Hrotsvitha

It takes true talent for a playwright to include topics and themes that are common for their time period, and yet be able to simultaneously incorporate messages far beyond those performed around them. Hroswitha of Gandersheim, as her title indicates, was a woman from a very Christian background. She had been raised and educated in a place that would almost guarantee that the influence of Christian doctrine to permeate into her work (Hroswitha, ). Though considered a mystery play, The Conversion of Thais the Whore can further be analysed as a stance against the authority of men, and how they can use their Christian views as an excuse for their ill behavior. Hroswitha introduces the character Pafnutius as an example of this. He is a man who hangs his own salvation on getting rid of Thais, a courtesan of such temptation he is unable to defend himself from her influence. The fact that a monk is unable to look past one woman can be hint at the weakness of man. In a time where men ruled the churches, this kind of accusation stands as a very powerful message, no matter how subtle the point had been. Hroswitha was a playwright far beyond her years in talent. She touched on subjects beyond her time, and used them to make her works much more personally relevant than they were overall in the tenth century. Instead of focusing on the moral stories of the bible that everyone knew, she used this knowledge to her advantage to create a scenario that could be seen as controversial from the…

Hrotsvitha wrote liturgical plays that were never performed on stage and became the first medieval woman to write about female spirituality. The main themes Hrotsvit emphasized her writing on was the virginity of woman. In her plays, “Hrotsvit constructs a world in which women’s chastity and asceticism become sources of power and direct links to God and Christ in which male lust is the fault of men, which is seen as un-Christlike” (Wetmore 18). Gallicanus is a satire that focuses on male lust…

Abraham by Hrotsvitha and a Play for Representing Adam, author unknown are both similar and different to one another in a variety of ways. Adam is directly based on the Bible text, while Abraham has references to God and the Bible, but takes place in its own time and place. Each are effective of communicating the messages they intend to in their own way, in construction, in their use of Representatio, and in the use of dialogue, staging, humor, wordplay, metaphor and characterization. A special…

that it has been around since the Middle Ages? In the Middle Ages drama was developed by the ruling and wealthy class to keep the poor peasants in line. Many plays were developed performed and produced by the church. at the time, the church was a major political and moral center. Medieval theatre refers to the period of theatrical performance between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and the in the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century AD. The…