Ottilia Fenchlerin's Songbook: A Contribution to the History of Sixteenth-Century German Women's Literature

Women authors do not figure prominently in the annals of the history of early German literature. If their voices can be heard, they are primarily those of mystics and other religiously oriented writers. This article examines a songbook that the Strasbourg burgher Ottilia Fenchlerin commissioned a scribe to produce in 1592. It contains primarily women's songs that were composed, according to the narrative voices, by women and that explicitly address women's issues and concerns. Although they seem to continue the medieval tradition of Frauenlieder composed by male poets, both the detailed literary analysis of exemplary pieces and comparisons with some representative Middle High German women's songs and Provençal trobairitz poetry undoubtedly created by women writers indicate that the lyrics in Fenchlerin's songbook address women's issues and concerns in a surprisingly radical fashion without precedent in the history of German literature. (AC)