"In zoren zu wütiger rach". Angry Women and Men in the German Drama of the Reformation Period.

The following is an analysis of the literary representation of anger within a manageable corpus of texts in a synchronic direction pointing out two different but also intertwined aspects: the specific connotations of gender and the specific differences of literary genre. Particular attention is paid to the secular dramas of the Nuremberg author Hans Sachs, composed in the Middle of the 16th century, where an increasing number of angry characters appears. First of all, the specific patterns of the dramatic representation of anger reflect a frame of notions that are reminiscent of the contemporary discourses of gender; the literary construction of angry woman and man converges in some respects with other forms of those discourses, but also marks significant differences in other respects. For example, this construction can be assigned to the misogyny discourse of early bourgeois culture, confirming in this way the current order of sexes; but this construction also avoids the prevalent idea of anger as a typical male characteristic that contrasts with the fundamental passive nature of woman. Both kinds of angry characters receive a pathological connotation: while male angry characters are generally coupled with impulsive rage (prototypical is the “wüterich” Herod), female anger is coupled with the vice of sexual lust (“Geilheit”). As a deviant behavior, anger – and specially female anger – always reveals a failure of the regulative forces of the patriarchal order; that is the reason why moral culpability for female furor generally lies with man: Clytemnestra’s crises are caused by the long absence of her husband Agamemnon from home; Rosamund’s ira is stimulated by the dishonoring of her father on the part of Alboin.