Pietism in Petticoats and Other Comedies

Luise Adelgunde Gottsched (1713-1762), poet, essayist, translator, and playwright, was regarded during her lifetime as intellectually the most formidable woman in Germany. Together with her better-known husband, Johann C. Gottsched, she crusaded to reform the language and literary taste of the Germans. Frau Gottsched’s most important contribution to German literature came in the form of her translations and original comedies in the French classical style. The present volume offers for the first time in English translation Luise Gottsched’s five original comedies, including Pietism in Petticoats (1736). The targets of her biting wit are hypocritical religious fundamentalists, the gentry, middle-class social climbers, German francophiles, and pseudo-intellectuals. These witty satires make it obvious why Luise has come to be viewed as the mother of the modern German comedy.