Zwischen Tugend und Laster

Barbara Sasse provides the first detailed analyses of a representative corpus of the plays, the so-called tragedi and comedi, written by the Noremberg shoemaker Hans Sachs (1494-1576) in the middle of the 16th century. For each play is offered a thorough examination of its intertextual frames of reference ; this includes both the literary sources, which Sachs usually conveyed via contemporary German translation, and his own motivic related master songs and rhymed stories (Spruchgedichte). This makes it possible to describe the author's dramaturgical methods more precisely and, in particular, the relationship between acting and moral instruction. Lastly, a closer look at Sachs' sources also more clearly reveals the author's crucial contribution to both the reception and popularisation of the various European literatures in the German-speaking territories of the 16th century and beyond.
In particular, the study focuses on the numerous female characters in the plays. Sachs, who was enormously interested in literature, drew inspiration for these from the whole Western literary tradition accessible to him, especially on the contemporary book market: the authors of classical antiquity, the spiritual and secular literature of the European Middle Ages and the Italian Humanists. Female figures assume a key function throughout in the contemporary topics discussed in the play, primarily the Lutheran doctrine and its model of marriage and family, but also the political and social discourses of order. In genre-specific terms, the new "serious" drama proves to be a creative virtual space for exhibiting new female attributes and potentials for action, which inevitably bring out subliminal contradictions to the collective moral concepts promoted in the appended doctrine. Conversely, however, the teaching often supports literary discourse, for example by linking female vices back to male misconduct, thus rebalancing the one-sided scolding of women within the framework of an essentially bilateral-structured marriage discourse.
The aim of the book is to make a significant contribution to Sachs' research in German studies. With the tragedi and comedi, a text corpus and a genre were chosen that have received little attention, especially in more recent studies, in which there have been a clear preference to focus on the master songs. In particular, the book is a quasi-complementary addition to the study by Johannes Rettelbach on the "non-dramatic poems of Hans Sachs", published in 2019 also in the "Imagines Medii Aevi" series.