Beyond Virginity: Flesh and Spirit in the Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

Abstract

For half century an by Hugo Kuhn, Hrotsviths von Gandersheim dichterisches Programm, has stood fast against rebuttal in arguing that complex set of connections, thematic and formal, links all of Hrotsvit's work.1 For Kuhn, the question of dramatic program is subsumed under that of comprehensive literary program manifest in Hrotsvit's six dramas, eight legends, two narrative poems, and thirty-five hexameters describing scenes from the Revelation of John.2 The impact of this essay-the single most influential piece of Hrotsvit interpretation-owes at least as much to Kuhn's power of presentation as to close analysis, of which there is little. He writes apodictically, as when identifying virginity as Hrotsvit's basic theme: Durch alle sechs [Dramen] ziehen sich gleiche Motive hindurch. Vor allem die virginitas als Grundthema (p. 94); he discovers bold and plausible patterns: each play has its own Hauptthema, as well as Seitenmotiv (also called Seitenthema or Nebenmotiv, pp. 94-95), which can become the Hauptthema of following play; the Hauptthema of the dramas is Heilskreis der Jungfrauen und Bii3erinnen (p. 102, apparently consistent with Kuhn's idea of virginity as the dramatic Grundthema); the plays, centered on women, develop thematically in parallel with the male-oriented legends. Kuhn moves swiftly from one work to another, and most scholars have followed him admiringly. Peter Dronke declares that Hrotsviths dichterisches Programm is a superb essay and makes it the foundation of his own argument for Hrotsvit's plays and legends as a single magnum opus, with vast and elaborate internal symmetries. 3 The best-known component of Hrotsvit's work is her group of dramas. Trans-