The “Mighty Voice of Gandersheim”: Hrotsvit’s Didactic Motivation in Her Plays

Year 2024, , 158 - 165, 22.06.2024

Hediye Özkan

https://doi.org/10.53487/atasobed.1496037

Abstract

The monastic author of the Saxon Imperial abbey of Gandersheim, Hrotsvit of
Gandersheim was a notable woman playwright during the reign of Otto I, who had been
crowned Roman emperor by the Pope in 962. Hrotsvit subverts notoriously misogynistic
medieval literature and the negative literary depiction of women in her plays composed
in the middle of the 10th century. She substitutes the masculine tradition and pagan
writers’ themes of shameless indecency of lascivious women with saintly women who
verbally and intellectually defeat the male oppressors. Transfiguring the earlier depictions,
she is devoted to evangelizing of the world and committed to reorienting the dramatic
representation of women. Furthermore, she identifies herself with an educator and
moralist and discloses an assertion of intention to constructs a didactic persona. This study
analyzes Hrotsvit’s plays Dulcitius and Sapientia by discussing the ways in which Hrotsvit
defies the literary conventions in male-authored narratives through her female
characters, who simultaneously defy and subvert the male authority through rhetorical
skills, moral and intellectual ability, and Christian wisdom. The aim of this study is to show
that Hrotsvit elevates the depiction of women and to serve God and spiritual ends by
writing.

Keywords

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, medieval ecclesiastical literature, didactic literature, hagiography, female martyrdom

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