Stoffgeschichte als transnationales Phänomen. Germanistische und außergermanistische Perspektiven auf Amphitryon

The Amphitryon-theme ran through some interesting transformations within German literature. This article explores these variations in a wider comparative context. Instead of a thematological approach – that sometimes emanates from problematic notions of textuality, questionable processes of canonization, and philological and national boundaries – intertextual perspectives and post-structuralist psychoanalysis will be applied to examine the history of the theme. Against this background, the relationships among the characters will be analysed while simultaneously focusing on the processes of staging an identity. Thus, this article strives to prove two things: First of all, that all literary transformations of Amphitryon create a new and specific environment of rules, orders and disorders; thus, they represent rearrangements of the existing power-relations between gods and men. And secondly, that the most exciting aspects of the myth are perhaps only visible when the theme is not perceived within a genetically and chronologically structured history of influences and is taken out of philological and national boundaries.