Download PDF | D. H. Green - Women and Marriage in German Medieval Romance-Cambridg University Press (2009).
276 Pages
In contrast to the widespread view that the Middle Ages were a static, unchanging period in which attitudes to women were uniformly negative, D. H. Green argues that in the twelfth century the conventional relationship between men and women was subject to significant challenge through discussions in the vernacular literature of the period. Hitherto, scholarly interest in gender relations in such literature has largely focused on French romance or on literature in English from a later period. By turning the focus on the rich material to be garnered from Germany — including Evec, Tristan and Parzival — Professor Green shows how some vernacular writers devised methods to debate and challenge the undoubted antifeminism of the day by presenting a utopian model, supported by a revision of views by the Church, to contrast with contemporary practice.
D.H. GREEN is Professor Emeritus in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College.
Preface
In the preface to Women Readers in the Middle Ages | wrote that the present companion volume was under active preparation. I was able to say this because the research and collection of material for both volumes were conducted at the same time and with an eye to what I originally, and optimistically, thought might be their joint appearance. If I have been able to complete the present book so relatively soon after its predecessor this is also because, when one has advanced well into one’s eighties, one is more than ever conscious of the pressure of time exerting its own urgency. The converse of this is that retirement gives one the freedom for uninterrupted research which our political masters, for all their talk of research assessment exercises, are loath to grant to academics, especially in the humanities, before they retire.
As previously, I owe a number of debts of gratitude. Foremost amongst these I thank Mark Chinca and Nigel Palmer for reading through the chapters of this book in their first shape and for giving me their detailed comments, most of which I have accepted. I have made considerable demands on the patience and readiness to help of members of the Cambridge University Library, which they have uniformly met with courtesy and efficiency. It is also a pleasure to thank once more Laura Pieters Cordy, and assisting her Hansa Chauhan, for transposing my handwriting into a print-ready text and for the helpful suggestions on style and wording which this elicited. Further, I acknowledge with gratitude the financial support from my University and my College which made a number of research stays in Germany possible.
My greatest debt is to Sarah, for her unflagging help, encouragement and willingness to talk over my many questions with me. Without her this book would not have been written.
Introduction
This book is conceived as a companion volume to Women Readers in the Middle Ages (Cambridge 2007), but with a double change of focus. In the earlier book I attempted to give a selective survey of the various classes of women in three countries (Germany, France, England) throughout the Middle Ages who were active as readers or engaged in other ways in literature, and also of the kinds of text they read, whereas now my question is more what appeals their reading made to them and how they may conceivably have reacted to it. Whereas the first book ranged over the whole span of the Middle Ages, from the seventh to the early sixteenth century, this one concentrates on the years before and immediately after 1200, above all because the wonderfully innovative force of the twelfth century promises illumination in regard to our question and because of the disturbances in the gender system which have been registered in that century. Focusing on the earliest German romances has the added advantage that they were written by authors of the highest rank and can be compared with French counterparts of similar quality.
The title of this book refers specifically to women alone. The reason for this is to provide continuity with the earlier volume, of which this one was at first conceived to form a part, but also because medieval misogyny felt the problem to lie more with women than with men, just as its modern successors coined a term for this (Frauenfrage) without feeling the need for a corresponding Ménnerfrage. Writing this book after its companion volume means that certain problems discussed earlier are not taken up again. These include the importance of women’s literacy and their reading practice (especially of romances), but also their activity as sponsors and patrons of literature in the vernacular. As a consequence, authors addressed not merely a lay audience, but more specifically a female audience, to whose interests they made special appeal.
In Part I one chapter gives a brief, but purposely general sketch of views about women commonly held in the Middle Ages and a second chapter prepares the ground for what is to follow by narrowing its focus down to feminisation in the twelfth century. Part II is devoted to a more detailed discussion of three of the earliest romance themes in European literature: Erec, Tristan and Parzival. It is not difficult to justify the choice of these romances, for they are historically important as the first examples of the ‘matter of Britain’, the first works to engage in vernacular fictional writing, and they were also in the lead in treating lay themes for a lay audience. Above all, they are works of high literary quality, of European rank. English speaking medievalists may perhaps know the works of Chrétien de Troyes, yet few outside the dwindling band of Germanists in English speaking countries are acquainted with his German colleagues. This is regrettable, not simply because of the quality of these German works (no mere copies of French originals), but also because they provide rich evidence of value for a gendered approach to the medieval period.
As a Germanist my main concern is with the German versions of these three romance themes, but their French counterparts are also taken into account. To assist English speakers, quotations from medieval works are translated, either where my text introduces them or in brackets after the actual quotation. Those who, it is hoped, wish to explore the works in their entirety are well served by English translations. Chrétien’s Erec and Perceval are available in translation in W. W. Kibler, Chrétien de Troyes. Arthurian romances (London 1991). The Evec of Hartmann von Aue has been rendered into English by M. Resler, Evec, by Hartmann von Aue (Philadelphia c.1987), Gottfried’s version of the Tristan story by A. T. Hatto, Gottfried von Strassburg. Tristan (Harmondsworth 1960), who has also translated Wolfram’s version of the Parzival theme, Parzival. Wolfram von Eschenbach (Harmondsworth 1980). Hatto’s translation of Gottfried also includes a translation of the fragments of Tristran of Thomas of Britain.
Although medievalists have learned much from the new questions raised by women’s studies in particular and by gender studies at large, I seek to qualify what may be termed an extreme feminism, the reluctance of some to recognise that, however dominant misogyny may have been in the Middle Ages, we cannot talk of a universal antifeminism in this period. If in A. Blamires’s anthology of texts, Women defamed and women defended (Oxford 1992), the defence seemed to fall markedly short, this was soon more than made good by the same scholar’s monograph, The case for women in medieval culture (Oxford 1997), in which the detailed and far-ranging case was argued by an impressive number of male as well as female authors. In the pages that follow I attempt to show that the case was also presented by the earliest authors in the romance genre in Germany as well as France. Medieval women were not entirely without sympathisers and allies amongst men.
Introduction
In the two chapters that make up Part I the argument operates with a double time-focus. The first chapter ranges over the medieval period at large, discussing selectively views held about women, largely negative but sometimes positive. Given its importance for clerical views we start with authoritative biblical evidence, but also consider ways in which it was developed throughout the Middle Ages, and include occasional significant qualifications or divergences from its implications. This theological testimony is then supplemented by what light the practices of feudal society may throw on secular attitudes towards women and their position in the world, sometimes in agreement with ecclesiastical views, sometimes deviating from them.
In Chapter 2 we narrow our range down to the twelfth century in considering what I term ‘feminisation’ in this restricted period. The justification for this closer focus is the important changes in the relationship between the sexes which have been registered for this century, but also because this sets the scene for Part II with its treatment of vernacular romances dating from before and just after 1200.
Both chapters provide a background for the works discussed in Part I and are meant to contextualise them. They cover a broad range of social and ecclesiastical issues relating to women, deliberately broader than those treated in Part II, in order to illustrate the extent of the debate into which vernacular authors then insert their literary contributions. This breadth of range is also meant to highlight the ambivalence of traditional views which lie at the heart of such a prolonged debate.
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