Das Andere Schreiben : Satire gegen die Frau und gegen die Ehe als Schreibmodell in lateinischen und altfranzösischen Texten des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts

The present thesis is primarily meant as a contribution to the theory and history of the literary genre of satire, which has been the object of controversial debate in the general theory of genre as well as in the history of medieval literature. The inquiry crosses the boundaries of Romance and Latin Philology and shows that, especially in the field of satirical and didactic literature, close relationships between vernacular and learned literature call for a comparative analysis. Moreover, it offers new insight into the medieval discourse on women, based on extensive interpretation and analysis of satirical and didactic texts, some of which have not yet been edited and have rarely been studied before. The primary tool of analysis is a model for the description of satire that states the tension between norm and transgression, between the constraint of justification and the freedom of literary and rhetorical play as the central characteristic of medieval satire. Various possible ways of resolving this inner tension are worked out through an analysis of misogynous and misogamous texts of the Middle Ages. This analysis shows at the same time that the gender problem brings a new focus to bear on the literary-theoretical problem of normativity in literary satire. The emphasis lies on a corpus of Old French and Latin literature about the estates, the so-called revues d'Estats and the sermons to women from the 13th-century ad status collections. This choice is supplemented by instances of Latin exempla and Old French fabliaux and misogynous dits. The final chapter gives a new interpretation of Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose, which is seen as a literary satire dealing with feminity and misogyny as key concepts leading to the central problem of the autonomy of the ethical subject. It is through the blending of the problems of gender and satire that the Roman de la Rose finally makes us aware of the possibility of overcoming the distance between the subject and the Other in the medium of literature