The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures: New Approaches to German and European Women Writers and to Violence Against Women in Premodern Times

Albrecht Classen

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The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures

New Approaches to German and European Women Writers and to Violence Against Women in Premodern Times

Albrecht Classen

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2007

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This book is in the series

Volume 1 | Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture

About this book

The study takes the received view among scholars that women in the Middle Ages were faced with sustained misogyny and that their voices were seldom heard in public and subjects it to a critical analysis. The ten chapters deal with various aspects of the question, and the voices of a variety of authors - both female and male - are heard. The study opens with an enquiry into violence against women, including in texts by male writers (Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Straßburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach) which indeed describe instances of violence, but adopt an extremely critical stance towards them. It then proceeds to show how women were able to develop an independent identity in various genres and could present themselves as authorities in the public eye. Mystic texts by Hildegard of Bingen, Marie de France and Margery Kempe, the medieval conduct poem known as Die Winsbeckin, the Devout Books of Sisters composed in convents in South-West Germany, but also quasi-historical documents such as the memoirs of Helene Kottaner or Anna Weckerin's cookery book, demonstrate that far more women were in the public gaze than had hitherto been assumed and that they possessed the self-confidence to establish their positions with their intellectual and their literary achievements.

Author / Editor information

Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, USA.

Topics

i-iv Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	i
TABLE OF CONTENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
Chapter One. Violence to Women, Women’s Rights, and Their Defenders in Medieval German Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	37
Chapter Two. Women Speak up at the Medieval Court: Gender Roles and Public Influence in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec and Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and Isolde Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	69
Chapter Three. Women’s Secular and Spiritual Power in the Middle Ages. Two Case Studies: Hildegard von Bingen and Marie de France Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	105
Chapter Four. Gender Crossing, Spiritual Transgression, and the Epistemological Experience of the Divine in Mystical Discourse: Hildegard von Bingen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	135
Chapter Five. The Winsbeckin – Female Discourse or Male Projection? New Questions to a Middle High German Gendered Didactic Text in Comparison with Christine de Pizan. What do we make out of a female voice within a male dominated textual genre? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	159
Chapter Six. Domestic Violence in Medieval and Early-Modern German, French, Italian, and English Literature (Marie de France, Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	187
Chapter Seven. Reading, Listening, and Writing Communities in Late Medieval Women's Dominican Convents. The Mystical Drive Toward the Word. The Testimony of the Sisterbooks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	231
Chapter Eight. Margery Kempe as a Writer: A Woman's Voice in the Mystical and Literary Discourse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	271
Chapter Nine. Helene Kottanner: A Fifteenth-Century Eye-Witness Turned Author. The Earliest Medieval Memoirs by a German Woman Writer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	309
Chapter Ten. Sixteenth-Century Cookbooks, Artes Literature, and Female Voices: Anna Weckerin (Keller) and Sabina Welser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	339
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	367
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	387
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	449

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

February 13, 2012

eBook ISBN:

9783110897777

Hardcover published on:

June 18, 2007

Hardcover ISBN:

9783110199413

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

Front matter:

6

Main content:

453

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110897777

eBook ISBN: 9783110897777

Hardcover ISBN: 9783110199413

Keywords for this book

Women/literature; women/mysticism; cookbook; medieval times/society; economy

Audience(s) for this book

Academics, Libraries, Institutes

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Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
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The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Topics

Table of contents

Bibliographic data