A ‘short history of innocence and misfortune’: On the intersection of poverty, risk thinking and constructions of masculinity in identity novels of the ‘Sattelzeit’
This study is based on the premise that poverty cannot be primarily described as a measurable social fact, but rather constitutes a discursively produced, socio-culturally and historically variable construct. In the German-speaking world, poverty has been defined by narratives since the ‘Sattelzeit’ (ca. 1750 - 1850). This study shows that specific ‘poverty narratives’ are structured around the question as to whether poverty can be controlled. Furthermore, the discursive perception of poverty as an individual risk, i.e., as a state that can be avoided and overcome, is also distinctly coded as masculine, while the overcoming of poverty features prominently in the narrative genesis of masculinity. These connections are examined not only through a diachronic comparison of representative non-fiction texts on poverty from the late 18th to the mid-19th century, but also through the analysis of five ‘identity novels’. It becomes clear that literary interpretations of the problem of poverty can address, aestheticise, and render ambiguous poverty narratives on different levels and, in turn, participate in the discursive construction of poverty in a subversive or affirmative way.