La neue lesbische Frau weimariana o sulla narrativizzazione dell’immagine della donna queer

Abstract

In order to understand the lesbian/queer literary production as a defined category referring to the theories of the third sex by Ulrichs and Hirschfeld, the present investigation aims to examine the novels by Aimée Duc, Sind es Frauen? Roman über das dritte Geschlecht (1901), Maximiliane Ackers, Freundinnen. Ein Roman unter Frauen (1923), and Christa Winsloe, Das Mädchen Manuela (1933). The close reading of these “reference models” allows the observation of the representation modalities of the Lesbenfrage from a social, cultural and erotic perspective. At the same time, it shows to what extent these texts contributed to the structural implementation of a new discourse of gender identity increasingly tending towards a queer perspective and therefore definitively distancing from the “classical” figure of the neue Frau. Hence, the present analysis tries to contribute to make partially visible the cultural heritage of the Weimar neue lesbische Frau through its narrative self-representation.