ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the modern, pathological body alongside the bodies of puppets, marionettes, and dolls intended as doppelgängers for their human counterparts. It also examines the conceptual link between three seemingly disparate aspects of the pathos of modernity: the expressionist body, psycho-physiologic pathology, and the theatrical marionette as a corporeal metaphor. The chapter investigates the choreography of the Viennese marionette theater alongside the contorted gestures painted concurrently by Viennese expressionists. It presents a number of visual analyses of modern bodies in Viennese expressionist paintings and their relationship to the inanimate (though equally expressive) gestures and movements of a Puppe. The chapter argues that such hystero-theatrical bodies were critically recognized as representing the hysteric, enacting through their movements a psychopathology that could be mapped onto the modern body. The case studies ease out various fin-de-siècle connotations of the Puppe.
