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Hrotsvit's Apostolic Mission: Prefaces, Dedications, And Other Addresses To Readers, Phyllis Brown

English

The most complete manuscript of Hrotsvit's writings, Bavarian State Library Clm 14485 (the Munich codex), includes prefaces, dedications, and other addresses to readers in which Hrotsvit names herself and provides information about her education, writing practices, and purposes. If this manuscript had not survived, we might have some of her plays and poems extant in other manuscripts, but we would know little or nothing about Hrotsvit, and we would likely not be able to imagine that such a scholar and writer could have existed. By naming and identifying herself as an author and addressing readers in the first-person, not only …