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Queering the Classics: Gender, Genre, and Reception in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

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Queering the Classics: Gender, Genre, and Reception in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim QUEERING THE CLASSICS: GENDER, GENRE, AND RECEPTION IN THE WORKS OF HROTSVIT OF GANDERSHEIM by Colleen Dorelle Butler A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Colleen Dorelle Butler 2016 Abstract Queering the Classics: Gender, Genre, and Reception in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. Doctor of Philosophy, 2016. Colleen Dorelle Butler, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. This thesis examines how the world’s first female dramatist, the tenth-century canoness Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, challenged pedagogical interpretations of gender in her imitations of Roman literature. The dissertation finds that while Hrotsvit imitated the content and form of Ovid, Terence, and Virgil, she denaturalized the binary conceptions of gender promulgated in their works by inverting the specific markers of gender identified in pedagogical texts associated with them and by linking those behavioural markers to imbalances of social power rather than to biology. Studies of the sex/gender system in the early medieval period have tended to focus on medical discourses which attribute gendered behaviour to biology. My doctoral research uses untapped primary sources to prove that gender was not invariably thought to be tied to biology in the medieval cultural imaginary. The commentaries, glosses, and other pedagogical texts on classical literature used in medieval classrooms presented readers with a concrete set of ideas about gender, including highly specific linguistic and behavioural expectations. While scholars have increasingly begun to analyze commentaries on classical literature for insights into medieval gender norms, the majority of this work has focused on the dissemination of ideas about masculinity in male homosocial schools during the twelfth century and beyond. My research contributes to this conversation by asking how early medieval female readers responded to the educational discourses on gender which they encountered in the female-led classrooms of women's religious institutions. The thesis is ii also innovative in its proposal that Hrotsvit’s book of saints’ legends was written in imitation of Ovid. Overall, the dissertation revises current understandings of the sex/gender system in the Ottonian period, demonstrating that ideas which resemble the social construction of gender were circulating centuries earlier than previously thought. iii Acknowledgments Many thanks go to my supervisor, David Townsend, for introducing me to Hrotsvit and for his endless encouragement and guidance on this project. I am also indebted to my committee members Suzanne Akbari and David Klausner for their forbearance and advice. I would also like to thank George Rigg, Ronald Herzman, and Graham Drake for sparking my interest in and giving me the tools to work critically with medieval languages and literature. Finally, I am incredibly grateful for my friends and family, without whom I would not have had the time or the fortitude to finish this thesis—thank you so much for everything. iv Table of Contents Chapter One Sum animal capax discipline: Gender and the Reception of Hrotsvit 1 Chapter Two: “Subject to Confusion”: Destabilizing Gender through Genre in Hrotsvit’s Terentian Comedies 44 Chapter Three Communi similis conamine voti: Gender and the Reception of Virgilian Epic in Hrotsvit’s Liber Tertius 135 Chapter Four The Christian Metamorphosis of Ovid in Hrotsvit’s Book of Legends 194 Bibliography 242 v CHAPTER 1: Sum animal capax discipline: Gender and the Reception of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim [N]on denego praestante gratia creatoris per dynamin me artes scire quia sum animal capax discipline sed per energian fateor omnino nescire.1 I do not deny that, with God’s grace, I know the arts by means of my own inherent ability, since I am an animal capable of learning. But I confess that I do not know them entirely by means of my own actions. — Hrotsvit The lines cited above are taken from a letter the tenth-century Saxon canoness Hrotsvit of Gandersheim wrote to “certain wise male patrons” of her book of dramas.2 This passage emphasizes two concurrent ideas—that Hrotsvit derives her intellectual gifts from God [praestante gratia creatoris] and that she is responsible for actively utilizing those gifts in order to learn [per dynamin me artes scire quia sum animal capax discipline]. The compact nature of the Latin language enables Hrotsvit to encompass both of these ideas simultaneously within the final clause [sed per energian fateor omnino [me artes] nescire]. Here Hrotsvit both ascribes credit to God for her intellectual abilities (“I do not know the arts only by means of my own actions”) and also attributes any gaps in her erudition to a lack of effort or activity [energian] rather than to a lack of inherent capability [dynamin] (“because of my own actions, I do not know the arts entirely”). Peter Dronke has suggested that Hrotsvit’s use of the words dynamin and energian are a purposeful allusion to Jerome’s letter to Paulinus on the importance of 1 Hrotsvit, Epistola ad quosdam sapientes huius libri fautores, in Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, Opera Omnia, ed. Walter Berschin (Munich: K.G. Saur Verlag, 2001), 135, ll. 5–8. All references are to Berschin’s edition unless otherwise noted. All translations are my own. 2 Hrotsvit, Epistola ad fautores, p. 134. 