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Lecturer(s)
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Solomon Kristýna, doc. Mgr. Ph.D.
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Course content
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Evil and Cunning Women of the Middle Ages The course explores the counterpart to the chaste and virtuous lady of courtly literature. It focuses on medieval texts that depict women who use cunning, intelligence, and rhetorical skill to undermine male authority, exploit, deceive, and humiliate men. These female characters do not act out of innocence or love; instead, they pursue their own interests. They use men for wealth, power, or revenge, thereby reversing traditional ideals of loyalty, obedience, and moral superiority. Corpus Aristotle and Phyllis - The clever Phyllis outwits Aristotle and exposes male overconfidence. Three Cunning Women - Three women deceive their husbands through cunning schemes and role reversal. The Priest Killed Five Times - A woman repeatedly kills her greedy husband and ultimately triumphs. Herzmaere - A woman dominates and humiliates her husband both verbally and socially. The Nuns' Tournament - Women fight fiercely against one another in a tournament to win a penis as a trophy, exposing their opponents' weaknesses. The Half Pear - A lady mocks her husband and demonstrates her superiority. The Nibelungenlied - Characters such as Kriemhild and Brünhild question traditional female ideals and act independently, vindictively, and destructively.
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Learning activities and teaching methods
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Dialogic Lecture (Discussion, Dialog, Brainstorming), Work with Text (with Book, Textbook)
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Learning outcomes
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Interpretation of texts of a specific period, genre, writer, or on a particular subject or topic.
After completing the course, students will be able to: describe alternative representations of women in medieval literature that differ from the ideal of the chaste, faithful, and virtuous courtly lady; identify the characteristic features of cunning, intelligent, independent, and dangerous female figures; analyse how female characters use cunning, language, intelligence, sexuality, power, or social status to pursue their own interests; explain how the selected texts challenge medieval concepts of female obedience, fidelity, and moral subordination; interpret gender relations and power dynamics between male and female characters; identify literary strategies such as comedy, satire, exaggeration, role reversal, humiliation, and the grotesque; compare different representations of female cunning, dominance, revenge, and violence in selected medieval texts; analyse the characters of Kriemhild and Brünhild in relation to traditional female ideals and questions of power, honour, and revenge; place the analysed works within their literary, cultural, and gender-related contexts; critically assess whether representations of active and dangerous women challenge the patriarchal order or reproduce contemporary misogynistic stereotypes; formulate and substantiate their own interpretations of selected literary texts; reflect on changes in the representation of female power and autonomy from the Middle Ages to the present day.
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Prerequisites
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The seminar is intended for all students of the Palacký University. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN GERMAN LANGUAGE!
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Assessment methods and criteria
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Student performance, Analysis of Creative works (Music, Pictorial,Literary), Didactic Test
Active participation in seminars, completion of the assigned primary texts, and a maximum of two absences.
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Recommended literature
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Fischer, Hanns. Studien zur deutschen Märendichtung. Tübingen. 1983.
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Grubmüller, Klaus. Novellistik des Mittelalters. Berlin. 2010.
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Jürgen Schulz-Grobert. Aristoteles und Phyllis. Stuttgart. 2006.
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