Fritz Lang's Brünhild.
A regiment of women warriors strides across the battlefield of German culture - on the stage, in the opera house, on the page, and in paintings and prints. These warriors are re-imaginings by men of figures such as the Amazons, the Valkyries, and the biblical killer Judith. They are transgressive and therefore frightening figures who leave their proper female sphere and have to be made safe by being killed, deflowered, or both. This has produced some compelling works of Western culture - Cranach's and Klimt's paintings of Judith, Schiller's Joan of Arc, Hebbel's Judith, Wagner's Brunnhilde, Fritz Lang's Brunhild. Nowadays, representations of the woman warrior are used as a way of thinking about the woman terrorist. Women writers only engage with these imaginings at the end of the 19th century, but from the late 18th century on they begin to imagine fictional cross-dressers going to war in a realistic setting and thus think the unthinkable.
Covering vast territory - both historically and conceptually - this study will appeal to a general audience and be of interest to specialists as well. ... Undoubtedly, Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly has performed a great service by launching this debate in such broad and yet detailed terms. Her book stimulates and deserves to be widely read, its arguments further discussed.
