383-389 Book Reviews Fall 06

iterary studies have long been in the habit of investigating the category of the literary from various critical perspectives. Indeed, we have come to expect that a book on literature will contain a critical reflection on the limits of literature, knowing that a simple celebration of literature will obscure more than it will reveal. Such self-criticism is much harder to find in theater studies, which still deems its object of study to be under all kinds of threats and therefore in need of constant apology. The value of the theater, or theatricality, is therefore more often presumed than critically reflected on. Christopher J. Wild’s book, Theater der Keuschheit—Keuschheit des Theaters: Zu einer Geschichte der (Anti) Theatralität von Gryphius bis Kleist, tries to close this critical gap. It is based on the methodological assumption that we can learn from the critics of the theater more than from its friends. For this reason, Wild uses a vocabulary and understanding of the theater that is derived, primarily, from various antitheatrical tracts. The theater thus emerges as a contested art form, one that reacts and even internalizes many of the arguments of its critics. This conceptualization is the central contribution that Wild’s book makes to the study of theater. Although Wild’s general methodology provides a unifying principle for his voluminous study, the book nevertheless falls into several distinct sections. A reading of Heinrich von Kleist’s short text, Über das Marionettentheater, supplies the prologue as well as part of the epilogue. Wild is attuned to the historical context of this text, situating it in the critiques of the lower theatrical genres by those attempting to make theater respectable, but he also approaches it from a theoretical perspective. I would call the general method “historicized deconstruction,” a versatile moving between close readings attuned to the difficulties of theatrical representation and historical sources. From this framing discussion, Wild moves to the first main section, from which the title of the book is derived, investigating the relation between the theater and virginity. Taking his point of departure from THE GERMANIC REVIEW