ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZUR TYPUSGESTALT DER SIBYLLE BEI J.W. GOETHE UND JUSTINUS KERNER
REFLECTIONS ON THE TYPOLOGICAL FIGURE OF THE SIBYL IN THE WORKS OF J.W. GOETHE AND JUSTINUS KERNER

Summary/Abstract: This contribution to the study of the historical literary figuration of women draws attention to literary projects from the early 19th century that stage female figures endowed with the capacity for magnetic prophecy. Through a concise discourse analysis the paper focuses on two fictional constructs of a wondrous seeress within the context of an emerging discursive society that, in the first decades of the 19th century, discusses magnetism, mesmerism, magnetic divination and the associated dissolution of boundaries between brilliance and madness, otherness and ambivalent normality: J.W. Goethe’s Makarie (Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years, second version from 1829) and Justinus Kerner’s Frau H. (The Seeress of Prevorst, first edition 1829, second edition 1832). Spiritual awakening and the gift of magnetic prophecy are articulated through an intricate interplay of poetry, natural philosophy, magnetism, romantic mesmerism, monadology, scriptural rhetoric, Christian theosophy and astronomy.

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