Women Readers and Writers in Medieval and Early Modern Bohemia

Abstract

Czech scholarship has tended to underestimate the role played by women in the literary life of medieval and early modern Bohemia, in particular, their cultivation of Latin and Czech literature.¹ Some of the most accomplished works of the age in these languages owe their existence to educated women readers and writers. Whenever women are the focus of attention in traditional scholarship, as in a recent monograph entitled Ženy a milenky českých králu̇ (Wives and Lovers of Czech Kings, 1994), they are consistently regarded in an ancillary relation to men as objects rather than subjects in their own right. Yet several women were also significant propagators of culture and education, and some of the most accomplished works in medieval Czech and Latin were commissioned by women readers.