Originally thought to have been written in the 15th century, a portion of the text was discovered in Melk Abbey Library in Austria, as part of another book's binding; this has been dated to around 200 years earlier.

Poems of this vintage were not uncommon in medieval literature, with other examples known from France, and in England, sexual vulgarity was a frequent theme of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry.

Der Rosendorn has been the subject of much scholarly debate over its depiction of medieval women and female sexuality to 13th-century eyes as well as its place within—and radical differences from—the broader canon of the German courtly romance.

Poems such as Der Rosendorn were uncommon but not unknown in the Middle Ages, particularly in German literature, and often-satirical writers were not afraid to use the foulest of language—mentula (cock),[6] cunnus (cunt)[5] and futuo (to fuck),[7] for example—to emphasise their points.

[9][note 2] The scholar Jane Burns also writes that fabliaux "draw attention to the rich mythical heritage behind the medieval association of mouth and vagina".

[15][note 3] The scholar Nichola McDonald has suggested that, while the Middle Ages as a period seems to have "accommodated ... the rude, bawdy or obscene", this did not mean that it was "devoid of the power to shock or offend".

[17] The poem begins with the male narrator going for a stroll and finding his way to a locus amoenus[note 4]—or a pleasant spot—where he sees a strange thing: a fenced-off garden, with a rose bush from which the rosewater is being extracted.

[20] With "narratorial licence ... pushed to its limit", the poem features an anthropomorphised vagina which has been separated from a woman, and the audience is told how "von ainer wurz fugt sich das,/Das die Fut zu ir frauen sprach" ("As a result of a herb the cunt was able to speak to her lady").

The 15th-century editions have been known to scholars for some time, but, notes the author Jason Daley, the latest discovery "mean[s] that someone was writing about a talking vulva much earlier in the Middle Ages than previously believed".

[8] Coxon also suggests that, as it is known that, for example, that noble ladies were allowed—indeed, encouraged—to call up an obscene performance by the fools, "so comic tales of this ilk may have served as the basis for social interaction, entertainment and play between the sexes in certain—if not all—cultural contexts".

[28] The poem, although very distant from the classic chivalric romances of contemporary German literature, does contain elements of the genre, particularly in its "eavesdropping male narrator", and the handmaiden in a rural and rustic sheltered setting.

[note 7] The poem also examines the theme of fidelity,[19] although it makes no attempt to draw out a moral lesson from the story it tells—indeed, argues Coxon, it deliberately avoids doing so.

[24] But Glaßner argues that it is more than just a fantasy: although it may seem bizarre to modern readers, "at its core is an incredibly clever story, because of the very fact that it demonstrates that you cannot separate a person from their sex".

[38] Der Rosendorn, argue the German medievalists Albrecht Classen and Peter Dinzelbacher is, along with Nonnenturnier and Gold und Zers, one many medieval priapeia "in which anthropomorphized genitals talk to their owners, earnestly negotiate with them, get into quarrels, separate from one another, are maltreated and sometimes come together again".

[44] The scholar of gender studies, Emma L. E. Rees, commented how, in Der Rosendorn, as in other iterations of the motif, "again, it's a man who is responsible for reuniting a woman with her wayward, talking vagina".

[46] The 18th-century French philosopher Denis Diderot imitated the motifs of Der Rosendorn and its companions in the genre, as the basis for his Les Bijoux Indiscrets of 1748.

[47] The premise of Der Rosendorn, suggests Daley, is still a useful literary trope in the 20th century, for example, in the 1977 cult movie Chatterbox, was also known as Virginia the Talking Vagina.

[49] The journalist Christobel Hastings has also related Der Rosendorn with Ensler's play, calling the former an example of how "long before The Vagina Monologues came into being ... there was plenty of exploration into the complexities of female sexuality in the literary canon".