Ava's New Testament Narratives

Ava is the first woman whose name we know who wrote in German. She wrote her poem - or poems - on the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ sometime early in the twelfth century, no later than 1127. It seems certain that she was a layperson, and her work reflects a level of learning that raises all sorts of interesting questions about the education of the laity, especially the education of lay woman, and about the nature of authorship in the Middle Ages, generally and particularly in medieval Germany.



James Rushing is Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Rutgers-Camden. His primary research interests are in medieval literature and culture, above all in the relationship of literary materials to their adaptations in the medieval visual arts, and in the depictions of love, sex, and gender in medieval literature.



Introduction Bibliography Texts and Translation Johannes Das Leben Jesu Der Antichrist Das Jungste Gericht Notes