Female truth-tellers: Subversive speech behaviour of women in narratives in the first printed books (1450-1500)

This paper investigates the behavior of female truth-tellers in narratives in the first printed books in Dutch (1450-1500). It will shed new light on the conceptualization and social acceptability of freedom of speech of women before the Modern age.

Although freedom of speech was not a civil right in the late Middle Ages, vocal criticism of power in the towns of the Low Countries was widespread. Research on this subject is mainly based on political and legal sources: records of court cases, chronicles, rules and laws and point to merely male actors.

I argue that the use of narratives offers an opportunity to investigate the mentality – the ‘characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, imagining and acting’ – behind this prevalent existence of subversive speech behavior. The narratives, representations connected real of fictional events, provided a risk-free space to test and consider ways of subversive speech behaviour.

I focus on the role of women truth-tellers in narratives. Truth-tellers are characters who candidly express, at their peril, their truth to those in power. An example of a female truth-teller is Helena in the historical romance Seghelijn van Jherusalem (1483-1486). She criticises her husband, the Emperor Constantine, by admonishing him to abandon his unbelief towards Christianity.

Female truth-tellers in narratives will be tracked in the first printed books (1450-1500) in Dutch. The printing press amplified the impact of notions on subversive speech through the dissemination of texts to a wide and partly new audience among, in particular, the middle classes of Dutch towns.