Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2009
Summary
In the two chapters of Part I we considered the different ways in which women were regarded in the Middle Ages in ecclesiastical and lay circles and feminisation in religious life and literature. If turning now to women in the context of love and marriage seems to exclude any public role and confine them to a restricted, even domestic function, my answer must be that this does no more than reflect their position in the Middle Ages. Women were frequently defined only as functions of men and in terms of their relationship (or non-relationship) with men: as virgins, married women, widows or prostitutes. To look at them in terms of love and marriage is one facet, albeit an important one, of the medieval conception of women's roles.
Marriage was a way of life theoretically for laypeople alone, so that in the following chapters we shall be concerned with literature in the vernacular (in the form of the romance) intended for the laity. Before this, however, we must recall that love and marriage were also a concern of the Church, either devotionally (love between man and God) or regarding the institution of marriage, where throughout the twelfth century the Church sought to impose its views on laypeople. Some of the attitudes illustrated in romance literature can therefore be paralleled, if under very different auspices, in clerical literature, whether in Latin (for clerical use) or in the vernacular (when addressing laypeople).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Women and Marriage in German Medieval Romance , pp. 63 - 83Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009