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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

ISSN Online: 2576-0548 Downloads: 578163 Total View: 4202906
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Article Open Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2024.12.001

Powerful Female Voices in the Early Middle Ages: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, Frau Ava, Héloise, and Marie de France

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.

*Corresponding author: Albrecht Classen

Published: January 2,2025

Abstract

Investigations of women’s lives and culture have often demonstrated that history does not progress linearly. Women’s influence on public life and politics could have been much stronger in the past than it is today, and vice versa. Differently put, Baroque women writers, for instance, might have faced much more opposition and restrictions than some of their predecessors in the pre-modern world. In fact, apart from Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, we know virtually no other German woman poet from that period, whereas the situation in the Middle Ages looked quite differently. There are many reasons for these very uneven, at times regressive developments. This paper will thus illustrate the unexpected phenomenon of highly powerful female authors in the early and high Middle Ages, who more often than not were in strong positions to voice their concerns, to contribute to the literary discourse of their time, and to shape public opinions. None of the names to be presented here is new to medieval scholarship, but Women Studies, Gender Studies, and Literary History at large can certainly profit from the insights that we will gain in grouping together the works by these extraordinarily vocal and self-conscious female poets from the tenth through the late twelfth centuries.

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How to cite this paper

Powerful Female Voices in the Early Middle Ages: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, Frau Ava, Héloise, and Marie de France

How to cite this paper: Albrecht Classen. (2024) Powerful Female Voices in the Early Middle Ages: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, Frau Ava, Héloise, and Marie de France. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science8(12), 2652-2664.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2024.12.001