MARIE THERESE VON ARTNER UND IHRE LITERARISCHE AUTORSCHAFT

This study concentrates on the literary works of the German-language author Marie Therese von Artner (1770–1829). The postulates of a feminist literary theory serve as a basis for exploring the issue of authorship in selected lyric texts. The study tries to answer the questions on which conditions Artner enters literature, how she perceives her own authorial process and authorship and how she defines herself as an author and a woman. Artner’s attitude is ambivalent, but this ambiance disappears in her later works and gives way to a more radical position concerning demands for women’s rights. Artner as a woman and a Hungarian German living at the periphery, is marginal in German literature, but in the period around 1800 she belongs to those authors who influenced the literary and cultural course of events in the region of Upper Hungary and Lower Austria.