Although there were a number of outstanding women writers of the late middle ages, it was not thought that women composed lyric poetry. Classen proves this to be a misconception, presenting here a selection of secular love songs and religious hymns composed by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German women poets, translated for the first time. Many seem to have left their works anonymously, or hid their names using acrostics; in these and other cases, Classen has identified a considerable corpus of writing which now fills the gap previously supposed to exist in the history of medieval and early-modern German women’s poetry.

Dr Albrecht Classen is University DistinguishedProfessor and Undergraduate Advisor in the Department of German Studies, University of Arizona