Kleist, Pentesilea. La volontà delle donne, ancora una volta

Abstract

Kleist, Penthesilea. The will of women, once againKleist’s drama is approached on the basis of gender relations betweenthe sexes, governed by the antithesis between power and freedom ofchoice in love. The analysis is carried out taking into account the ancientsources known to Kleist, other Kleist dramas including mainly thePrince of Homburg, and the technique of semantic ambiguity. The thematicrelationships between Penthesilea on the one hand and Aeschylus’Supplices as studied in a seminal paper by Guido Paduano on theother are commented on.