The Tragedy of Fatherhood

The Tragedy of Fatherhood is a tour de force that will open new avenues of research. Although the pater familias is generally considered the model for all figures of authority, his position has gone largely unaddressed in criticism except from the vantage point of the son or the subservient subject. Silke Weineck’s elegant and thought-provoking study lifts the father from the shadows and lets him speak as a figure that is at once powerful but vulnerable, the bedrock of the social order but also its most contested member. The book combines an enormous wealth of learning with grace and wit, and is written in a manner that should be the envy of all scholars in the humanities. -- Rochelle Tobias, Professor of German, Johns Hopkins University, USA
In this highly reflective and provocative study, Weineck offers a series of consummate literary analyses, which interrogate conventional truisms of psychoanalytic discourse and political theory. With a brilliant shift in perspective, The Tragedy of Fatherhood demonstrates to what extent the figure of the father has been reduced to mere instances of the filial imagination. The result is a richly nuanced and theoretically sophisticated assessment of conceptualizations of paternity throughout the literary and political traditions of the West, which calls for an entire reconsideration of how notions of sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy have been and continue to be formulated. -- John T. Hamilton, Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA
The subject of Silke-Maria Weineck’s The Tragedy of Fatherhood is central and compelling—the vicissitudes of the ‘paternal triad,’ the authority vested in family fathers, kings, and gods as concretely imagined in myth, literature, and psychoanalytic theory. Weineck’s erudition, especially where Greek and German writers are concerned, her gracious sensibility, theoretical finesse, and writerly flair hold this threatening matter at bay: her critical imagination is a continual source of revisionary insight and complex pleasure. -- Stanley Corngold, Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature, Princeton University, USA
This important study is of immense value to any reader interested in the history of family formation, the relationship between antiquity and modernity, the precursors of psychoanalysis in Greek tragedy, and representations of fatherhood in Western culture. -- Anette Schwarz, Associate Professor of German Studies, Cornell University, USA
This fresh and original study turns our notions of paternal power and its dominance upside down to argue through texts from literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and political theory that history has been written mainly by the son, who is both heir and victim. Freud, Greek tragedy (Laius, Oedipus) and philosophy (Aristotle) are joined to the Hebrew Bible (Abraham), among others, in order to offer another set of readings, especially of German authors (Hofmannsthal, Lessing, Kleist) that will challenge the reader to think our familiar tropes anew. -- Froma I. Zeitlin, Emerita, Ewing Professor of Greek Language & Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University, USA
The Tragedy of Fatherhood is a remarkable book. Its conversational style makes for pleasant reading, and the wealth of material makes the reading profitable. The summary offered here can only suggest its argumentative breadth and depth of learning: Weineck has selected texts and time periods conscientiously in order to provide, not a history of fatherhood, but a reflection on the critical moments that have shaped Western notions of fatherhood vis-à-vis politics, religion, and the family. * Goethe Yearbook *
[A]n engagingly written book that offers a broad angle on a topic that never seems outdated ... Weineck takes us on an interesting and ... novel journey through the centuries, delivering her thoughts in an immaculate, captivating style. * Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies *
Silke-Maria Weineck’s broad yet precise study of the representation of fatherhood in psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and literature has the virtue of making us rethink what we tend to take for granted: the status and definition of the father in Western culture. … The quality of her insights is enhanced by her graceful prose style, which lends clarity to ideas of great complexity. While her approach is exemplary of thoughtful scholarship, it is clear that she cares deeply about the issues that she raises. * Monatshefte *
Ambitious and compelling … [Weineck’s] book offers a powerful revisionist history of fatherhood as a site of crisis and, perhaps more significantly, gives us a new set of tools to think about the relationship between fatherhood and power, or, more accurately, about fatherhood and the forms of disempowerment. * Comparative Literature Studies *
Weineck’s elegantly written work is not only insightful but also generative. It solicits further pursuit of the relations she draws ... The lines of inquiry that Weineck opens and provokes testify to the strength of her achievement as vividly as the persuasive arguments and readings she sets forth. * Modern Language Quarterly *
Illuminating … If it is beyond the confines of this review to detail the development of Weineck’s argument and reading of these texts, it is surely not beyond the confines of the reader’s engagement with her book to enjoy and learn from it. * Studies in Romanticism *