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A Woman Fights for Her Honour: Ruprecht von Wurzburg's Von zwein kouf mannen. Female Self-Determination versus Male Mercantilism
- Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 42, Number 2, May 2006
- pp. 95-113
- 10.1353/smr.2006.0020
- Article
- Additional Information
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Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 42.2 (2006) 95-113
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A Woman Fights for Her Honour:
Ruprecht von Würzburg's Von zwein kouf mannen. Female Self-Determination versus Male Mercantilism
Albrecht Classen
Late-medieval mæren offer a wealth of information about the history of mentality, the history of emotions, and especially about gender relations. In close parallel to medieval French fabliaux and medieval Italian novelle, this narrative genre served as literary entertainment for an urban and aristocratic audience and offered concrete didactic advice on how to abstain from vices and how to lead one's life according to the teachings of the church (Clements and Gibaldi; Fischer, Studien zur deutschen Märendichtung; Peters). Quite often we know neither the author's name nor anything about the biographical background, but we can be certain on the basis of a rich manuscript tradition that these works appealed to a wide audience (Mihm). In fact, these mæren continue to be highly fascinating narratives even today, in that they invite intensive discussions, trigger reflections about fundamental human values and morals, and shed significant light on power structures, social conflicts, cultural traditions, the treatment of marginalized groups, the relationship between the church and the laity, and economic aspects (Fischer; Ziegeler, "Ruprecht von Würzburg"). Many of these mæren would deserve to be incorporated into the curriculum in medieval literature classes, but often they are not available in good editions or translations.1 As is often the case today, the conflict between the genders plays a major role in these tales. Yet contrary to many modern assumptions, female protagonists in the mæren do not necessarily fare badly, and, more often than not, they are able to assert themselves in a surprisingly forceful and intelligent manner. [End Page 95]
Late-medieval society was certainly dominated by patriarchal power struc-tures, but it would be erroneous to conclude that women were entirely muted and had no space in which they could operate more or less freely (Allen, esp. ch. 6; Becker-Cantarino 46–58; Wunder 220–24). Of course, the literary discourse does not necessarily reflect historical reality, but, whether it proves to be de-scriptive or prescriptive, the general awareness of the gender debate, hence of the various issues and concerns particularly regarding women's conditions, can certainly be identified through a literary analysis (Classen, "Gender Conflicts"). Considering that many poets of these Middle High German mæren dealt ex-tensively with women's performance, abilities, speeches, skilful handling of complex and delicate situations and thus directly addressed the women among their audiences, inviting them to identify with the heroines and their struggle against male manipulations, it would not be correct to characterize the entire corpus as misogynist or to read them exclusively from moralist, clerical, hence patriarchal perspectives (Beine; Millet).
In fact, as will be argued here, even within a patriarchal context, female characters were at times attributed a moral, ethical, and intellectual position superior to that of their husbands, and they knew very well how to defend their honour, economic position, and public roles against male attempts at seducing, abusing, and subjugating them (Classen, "Love and Marriage"). A narrow feminist reading suggesting women's functionalization by a male power structure predicated on a traditional Christian moral system forcing women to submit themselves entirely to their husbands' rules would easily miss the point and would not do justice to the proper interpretation of individual texts that offer a multiplicity of perspectives regarding the gender relationship and women's opportunities to command their own agency. Certainly, late-medieval literature was often characterized by "normalized violence against women" and "acts of violence against women" (Weisl 117). However, the claim that "[w]hatever goes on in the foreground, the Canterbury Tales maintains a backdrop of a world physically antipathetic to the female sex" (Weisl 133) tends to mislead and blind us to significant alternatives, especially to sharp criticism of male behaviour and open praise of women...