Hrotsvit’s Latin Drama Gallicanus and the Old English Epic Elene: Intercultural Founding Narratives of a Feminized Church

Chance, Jane; Brown, Phyllis R.; McMillin, Linda A.; Wilson, Katharina M.

doi:10.3138/9781442675902-012

Cited by 2 publications

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“…It would be impossible to say whether the poet was addressing a mixed audience, as this introductory passage suggests, but the religious and didactic context certainly implies the opposite, hence a purely female audience, explicitly predicated, as Jane Chance has observed, on ''gender difference.'' 43 At any rate, Hrotsvit at the beginning presents a specifically male perspective, with Callimachus and his friends discussing his options with this woman who would be, at least according to the opinion voiced by the friends, utterly inaccessible for Callimachus because of her strong Christian faith. Not only does she adhere strictly to the biblical teachings of St John the Apostle, to embrace God with every fiber of her body and her mind; she has also for a long time abstained even from marital sex, even though her husband, Andronichus, is as much a Christian as she is.…”

Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex on the Stage (and in the Library) of an Early Medieval Convent: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

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2010

Orbis Litterarum

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Early medieval drama (in Latin) surprisingly focused very much on the theme of sexuality, as best illustrated by Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (10th century). She was most eager to compete with the Roman dramatist Terence and to create new Christian plays that were, on the one hand, basically determined by the theatrical strategies of Terence, and yet followed, on the other, early medieval Christian values as developed by the Church Fathers and desert hermits. Although Hrotsvit pursued strongly religious values throughout her works, she also revealed a keen interest in theatricality per se, irrespective of the religious paradigm characteristic of the Middle Ages. At the same time this tenth‐century convent author demonstrated an incredible skill in exploring and utilizing a wide range of sexual themes in her plays and religious narratives. She consistently demonstrated a unique ability in creating theatrical works that aimed both for the basic entertainment of a convent audience and also for a fundamental clerical education that did not ignore the world of sexuality as a dangerous yet unavoidable aspect of human existence.1

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Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex on the Stage (and in the Library) of an Early Medieval Convent: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

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2010

Orbis Litterarum

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The Lonely Afterlives of Early English Queens

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Schilling

2022

Neophilologus

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Queens were important figures within the court communities of pre-Norman England, their status defined by their relationship to the king, whether as queen-consort, queen-mother, queen-regent, or queen-dowager. These were positions with an attendant degree of prestige and authority, but a vulnerability to the vicissitudes of the king’s fortunes. Often this would lead to periods of exile from the court community. Such exiled queens could find refuge on their own lands or other communities, such as abbeys and foreign courts. This removal from the centre of power allowed the king to minimise or control any vestigial queenly status or authority, and guard against the exiled queen becoming a locus for alternative political factions. These queens-in-exile form the focus of this article, which seeks to establish not only the patterns and contexts that allowed such social isolation to occur, but queens’ emotional responses to it. Here there are four interlinked concepts: social isolation (exile), emotional isolation (loneliness), social loneliness (the absence of community), and emotional loneliness (the absence of a close individual). These are observable across the experiences of an array of literary and historical pre-Norman queens, from Beowulf and Elene through to royal women, such as Æthelflæd (d. 918), Eadgifu (d. c.966), and Emma of Normandy (d. 1052). Through the analysis of such experiences, it is possible to construct cultural perspectives on the exercise of queenly authority, on queenly vulnerability, and on queenly affect.

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Hrotsvit’s Latin Drama Gallicanus and the Old English Epic Elene: Intercultural Founding Narratives of a Feminized Church

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Sex on the Stage (and in the Library) of an Early Medieval Convent: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

Sex on the Stage (and in the Library) of an Early Medieval Convent: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

The Lonely Afterlives of Early English Queens

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