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Kontexte und Konkretisationen zu einer Poetik des essemple im Prolog der Vie de sainte Osith

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Abstract

Taking into account the terminology developed by 12th-century vernacular literature, the question of the imitability of certain deeds exhibited in medieval hagiographic narratives should be discussed anew. In the chanson de geste and the vie de saint, the term essemple appears much more frequently than terms equivalent to the imitatio Christi, marking an interface between autology and heterology. In the prologue of the Vie de sainte Osith, one can observe this particular duality of a semantic reference to the actions of the speaker as well as to the actions of the saints, a duality which applies to hagiographic speech as a whole. Thus, the term essemple can be taken as a starting point for questions concerning the conditions of hagiographic speaking, the contexts of a concrete identification and the flip sides of a specifically hagiographic notion of exemplarity. In that way, essemple forms the centre of an implicit poetics.

Abstract

Taking into account the terminology developed by 12th-century vernacular literature, the question of the imitability of certain deeds exhibited in medieval hagiographic narratives should be discussed anew. In the chanson de geste and the vie de saint, the term essemple appears much more frequently than terms equivalent to the imitatio Christi, marking an interface between autology and heterology. In the prologue of the Vie de sainte Osith, one can observe this particular duality of a semantic reference to the actions of the speaker as well as to the actions of the saints, a duality which applies to hagiographic speech as a whole. Thus, the term essemple can be taken as a starting point for questions concerning the conditions of hagiographic speaking, the contexts of a concrete identification and the flip sides of a specifically hagiographic notion of exemplarity. In that way, essemple forms the centre of an implicit poetics.

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