1 2 learning the scriptures.3 Dronke translates these two words in the specific Aristotelian sense of potentiality (“potentially”) and actuality (“in actuality”), a move that mirrors Jerome’s and Hrotsvit’s use of the Greek philosophical terms in their letters instead of Latin versions of these words. Although many English translations of the New Testament, including the King James Version, render Paul’s ἐνέργεια and δύναµις interchangeably as “power,” in the Vulgate Jerome clearly attempts to replicate the Greek differentiation between the two terms through his consistent use of operatio and virtus, respectively.4 Indeed, like ἐνέργεια and δύναµις, operatio and virtus convey the difference between actively utilized power and the capacity to be powerful. The concept that Jerome conveys to Paulinus and that Hrotsvit conveys to her male patrons—that God grants gifts (intellectual or otherwise) to people and that people are responsible for the degree to which they utilize those gifts—ultimately stems from the New Testament, most notably outlined by Paul in Romans 12:3 and 1 Corinthians 12:4-6. By using these specific Greek terms, Hrotsvit not only demonstrates the extent of her own learning, but also underscores the difference between capability and action. Hrotsvit thus draws upon patristic and scriptural precedent both to praise God and to call attention to her own personal agency in a number of different ways. In his letter, for example, Jerome encourages Paulinus to devote himself to learning the Scriptures even if their content seems rather obvious, explaining that biblical passages “offer one 3 Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 74. For an edition of Jerome’s letter, see PL 22: col.0540–0549. The terms to which Dronke refers occur in section 2 (Habet nescio quid latentis energiae viva vox) and section 3 (Mollis cera et ad formandum facilis, etiam si artificis et plastae cessent manus, tamen τῇ δυνάµει totum est, quidquid esse potest). 4 See for example, 1 Corinthians 1:24 (virtutem for δύναµιν) and Ephesians 1:19 (operationem for ἐνέργειαν). Here and throughout the Vulgate is cited from Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. Robert Weber et al. 4th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). 3 meaning on the surface, and another underneath,”5 that “multiple meanings lie in single words,”6 and that “in the same passage, a learned person may hear one thing, and an unlearned person another.”7 In a similar way, by writing in a purposefully ambiguous style, Hrotsvit mimics biblical models of writing and invites patristic modes of interpretation. In co-opting and redeploying such authoritative methods of writing and interpretation, Hrotsvit demonstrates that she is capable of understanding and reproducing the style of divinely-inspired texts. Hrotsvit also directly adopts the specific sort of humility underpinning the church father’s conception of Christian knowledge. Jerome rails against those who are unaware of their own ignorance, writing: “to teach what you don’t know is similar to the entertainment provided by snake oil salesmen, and, if I may speak with annoyance, it’s even worse if you don’t know what you don’t know.”8 Hrotsvit’s confession that she “does not entirely know the arts” and her further statement at the end of the same letter that “I know that I don’t know” both acquit her of the sort of presumption against which Jerome preaches.9 Such statements also align Hrotsvit to Jerome himself, who likewise admits: “I am not so insolent and stupid that I promise to understand these things. but I confess that I wish to do so.”10 5 aliud in cortice praeferunt, aliud retinent in medulla. Jerome, Ad Paulinum, PL 22: col.0548. All translations are my own. 6 Singula in eo verba plena sunt sensibus. Jerome, Ad Paulinum, PL 22: col.0545. 7 in una eademque sententia, aliter doctus, aliter audiret indoctus. Jerome, Ad Paulinum, PL 22: col.0549. 8 et circulatorum ludo similia, docere quod ignores: imo, ut cum stomacho loquar, ne hoc quidem scire quod nescias. Jerome, Ad Paulinum, PL 22: col.545. 9 scio quod nescio. Hrotsvit, Epistola ad fautores, p. 135, l. 21. 10 Non sum tam petulans et hebes, ut haec me nosse pollicear. sed velle fateor. Jerome, Ad Paulinum, PL 22: col.0549. 4 Yet for Jerome, there are right and wrong ways of learning and sharing one’s own knowledge. In particular, Jerome repeatedly expresses distaste for those who would dare to teach among or learn from women: Alii adducto supercilio, grandia verba trutinantes, inter mulierculas de sacris litteris philosophantur.
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