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Abstract
This dissertation contributes to the current discussion on the influence of genre on gender representation by focusing on various idealized feminine forms found in texts authored by medieval German religious women from 1100 to 1475. The texts (generally) fall into three genres—the vision cycle, the sister-book (Nonnenbuch), and the personal revelation—which together form a textual family of interrelated genres.
Each genre limits the types of figures which can be included. Vision cycles focus on salvation history and present the idealized feminine and masculine figures involved in divine narrative. The Nonnenbücher, which present an exceptional history of cloistered spirituality, record episodic vitae of perfected predecessors; ideals are expressed at the human level as attainable models for imitation. In the personal revelations, the female author herself becomes a pattern for imitation as she records her process of becoming extraordinary. This sequence accords with a temporal shift in the representation of feminine ideals, from divine to human, from static to dynamic, and parallels representations in the visual arts.
In the process of imitating and manipulating the various representations of feminine ideals, the authors alter both the ideals and the genres. In Hildegard von Bingen's vision cycle, she modifies the traditional binary representation of Eve and Mary. The authors of the sister-books adapt exemplary characteristics normally accorded to religious men to fit the cloistered life of Dominican nuns. The authors of the personal revelations employ external ideals as models for their own lives, record the events of their lives according to their chosen model, yet also adapt the pattern to accord with their personal circumstances.
This research furthers modern understanding of the complexity of medieval gender ideals, by demonstrating that there were several ideals available to religious women, that the selected genres influenced how these ideals were represented, and that the women were actively involved in the transmission and transformation of literary forms. That such variety could exist within an interrelated group of texts and assigned to a small proportion of the female population has broad implications for studies in genre and gender in all literary periods.