Mothers and Daughters in Medieval German Literature

Résumé du livre

Ann Marie Rasmussen has focused on selected fictional texts in order to examine the wider implications of the mother-daughter theme as a literary and cultural paradigm. She explores each work in its historical context as a literary and cultural system deploying stereotypical representations of mothers and daughters in specific ways and for specific purposes. By examining works from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. Rasmussen charts the use made of mother-daughter stereotypes in light of historical change: the emergence of patrilineal kinship organization among the nobility, the problems attending noblewomen's exercise of political power, and the shifting contradictions between sexuality and honor in representations of common women.