Late-Medieval German Women's Poetry

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.