The Guardian

Medievalists excited at parchment fragment of 'vagina monologue'

Find in Austrian abbey dates poem to 200 years earlier than previously thought
Fragments from 60 lines of The Rose Thorn (Der Rosendorn) discovered on a strip of parchment in the library of Melk Abbey, Austria. Photograph: Melk Abbey

It has been called the earliest form of the Vagina Monologues – an argument in verse between a woman and her vulva, originating in the Middle Ages.

Now a fragment of the text, about who gives more pleasure to men, dates the poem to

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