Ogling Ladies

Scopophilia in Medieval German Literature

Sandra Lindemann Summers

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780813064215
  9780813044187
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813063973
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

In the European Middle Ages, the harm a person's gaze could cause was greatly feared. A stare was considered an act of aggression; intense gazing was believed to exert immense power over the individual observed. The love of looking, or scopophilia, is a common motif among female figures in medieval art and literature where it is usually expressed as a motherly or sexually interested gaze--one sanctioned, the other forbidden. Sandra Summers investigates these two major variants of female voyeurism in exemplary didactic and courtly literature by medieval German authors. Setting the motif against the period's dominant patriarchal ethos and its almost exclusive pattern of male authorship, Summers argues that the maternal gaze was endorsed as a stabilizing influence while the erotic gaze was condemned as a threat to medieval order. Summers examines whether medieval artists and writers invented the idea of "ogling," or whether they were simply recording a behavioral practice common at the time. She investigates how the act of ogling altered the narrative trajectory of female characters, and she also considers how it may have affected the regulation and restriction of women during Europe's Middle Ages. Drawing upon contemporary gender studies, women's studies, film studies, and psychology, Summers argues that the female gaze ultimately governs social formation. The exploration of the female gaze in period literature transcends medieval scholarship and impacts our understanding of the broader problem of gender perceptions and social structuring in Western civilization.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. “A lady should never look directly at a male visitor”: Thomasin von Zerclaere
• 2. “Wild glances”: Winsbeckin and Der Renner
• 3. “The woman behind the wall”: Heinrich von Melk and Der Stricker
• 4. “He was as handsome as he could be!”: Male Beauty and the Ogling Lady in the Eneasroman
• 5. “The most handsome knight that ever lived”: Female Scopophilia in Parzival
• 6. “Lady, you saw it with your own eyes!”: Enite and the Perfect Female Gaze in Hartmann’s Erec
• 7. Knight or Eye Candy? The Gendering Gaze in Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein
• Conclusion
• Appendix: English translations of Heinrich von Melk’s Von des todes gehugde and Der Stricker’s Die eingemauerte Frau
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index