Free (nook/Kindle/Kobo/DRM-free) Works of Hrotsvit [10th C Woman Playwright w/Notes]

[ATDrake]

The Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim edited and introduced by David H. Price is a collection of plays, prose pieces, and other stuff written by the 10th century German female playwright, poet, and historian (Wikipedia), in both its original language text from a 1501 edition and accompanying English translations with notes, free courtesy of the University of Illinois Press as #2 in their Women in Print series of e-books focusing on influential historical female authors.

This is a very nifty-looking series which looks to perhaps be offered as a permafreebie resource () and brings attention (with explanations!) to otherwise-obscure-to-modern-readers works.

As for the works themselves, there's a whole lot of faith-related plays and legends and other stuff as might be expected from the times, so this might also be of special interest to persons looking into medieval depictions of Christianity in literature. Plus some pieces written in praise of and sent to other prominent historical figures such as the various Holy Roman Emperors Otto (Wikipedia), which may be of especial interest to the historical political enthusiasts in the audience.

Currently free @ B&N (also UK), Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK), Kobo & Google Play (both available to Canadians), and directly from the university's dedicated website for the project (DRM-free ePub/Mobi/PDF of both this version available worldwide, as well as online reading/PDF download of facsimiles of the original print editions & some sort of video; requires javascript to be active in your browser).

And this has been the (late!) selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Because a layperson-friendly educational-to-the-masses academic project dedicated to bringing into a spotlighted (and annotated! have I mentioned how much I love annotated?) feature works by vintage historical personages into an easily accessible format (and DRM-free! with facsimiles of the originals! have I mentioned how much I love DRM-free and facsimiles of the originals?) for those who would otherwise probably not know about them without getting into some specialist studies (I'd heard of Hildegard of Bingen (Wikipedia) before, but Hrosvitha is just a bit more obscure than even my medieval recreationist-spectating Gentle Readership had ever encountered) is a totally awesometastic thing of beauty and a joy forever and a cause to

IMHO, that is.

Enjoy!

Description
The discovery of these works by a tenth-century woman who wrote plays when no one else in Europe was writing plays, and who imitated the style of Terence, when most people thought the classics had been forgotten, caused a literary sensation when it was first published in 1501.

Historical assessments of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim are liberally adorned with the word "first."

After all, she was the first major medieval woman author, the first German woman writer in print, the first post-classical playwright, as well as the first German to write a literary work on the Faust-theme, and she is sometimes said to have been the first woman historian. These are landmarks to be sure.

Yet Hrotsvit's place in cultural history is even more significant than such an impressive number of firsts might indicate, for she has reemerged to become a living part of European literature, a singular phenomenon for a tenth-century author. She is not only the earliest writer, of either gender, to have a secure place in the German literary canon, but also the only author from her period whose literary works continue to inspire generation after generation of fascinated readers from disparate cultures.

Although her writings did not circulate widely in the Middle Ages, they became a sensation from the moment they were discovered in 1493. Her plays and poetic narratives began to attract widespread attention in the twentieth century and are now prominent fixtures in the American college curriculum. Her very name, which she confidently and aptly translated as "the powerful sound from Gandersheim" ("clamor validus Gandeshemensis"), portended her literary success. Disappointingly few aspects of Hrotsvit's life are known.

Apart from comments scattered among the introductions to her poetry, there are no reliable documentary sources for reconstructing her biography. Occasionally, this has provided license for odd, sometimes sexist and even misogynist, suggestions, especially in older scholarship, about her life experiences. Most famously, a nineteenth-century scholar argued that Hrotsvit never actually existed but was a literary hoax perpetrated by Conrad Celtis, Johannes Reuchlin, and other early humanists.

Although this dubious charge was taken seriously for many decades, it has been definitively (and repeatedly) debunked. In fact, intensive scholarship over the last two centuries has pieced together a secure, albeit sparse, account of the likely circumstance of her life. Her floruit dates--ca. 935 until ca. 973--have excellent evidence. She identifies herself as a canoness of Abbey of Gandersheim (Saxony, Germany) during the rule of Abbess Gerberga II (940-1001; abbess as of 959), a niece of Emperor Otto I. Hrotsvit also helpfully observes that her abbess is younger than she, thus allowing scholars to place her birth approximately in 935. Several of her works mention well-documented historical events, such as the papal coronation of Emperor Otto I in 962 and the coronation of Otto II, as co-emperor, in 967. Her final work, a brief epic on the history of Abbey of Gandersheim, was completed while Otto I was still alive, thereby indicating that her literary activity, at least as far as the surviving works are concerned, ended before his death in 973.