Negotiating Childlessness in the Middle Ages

This book examines the ways in which people wrote about and engaged with infertility in the German Middle Ages. Striking differences emerge across the vernacular stories, legends, and romances concerned. For some, childlessness is a huge problem, for others, a high ideal. Regina Toepfer considers the reasons for these differences, and how ideas changed over the period, revealing different narrative patterns that shape stories of childlessness right up to the present day.

These range from the late fulfilment of the longing to have children, assisted by divine or demonic help; through social and religious alternatives to parenthood; to the conscious decision to remain childless and achieve happiness through partnership alone. Bringing German source material to an English readership for the first time, this book provides fresh insights on childlessness that engage with current debates about sperm donation, adoption, and being childfree.

Regina Toepfer is Chair of Medieval German Literature at the University of Würzburg in Germany. Her research fields are narratology, translation history, and gender studies.