Gender discourse in German schwanks of the first half of the 16th century: stating the problem

The paper describes the gender discourse of the German humorous literature of the epoch of transition from the Middle Ages to the Early New Time by studying schwanks. Texts created in the first third of the 16th century written by Johannes Pauli and Hans Sachs are analyzed. The works of these authors, as well as of their contemporaries S. Brandt, M. Luther, etc., are connected with the ideas of the Reformation. More than half of the stories in J. Pauli's collection "Schimpf (Scherz) und Ernst" is devoted to relations of the sexes. In conformity with the traditions of the medieval literature, Pauli criticizes female moral qualities; however, settled toposes of the author have individual features. The repeating plot concerns female garrulity, its criticism in gender literature is estimated as a reaction to women's expressing their own opinion, a display of independence. However, though Pauli derides this phenomenon, he recognizes it as a due one. He also repeatedly specifies the greed of women; its accentuation is usually connected with the growth of men's tension because of the uncertainty in the economic situation. Still, in Pauli's schwanks women are not competitors to the stronger sex. Among other female drawbacks we can observe squabbleness, connected with the distribution of power in the family; but females display all these negative qualities to each other, not to men. At the same time J. Pauli willingly recognizes female advantages, religiousness among them. In Pauli's schwanks there is not only negative, but also positive female identity; his female characters struggle actively for moral values. In the paper early schwanks of H. Sachs are also analyzed (''Seven Complaining Wives'', ''Seven Complaining Husbands'', ''Logomachy of a Servant and an Apprentice'', ''Complaints of Three Servants about their Mistresses''). In the first two histories only one of the seven spouses are happy with their family life. They teach the others to be attentive and tolerant to the partners. Though the discontent is expressed concerning the opposite sex, there is a certain gender balance. Spouses equally state mutual reproaches, similarly blaming the other party of malfunctions; even the decisions offered to settle family problems are similar. Sachs, as well as Pauli, does not make a big difference between men and women in their statuses in the family. Sachs scrutinizes the features of the man. The men's sins are libertin-age of the young spouse and avarice and jealousy of the old, laziness, drunkenness and ignorance, gambling, larceny and deceit; women's drawbacks are authoritativeness, possession and disposal of the money, irritability and scandalousness, flirting, laziness and untidiness, malignant gossip, sometimes drunkenness. However, listing women's defects is more modest, less bright and diverse, as that of men's. Besides, three of the four analyzed texts are written on behalf of women who proclaim burgher-protestant values, opposing men who are insolvent in this sense. As a whole, schwanks by Pauli and Sachs of the first third of the 16th century have no excessive intensity and aggression in relations of the sexes; there is no negative image of a woman. There is a continuous struggle for new religious-moral values. In this struggle great attention is paid to the formation of a new man's identity; women, it their turn, take the role of distributors of new ideas and norms in the conditions of transformation of the gender code.

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