Einleitung

Abstract

Childlessness is an anthropological phenomenon. Since antiquity, it seems to have left traces in history in written and material sources throughout the most diverse cultures, religions and social groups. In the medieval tradition, childlessness and parenthood are addressed in very different contexts, literary forms and text genres. Evidence can be found in biblical, legendary and historiographical writings, in theological, legal, demonological texts, in treatises on natural history and gynecology, in courtly novels and epics. Apart from illustrating male cultural dominance through attempts at controlling procreation and birth, the earlier history of infertility itself has only recently become a widely researched topic in both cultural and Gender Studies.

This special issue proposes to view childlessness in the perspective of in/fertility; if we see cultural and symbolical practices of bearing and rearing children in a common context with social constellations that provide alternatives to being ‘biological’ parents and ‘biological’ children, if we see voluntary and involuntary childlessness as interlinked, an amazing number of views on parenthood and childrearing, on familial and personal continuity in the present and the afterlife come to the fore. Even if, or maybe because, procreation was such an important element of determining one’s own position in society, women and men were not always disadvantaged by childlessness. On the contrary, the authors of this issue provide evidence of a large spectrum of possible, and performed, agency of all sexes, ages and social groups.

Keywords Gender Studies; Infertility; Voluntary and Involuntary Childlessness; Parenthood