THE NEGOTIATION OF GENDER AND POWER IN MEDIEVAL GERMAN WRITINGS by DANIELA HEMPEN M.A. Universitat Tubingen 1991 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Department of Germanic Studies We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September 1998 © Daniela Hempen, 1998 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of yy>r> VT V^vQ-fe.^ The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date ~j- o Q«-oSo AOI N ^«sg DE-6 (2/88) 11 ABSTRACT Drawing on insights from feminist scholarship and gender studies, this thesis offers a new reading of selected medieval German texts with a special emphasis on the negotiation of gender and power. All three parts of the thesis demonstrate how the use of modern theories helps us to re-examine a medieval text's implications and ethical values, and to reconsider traditional views of the text. Part One focuses on the discussion of gender boundaries. Didactic and fictional texts, such as Thomasin von Zerclaere's Der welsche Gast and Ulrich von Liechtenstein's Frauendienst, show that violations of gender boundaries and the questioning of the traditional power relationship between the genders are crucial to the textual negotiation of masculinity and femininity. As I demonstrate in Part Two, the unequal relationship between men and women is especially important for the system of male homosocial bonding underlying medieval society. Examples of the physical and symbolic exchange of women and their favours are offered by didactic texts, such as Marquard vom Stein's Der Ritter vom Turn, and fictional texts, such as the Nibelungenlied. Aspects of this exchange are not solely related to medieval marriage practices, but are also reflected in courtly rituals, such as "frouwen schouwen" (watching the ladies). The importance of the conventionally beautiful female body as an object of exchange becomes obvious in Part Three, where I examine encounters between Christian knights and women defying the norms of feminine beauty. Here I focus on female figures that are defined as "doubly Other": both in their relationship to the masculine Self, and in their relationship to the ideal of medieval Christian femininity. Texts such as Wolfdietrich B and Der Strieker's Die Konigin vom Mohrenland show how the negotiation of gender and power assumes a new dimension in light male encounters with Wild Women, heathen women, "supernatural" women and old women, where the male partner often has to struggle to uphold his privileged masculine position. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iv INTRODUCTION 1 1. Gender under Discussion 1 2. Feminist Criticism and the Concept of Gender in Medieval German Literature: An Overview of the Debate 16 3. The Objectives of this Thesis 23 Part One: Constructing Gender and Power 39 1. The Biblical Tradition 3 9 2. Gender-Transgressions: Some Historical Examples 51 3. Gender and Power in Medieval German Literature 60 3.1. Didactic Literature 60 a) Sebastian Brant: Das Narrenschiff 60 b) Thomasin von Zerclaere: Der welsche Gast 69 3.2. Fiction 79 a) Nibelungenlied 79 b) Wolfdietrich B 92 c) Ulrich von Liechtenstein: Frauendienst 97 d) Dietrich von der Glezze: Der Gurtel 115 e) Beringer 128 4. Conclusions 135 Part Two: Male Bonding and the Role of Women 140 1. From Levi-Strauss to Sedgwick: Male Homosocial Bonding and the Exchange of Women 140 2. Male Homosocial Bonding in Medieval German Literature 149 2.1. Didactic Literature 149 a) Der Grofie Seelentrost 149 b) Marquard vom Stein: Der Ritter vom Turn 162 2.2. Fiction 169 a) Nibelungenlied 169 b) Kudrun 184 c) Hartmann von Aue: Iwein 191 3. "... den fremden an ze sehene": "frouwen schouwen" and Male Interaction 203 4. Conclusions 227 Part Three: Men Encountering "Other" Women 233 1. Otherness in Medieval Literature 233 1.1. Supernatural Women 244 a) Der Ritter von Staufenberg 244 1.2. Wild Women 251 a) Wolfdietrich B 251 b) Eckenlied 262 1.3. Heathen Women 266 a) Der Strieker: Die Konigin vom Mohrenland 266 b) Wolfdietrich B 273 1.4. Old Women 279 a) Alten Weibes List 279 b) Die Halbe Birn 291 2. Conclusions 295 RESULTS 298 BIBLIOGRAPHY 303 1 INTRODUCTION Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? Virginia Woolf1 Normally the task of the historian is to piece together an account of what happened from the available sources, offer some analysis of the causes and effects involved, and present his or her findings in the most accessible form to readers or students. In a case like the present one [...] this task is enormously more complicated, because many readers, rather than being eager for the information to be thus gathered and relayed, will be inclined to resist it. John Boswell2 1. Gender under Discussion In the year 1970 Kate Millett introduced the concept of "sexual politics," which proposed that sex was "a status category with political implications."3 For this purpose she had to expand the term "politics" so that it now described not only the "exclusive world of meetings, 'Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929; London: Flamingo, 1994), 31. 2John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books, 1994), xxvii. 3Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Doubleday & Co, 1970), 24. chairmen and parties," but all kinds of "power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another."4 Together with Virginia Woolf s A Room of One's Own (1927), Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949), Katharine M. Roger's The Troublesome Helpmate (1966)5 and Mary Ellmann's Thinking about Women (1968),6 Millett's work constitutes the basis of Anglo-American feminist literary criticism, which followed in the wake of the newly surfacing Anglo-American political feminist movement in the 1960s,7 usually referred to as the "second wave" of feminism. One of the most important concepts discussed in current feminist writings is the concept of patriarchy. Although this term has been defined in a variety of ways, most feminists agree that patriarchy is based upon structures of male domination and female subordination. Kate Millett, for example, describes patriarchy as a historical societal structure in which "the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political office, and finance, in short, every avenue of power within the society, including the coercive force of the police, is entirely in male hands."8 According to Millett, patterns of male domination and female subordination are to be found in their most intimate and pervasive form in personal, sexual relationships between the two genders. Since the family as the instance of primary 4Ibid., 23. 5Mary Ellmann, Thinking about Women (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968). 6Katherine M. Rogers, The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature (Seattle: U of Washington Press, 1966). 7Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 1985), 21-22. 8Millett, 25. 3 socialization is the first authority to enforce gender-based notions of power and subordination, the private world of the family is closely interconnected with the political world, thus giving testimony to the powerful feminist insight that the "personal is political." The initiation of children into the societal norms of femininity and masculinity is in itself a highly political act, and it can be said that "sexual politics" quite literally start in the cradle. The much more frequent killing of female, as compared to male, offspring in many historical (and some contemporary) societies is probably the most drastic example of this kind of sexual politics, but there are other, less horrifying signals, like the distinction between male and female infants by colours such as "blue" and "pink," colours which may translate directly into a different form and amount of attention parents pay to their children depending on their gender.9 Even though Millett's definition of patriarchy is certainly not the only one to be considered, it is especially powerful in that it conveys the notion that, as Mary Daly formulates it, patriarchy is a colonizing force, that "appears to be 'everywhere.:'" Even outer space and the future have been colonized. [...] Nor does this colonization exist simply "outside" women's minds, securely fastened into institutions we can physically leave behind. Rather, it is also internalized, 9See for example Judith S. Bridges, "Pink or Blue: Gender-Stereotypic Perceptions of Infants as Conveyed by Birth Congratulations Cards," Psychology of Women Quarterly 17 (1993): 204. The degree to which the colours "blue" and "pink" are commonly associated with masculinity and femininity may also be deduced from the fact that "lavender" as the colour "in between" has come to signify a state of violation of gender categories and is usually attached to homosexuals. See Venetia Newall, "Folklore and Male Homosexuality," Folklore 97(1986): 126. 4 festering inside women's heads, even feminists heads.10 The Christian religion plays a most important role in the internalization and re- enforcement of patriarchy in the Western world.