Rebecca Garber

Medieval Literature and Culture Classen, Albrecht. Late-Medieval German Women's Poetry: secular and Religious Songs. Translated from the German with Introduction, Notes and Interpretive Essay. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004.157 pp. $65.00 hardcover. In his text, Classen makes several calls for an expansion of the canon of medieval women writers. He contributes to this task by expanding the scope of medieval German literature beyond the so-called Blutezeit into the later medieval period of the 15th and 16th centuries. In his examination of secular songbooks (Volksliedbucher) and collections of religious songs (Kirchenlieder), Classen claims to have found evidence for a continuing female contribution to medieval German literature. In his introductory essay, Classen discusses the current level of scholarship on medieval women writers as well as recent research by feminist medievalists, and provides an introduction to the texts. The 34 secular and 13 religious poems are grouped separately by manuscript or early print source, and are followed by an interpretive essay. Although written in the female voice and generally found in manuscripts composed for or collected by a female reader, all of the authors of the secular poems remain anonymous to both their medieval and modern readers. This requires of the modern scholar the extremely difficult task of interpreting authorial gender from a limited number of stanzas. Within Middle High German lyrics, this conundrum is compounded by the tradition of Frauenlieder, that is, men composing songs in women's voice. Indeed, Classen determines within his interpretive essay that a number of the poems he includes were probably written by men, such as those which appear within the tradition of cleric versus merchant as lovers, the anti-monastic song, and those which include fairly explicit sexual references. The criteria for determining whether a song was composed by a woman appear to be "references to woman's concern," "aggressive criticism" of or bitterness towards the disloyal male lover, "discomfort" on the part of a male poet singing "such passionate expressions," and references to woman's marital ideals and/or pregnancy. As only one-third of the songs are discussed in the interpretive essay, and because the criteria for determining female authorship are vague, the burden of interpretation is placed upon the reader. With regard to these secular songs, skepticism remains about an effort which is based upon such short texts and which evinces the scholar's own biases as to what a medieval man or woman would be comfortable in uttering. …

... THE END WILL COME" Early Latin Christian Interpretations of the Opening of the Seven Seals Dougbs W. Lumsden 2. TOPOGRAPHIES ... FEMININE FIGURAE Representations of Gender in Religious Texts hy Medieval German Women Writers 1100-1375 Rebecca LR Garber ...

... THE END WILL COME" Early Latin Christian Interpretations of the Opening of the Seven Seals Dougbs W. Lumsden 2. TOPOGRAPHIES ... FEMININE FIGURAE Representations of Gender in Religious Texts hy Medieval German Women Writers 1100-1375 Rebecca LR Garber ...

This dissertation contributes to the current discussion on the influence of genre on gender representation by focusing on various idealized feminine forms found in texts authored by medieval German religious women from 1100 to 1475. The texts (generally) fall into three genres---the vision cycle, the sister-book (Nonnenbuch), and the personal revelation---which together form a textual family of interrelated genres. Each genre limits the types of figures which can be included. Vision cycles focus on salvation history and present the idealized feminine and masculine figures involved in divine narrative. The Nonnenbucher, which present an exceptional history of cloistered spirituality, record episodic vitae of perfected predecessors; ideals are expressed at the human level as attainable models for imitation. In the personal revelations, the female author herself becomes a pattern for imitation as she records her process of becoming extraordinary. This sequence accords with a temporal shift in the representation of feminine ideals, from divine to human, from static to dynamic, and parallels representations in the visual arts. In the process of imitating and manipulating the various representations of feminine ideals, the authors alter both the ideals and the genres. In Hildegard von Bingen's vision cycle, she modifies the traditional binary representation of Eve and Mary. The authors of the sister-books adapt exemplary characteristics normally accorded to religious men to fit the cloistered life of Dominican nuns. The authors of the personal revelations employ external ideals as models for their own lives, record the events of their lives according to their chosen model, yet also adapt the pattern to accord with their personal circumstances. This research furthers modern understanding of the complexity of medieval gender ideals, by demonstrating that there were several ideals available to religious women, that the selected genres influenced how these ideals were represented, and that the women were actively involved in the transmission and transformation of literary forms. That such variety could exist within an interrelated group of texts and assigned to a small proportion of the female population has broad implications for studies in genre and gender in all literary periods.Ph.D.German literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsMedieval literatureSocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132138/2/9959763.pd

... THE END WILL COME" Early Latin Christian Interpretations of the Opening of the Seven Seals Dougbs W. Lumsden 2. TOPOGRAPHIES ... FEMININE FIGURAE Representations of Gender in Religious Texts hy Medieval German Women Writers 1100-1375 Rebecca LR Garber ...