Medialität und Geschlecht in Fontanes Romanwelt
Mediality and gender in Fontane’s novel world

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the connection between different media on the one hand and the gender of the protagonists on the other in two novels by Theodor Fontane. In a first part of the investigation is considered the way the characters deal with painting and music as varieties of the medium of art in the novel “L'Adultera”. In the second part, the parallelism and the competition between the means of the traditional communication medium “letter” and the means of the new communication medium telegraph/telegram and their gender assignment are examined more closely. Fontane’s sense of the power of the media and his skillful use of mediality to characterize gender roles and to loosen up the normative ideas of masculinity and femininity in the 19th century become visible.

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