Laughing at Empire: The Transgressive, Saintly Humor of Hrosvit's "Dulcitius"

The tenth century canoness, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, drew from hagiographic legenda in search of extraordinary figures, particularly women, to serve as protagonists in her dramas, crafted in the style of the Roman playwright Terence. This is aptly demonstrated in her work, Dulcitius, adapted, with no substantial changes in the plot, from the story of three sisters found in The Passion of Saint Anastasia. While the play begins with these women sentenced to death, the multiple attempts by the agents of the Roman empire to humiliate or assault them are subverted in particularly humorous ways, rendering the men in power and the empire they represent ridiculous. This paper will analyze the levels of transgression found in Hrotsvit’s Dulcitius arguing that a transgressive message of laughter “from below,” as outlined by Jacqueline A. Bussie, can be reclaimed from the work as humor uniquely disrupts dominant ideologies of empire and patriarchy.