Rhetorical tropes and realities--a double strategy confronts a double standard: Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg negotiates a solution in the seventeenth century.

At a time and in a place that for the most part barred women from writing, Catharina Regina yon Greiffenberg (1633-1694) wrote and published by utilizing a number of strategies to circumvent those limitations. The devices she used seem fit exemplars of what Susanne Zantop called "complicated maneuvers, [and] ... strategies of adaptation and defiance women had to develop in order to gain admittance to a realm dominated by male printers, publishers, critics, and peers" during the early modern period. This paper focuses on one such device, which I refer to as the double strategy, and on Greiffenberg's use of conventional rhetorical devices as part of that double strategy. (SRF)

"Faced with an obstinate world, I reply with obstinacy. Create new poems, sing fresh songs! Courage must not allow the world's mockery to grind her into the dirt; rather, she must fly up to the stars" (qtd. in Cerny, Greiffenberg 87). Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg directed these words about her writing to her friend Sigmund von Birken in the year 1675, at a time and in a place that for the most part barred women from writing. She was not a lone exception to the general silence of women in the seventeenth century--others who wrote defiantly about their position as women writers in a male-dominated literary world include Sibylle Schwarz (1621-1638) and Susanna Elisabeth Zeidler (1657-1706) (see Schwarz 6 ff.; Czarnecka 166-67)--but, as continues to be pointed out, "Greiffenberg is known as the greatest woman poet of the German Baroque period" (Linton 371). The devices she used to respond to the realities she faced while negotiating the gender boundaries of that time seem, therefore, fit exemplars of what Susanne Zantop called "complicated maneuvers [and] ... strategies of adaptation and defiance women had to develop in order to gain admittance to a realm dominated by male printers, publishers, critics, and peers" (11).

Greiffenberg used a number of strategies to circumvent boundaries and legitimize herself as a female poet who wrote for the public. This paper focuses on one such device, which I call the double strategy. I define this "double strategy" in light of Sigrid Weigel's concept of the "schielender Blick" (double focus) outlined in her 1983 article of the same name and her positioning of women both inside and outside Occidental culture (see Topographien 259-64). In order to demonstrate how Greiffenberg was able to negotiate gender expectations, I will touch first on her biography and works, and then discuss the gender-role paradigms that applied to her socio-economic station, faith, and geographical location.

Greiffenberg lived from 1633 to 1694, spending most of her life in Seysenegg Castle, her family's estate in Lower Austria. With support from several men in her life (for reasons we can now only speculate on) she received a far better education than was normally available to a woman of her time, even given her social station as a member of the Protestant landed gentry. Her first teacher was her father's half-brother, Hans Rudolf von Greiffenberg, who became the family's legal guardian after the death of Greiffenberg's father in 1641 and who then married Catharina Regina in 1664. He instructed her in Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian, and introduced her to "political science" (Staatswissenschaft) and law (Gnadinger 249). She was also educated in poetics by Johann Wilhelm von Stubenberg (1619-1663), a neighbor and well-known translator of Spanish and French bucolic novels. (2) In 1659 Stubenberg sent one of Greiffenberg's sonnets to Sigmund von Birken, president of the literary society Pegnesischer Blumenorden, who in turn assisted in the publication of her first book in 1662. Greiffenberg corresponded with von Birken until his death in 1681. Another mentor may have been the Protestant pastor Daniel Klesch from Hungary (now Slovak Republic), who claimed to have instructed Greiffenberg in the art of poetry in 1652 (Zesen and Klesch, n. pag.); still other supportive males included Gottlieb Amadeus von Windischgratz and Johann Christoph Arnschwanger.

Greiffenberg also had at her disposal the well-stocked library in Seysenegg Castle. In 1983 Heimo Cerny published a survey of the 1924 auction catalogue listing of the library's contents. Among books presumed to have belonged to the Greiffenberg family (as well as those of the Risenfels, owners of Seysenegg Castle after 1664) were volumes on religion, church history, church law, bibles, a Koran, works on philosophy, and an enormous number of legal texts, as well as books on geography, history, architecture, medicine, natural sciences and mathematics, economy and the science of war, language guides and dictionaries (of Latin, Hebrew, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, English), and works by German, French, and Italian poets (57-58). Unfortunately, beginning in 1629, the circumstances of the Protestant landed gentry in Austria became increasingly difficult under the discriminatory politics of the Counter-Reformation, and most of this group eventually emigrated to Regensburg and Nurnberg (see Schnabel, Exulanten). Following her husband's death, Greiffenberg had little choice but to leave Seysenegg Castle and its library behind, moving to Nurnberg in 1679 or 1680. She did, however, still have the benefit of male support after the move, maintaining social/religious relationships with Daniel Wulffer, Johann Paul II von Wolzogen, and Georg Hannibal von Egk. She died in Nurnberg in 1694. (3)

Greiffenberg's first (and, today, best-known) book, Geistliche Sonnette / Lieder / und Gedichte, was comprised of 250 devotional sonnets and 52 songs interspersed with poems the writer calls "Kunst-Gedanken" (1662). (4) The major theme of this publication is the praise of God. In one of the first sonnets, Greiffenberg reveals this theme as her raison d'etre: "Oh praise / praise / praise / without respite or end / the One / whom you / my soul / were born to praise! / For this angel-work you were chosen by God" (SW 1:6). (5) Greiffenberg's conviction that she was "chosen by God" for this "angel-work" seems to have been based on two events. In the first, her mother, Eva Maria (nee Freiin yon Pranckh zu Reinthal und Frondsberg), suffering from a serious illness while carrying Greiffenberg, had pledged the unborn child to the service and honor of Christ. (6) The second event was an epiphany Greiffenberg describes in a letter to Birken as a "light" signifying her calling to further the glory of the Lord, occasioned by the death of her younger sister in 1651 (dated 1 August 1672; qtd. in Frank 20). It was following this mystical "Durchbruch-Erlebnis" (breakthrough-experience, Liwerski 583) that Greiffenberg devoted her entire existence and profession to the praise of God's glory. (7)

In 1675 the Sieges-Seule der BuBe und des Glaubens / wider den Erbfeind Christlichen Namens (Pillar of Victory of Atonement and Faith / Against the Archenemy of Christianity) was published, containing three distinct works written between 1660 and 1664. The title is from the first text, the topic of which is the Turkish invasion of Austria that, in 1663, had also threatened Seysenegg Castle. In this poem of over 200 pages, the author delivers a history of Islam, pleads for Christians to unite in raising arms against the enemy, and calls for a reunification of Christianity under Protestant rule. (8) This political piece (Gnadinger 262) is followed by Greiffenberg's German translation of Guillaume de Saluste Seigneur Du Bartas' Le Triomphe de la Foi, entitled Glaubens-Triumf oder die Siegprachtende Zuversicht, and the book's third section is a collection of twenty-one emblemata nuda (emblems without picturae) (see Daly, Dichtung 66 ff.), designated Tugend-ubung sieben lustwehlender Schaferinnen (Virtue-Practice of Seven Pleasure-Seeking Shepherdesses). Reminiscent of Harsdorffer's Frauenzimmer Gesprachspiele, the seven shepherdesses elucidate three virtues each, stressing in particular chastity and constantia.