Library of Medieval Women Series

Selection of the works of Hrotsvit, the first-known woman dramatist, containing legends, dramas, and epics. Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (c.935 - c.975), almost certainly of noble Saxon parentage, was a canoness of the Saxon imperial abbey of Gandersheim, living and working there during its time of greatest material prosperity and cultural and intellectual pre-eminence. Her importance cannot be overestimated: she is the first poet of Saxony; the first known dramatist of Christianity (indeed the first known woman dramatist of any time); and a woman displaying erudition and wit in an essentially patriarchal age, a female author in a literary field dominated by men who insisted on re-evaluating and redrawing the literary depiction of women. Discovered in the late fifteenth century, her extraordinary oeuvre, written in medieval Latin, comprises a wide variety of genres: eight legends, six dramas, and two epics, organised into three books. The present volume contains a selection of Hrotsvit's works in Englishtranslation, together with an interpretative essay, critical introduction, and scholarly apparatus. Professor KATHARINA WILSONteaches at the University of Georgia.

Helene Kottanner's account, one of the oldest known pieces of historical prose written by a women, transcends the loyal discretion of a royal servant and is unconsiously revealing about herself and her ambitions.