Imaging Paradise and the Patriarchal Shackles： Six Plays of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim

This study aims to examine the patriarchal thinking within the six plays of the Medieval female playwright, Hrotsvitha, under the Foucauldian theories on power and knowledge. Most of the studies of Hrotsvitha consider her to be a ""feminist"" because she reversed the negative dramatization of women from the Roman Terence’s comedies and instead portrayed the positive images of women in her plays. All of Hrotsvitha''s six plays abound with female bodies, sex and discourse codes. These codes are also predominant in the foundation of Foucault’s power theory. To Foucault, knowledge verifies power, and power, in turn, strengthens and validates knowledge. Foucault defines power as being exemplified in forms of microphysics that vary and flow among human relationships, social structures, governmental institutions (like nunneries and monasteries), and different classes. By using Foucault’s theory, we might be able to realize how power has been shaped and hidden in Hrotsvitha’s plays, especially in those sections that chiefly focus on tortures and punishments, the taming of female bodies and the transformation of prostitution, and the conversion of pagans. All help to reflect on the propaganda of Christian doctrines. My thesis attempts to examine and answer the question: Would those women characters have their own voices so long as the patriarchal faith pervades in the plays. Or, what they have done would rather intensify the patriarchal shackles of religion.