Weibliche Autorschaft in allegorischen Ich-Er¬zählungen über Liebe: Christine de Pizan und Hadewijch von Antwerpen

Abstract

The paper deals with late medieval allegorical first-person narratives about love that usually recount a love experience from the point of view of a male lover-poet. It examines systematic shifts between the constitutive elements of this text family ? the first-person stance, allegorical form and the courtly love theme ? that occur in texts of this type written by women authors, as in the visions of 13^th-century beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp and the writings of early 15^th-century author Chris­tine de Pizan. Christine shows a certain distance towards the implication of herself in the story and/or to the use of allegory in her texts on love. However, if she estab­lishes an allegorical framework while filling all three functions of the ›I‹ ? author, narrator and protagonist ?, she brings to the fore subjects other than love. In con­trast, the female mystic Hadewijch of Antwerp expresses agency in love and is au­thorized by her love experience to write about it in her visions. The conception of a feminine soul as spouse of God may have facilitated Hadewijch’s appropriation of the first-person stance and agency in love. The shift in gender of the loving and au­thorial ›I‹ in her visions goes along with a shift in the scope of allegory and of love, both of which have a religious nature. In order to better conceptualize this underlying gender system of the text family and include historical aspects of what it means to say ›I‹, the paper proposes to extend a purely literary perspective by applying Fou­cault’s and Agamben’s concept ›dispositive‹.