Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2014 Voice in the Dramas of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim Tara A. Bonds Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES VOICE IN THE DRAMAS OF HROTSVIT OF GANDERSHEIM By TARA A. BONDS A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2014 © 2014 Tara A. Bonds Tara A. Bonds defended this dissertation on October 9, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were: Laurel Fulkerson Professor Directing Dissertation Tim Stover University Representative Martin Kavka Committee Member David Johnson Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER ONE - Hrotsvit’s Background and Project Outline ......................................................1 CHAPTER TWO - Hrotsvit’s Relationship with Terence; History of Scholarly Perception of Hrotsvit; and the Rhetoric of the Humility Topos .........................................................................26 CHAPTER THREE - Hrotsvit’s Interplay with Terence: The Themes of Female Subjectivity and Voice, Marriage, Disguise and Parental Figures ...........................................................................58 CHAPTER FOUR - Hrotsvit’s Female Subjectivity and Voice versus the Hagiographical Sources; The Unspoken Challenge ................................................................................................96 EPILOGUE ..................................................................................................................................126 APPENDICES .............................................................................................................................131 A.Timeline of Authors .................................................................................................................131 B.Important Events in the Ottonian Empire and Gandersheim Abbey ........................................132 C.List of Manuscripts...................................................................................................................133 D.The Plots of Terence’s Plays ....................................................................................................135 E.Hrotsvit’s Writings ...................................................................................................................137 F.Hrotsvit’s Latin Passages for Chapter 4 ...................................................................................138 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................143 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................148 iii ABSTRACT This doctoral thesis studies the life and writings of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, a 10th century Saxon canoness within the Ottonian Empire. Hrotsvit’s decision to write, and thus enter the male-dominated literary realm, places her within a unique category. This canoness’ writings explore her perceptions of the worth of the Christian female in subjectivity and voice. Although her stated purpose for her dramas was to compete with the Roman poet, Terence, she also sought to provide female characters with strengths and choices not given to other female characters in either the Classical or medieval tradition. This project aims to study Hrotsvit’s six dramas, as compared with Terence’s six plays, in terms of the canoness’ interplay with thematic inversion and subversion. This paper will delve into Hrotsvit’s background in order to hypothesize as to her ambitions and goals. It will also analyze the canoness’ forms of inversion and subversion within both writers’ prologues, focusing on the humility topos as understood in Classical times and medieval times. This thesis also will study the themes of female subjectivity and voice within the literary structures of disguise, marriage, and parental figures. Lastly, this dissertation will analyze the themes of female subjectivity and voice within Hrotsvit’s dramas as compared to the hagiographical sources she used as her source material, in order to posit that the canoness not only openly challenged Terence, but also obliquely challenged the representation of women from the hagiographical literature. iv CHAPTER 1 HROTSVIT’S BACKGROUND & PROJECT OUTLINE During the latter half of the tenth century, within the Ottonian Empire there existed a royal abbey called Gandersheim. Housed within the walls of the abbey, a Benedictine canoness lived. She came from nobility, and knew a sheltered life. From Gandersheim, the canoness had access to the royal Ottonian court, a place of intellectual enlightenment on the one hand, and brutal war campaigns on the other. Yet it was here and within the library walls of Gandersheim that the canoness discovered knowledge of Classical authors alongside the teachings of the Church and stories of its saints. She might have had access to books and teachings that only a few select female contemporaries would have shared.1 But, this woman felt compelled to do more than just read, more than just satiate her own desire for knowledge. This canoness believed it was her duty to accept her God-given talent and use it to aid fellow Christians in their faith and understanding. Stepping outside the acceptable boundaries of her female role, she chose to express her religious beliefs in writing as only a few other women before her, a jurisdiction of rights that fell within the realm of the male sphere. She covered her decision with a mantle of Christian obligation and asserted her own female unworthiness. The former she truly believed in, if we take her writings and prologues at face value. The latter she did not actually believe in, again, if her writings and prologues are taken as fact, since she subverts her claims to inferiority in a number of ways. She used her intelligence to step into a male regime, and by employing a clever dual approach to any resistance to her writings and utilizing the rhetoric of Christianity, she proactively diminished the possibility of criticism and/or punition for her unorthodox actions. Had the canoness just written tales about saints, like other hagiographers of the time, she still would have stood out based on the fact that as a writing woman, she challenged the status quo. She, however, did not just write standard stories. She demanded a great deal more from herself than just replicating the same forms of literary characters as presented by male writers. Rather, she chose to challenge the presentation of fellow women in literature, a huge 1 At the time of Hrotsvit’s writings, women did not have the same privileges as men. We have very few instances of western women writers in the periods preceding Hrotsvit. Dhuoda wrote a century before Hrotsvit, indicating that certain wealthy women did have access to education, but her Liber Manualis was albeitly written for her oldest son, not for a wider assimilation. 1 undertaking. Women’s roles in literature, both from Classical sources and hagiographical sources were simple and static. Women were objects: whether they were Christian saints or pagan sinners, it did not matter.2 So, she decided to write stories wherein the women had meaning, purpose and the right to decide their own fates. And, she brilliantly managed to pull off this coup by playing within the strictures of genre. She did not create female characters whose strength was an affront to men; instead she crafted female characters whose strength derived from their chastity and Christian faith. In this, she is likely to have built upon hints present in the sources (such as the powerful female Christian martyr St. Perpetua), but also she knew women who, in their own spheres, exerted power. But focusing on martyrs and saints meant that her characters could only be accused of being strong in Christ, which was an unlikely accusation in the context of the spread of Christianity in Europe at this time. Even here, however, the canoness from Gandersheim did more than just trespass into the near-exclusively male club of writing. She went beyond mimicking the expected passivity of literary female characters and opened a door to a new representation of women as subjects. Beyond these two significant breaks in the status quo, she decided to challenge one of the best- known Roman authors in his own arena. Understanding that a pagan Roman author’s plays about lascivious and immoral characters intrigued many contemporary Christians, she decided to supplant him. She would write plays in his style and in meter, and within them twist and turn the Roman poet’s plots and unsavory characters into the opposite: she provided an offer of salvation and a cast of proper Christians. Engaging in a multi-layered contest with the playwright, Publius Terentius Afer, the canoness sought, and perhaps even achieved, victory over her opponent. Her plays told of holy women who overcame all earthly obstacles to maintain