The Tale of Bluebeard in German Literature From the Eighteenth Century to the Present

'The majority of her [Davies's] readings are perceptive and provocative... her considerable expansion of the corpus of Bluebeard tales to some 70 texts and operas is commendable, especially as many of them have been forgotten for more than a century.' -Times Higher Education Supplement'One seldom encounters a work of literary cricicism that makes such compelling reading as this investigation of the Bluebeard motif in modern German literature... it combines thorough scholarship with imaginative intepretation and intellectual sophistication... this is an exciting book that deserves to be widely read and influential, both within and beyond German studies.' -Journal of European Studies'Bluebeard', in which women are slaughtered and hidden in a horrible chamber by a monstrous husband, is hair-raising; yet its happy ending gives it a utopian force. Davies's book focuses on literature in German from the eighteenth century to the 1990s, and is the first full-length study of the history of Bluebeard published in any language.