Literatur – Theorie – Geschichte

This study presents practice as a productive mode that allows literature to work on its forms. It examines Fischart’s Geschichtklitterung to show that literary self-formation does not occur autonomously but is grounded in historical practices. Fischart employed practices of Latin scholarship on all levels – from language to the macrostructure of narration – while refining his practice of German poetry.

Animal skin plays a special role on the human body, taking up a position of both proximity and difference in relation to its human wearer. In medieval literature, the interplay between human and animal body coverings is used to question, discuss, and negotiate dichotomies of clothing and nudity, courtliness and wildness, man and woman, the familiar and the foreign.

What exactly the reception of works of art looked like in the aristocratic culture of the Middle Ages is a mystery – but this interdisciplinary study takes the bold step of examining ivory carvings and narrative texts written in Middle High German to find out how the nobility might have perceived them. Through the lens of art studies reception aesthetics, it comes up with a framework of work-immanent techniques that shape perception, examining romances such as Rudolf’s Willehalm von Orlens, Gottfried’s Tristan, Wolfram’s Titurel, and Konrad’s Partonopier und Meliur to argue that the manipulation of the receiver’s viewpoint is a specific aesthetic concept. For in both visual artifacts and courtly romances, gazes are frequently portrayed as limited, concealed, or completely impossible, indicating that there is more to see than what meets the eye. This study analyzes images and texts together, suggesting that courtly culture had its own codes for the invisible – codes that only become identifiable as concealed instructions for reception when the subtle control of the gaze is revealed in such works as a cross-media aesthetic strategy.

In the narrative literature of the late twelfth century, dynamics of desire produce complex identity and relationship constellations. This study examines the narrative logics of heterosocial and homosocial desire in the context of contemporary discourses. A systematic exploration of the tools of queer and gender studies is followed by three case studies on the Song of Roland, the Romance of Eneas, and the Nibelungenlied.

Instead of being unambiguously decrypted, allegories enable liminal areas to emerge between literal and figurative dimensions. In this process, historically "old" and epistemologically "new" aspects can ironically diverge. This comparatist volume focuses on the ludic potentials of one such "old-new" type of fascination – the allegory of love – which become particularly evident in the interplay between abstraction and hyper-concreteness.

This study examines pictoriality in the late courtly romance. With iconical narration, it provides evidence of a poetic strategy that makes use of the specific dimensions and premodern logic of images, thereby generating action and meaning. The volume thus makes a contribution to historical narrative studies and to research into the visual culture of the Middle Ages within the scope of transdisciplinary image studies.

The orchard is not some arbitrary, topical setting in the courtly romance. As a liminal space, it has a specific potential for action and conflict. This volume uses example analyses to show how the orchard is created in narrative as a consistent, three-dimensional space of action and imagination and how this develops, semanticizes, and functionalizes its conflict potential for the narrative.

In high medieval literature, manheit describes the ability to fight and to use violence, and was therefore the knight’s most important characteristic. This study shows how in texts like Iwein and the Steierische Reimchronik, warlike and violent actions are staged as manheit and battle, and how the legitimization of the chivalric potential for violence by aristocratic rulers is glorified.

This study examines stagings of the rule of Charlemagne in Upper German chanson de geste adaptations of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. Using the concept of the "sacrality of the ruler", it analyzes the relationship between Charlemagne’s official legitimation and personal distinction. The corpus reveals a diachronic shift from paradigmatic to syntagmatic narration about the life and work of the canonized ruler-saint.

The aim of looking at Middle High German market scenes is to free the analysis of mercantile practices in premodern narrative literature from teleological economic historiography and to instead investigate the semantic potential of the mercantile space on the basis of the functionality of its practices. This volume examines the literary negotiation of mercantile conventions by looking at a number of examples from the thirteenth century.

This volume brings together selected writings by Udo Friedrich that stimulated three paradigm shifts in medieval studies: the reevaluation of the potential of rhetorical argumentation structures in the analysis of short narratives, a new cultural studies perspective on the intersections between concepts of nature and culture, and an anthropologically oriented narrative theory that examines the cultural archive by looking at its narratives.

This study provides a fundamental new reading of numerous commonplace positions in Germanic medieval studies relating to the physical beauty of literary figures. It looks at both canonic and more marginal Middle High German poems ("Erec," "Parzival," "Welscher Gast" [The Romance Stranger]) as well as their Medieval Latin context (poetorhetorics) and their discursive matrix, which is based in theology.

The phenomena of religious pluralization in medieval texts can be observed not just in dramatic transgressions but also in subtle variations. The contributions in this volume sound out these intra- and interreligious spaces from the perspectives of semantics, narratology, and discourse and transmission history, providing new insights into the diversification of religious difference in the pre-modern period.

This volume examines the cultural manifestations and historical development of figures of reversal, as well as in their poetological configurations. From the turn as an epistemic figure to modellings of religious conversion and literary models of reversal, their reception history encompasses a range of very different fields. The reversal ultimately proves to be an elementary form of orientation.

Against the backdrop of 13th-century cultural history, the study examines the function of legendary narratives in Christian identity formation. Martyrdom, war, and conversion are the basic narratives in negotiating religious opposition to heathendom. These stories were handed down from the early beginnings of Christianity and specifically updated in the context of crusades and missions.

In the 12^th and 13^th centuries, contemporary courtly literature exalted court culture while also subjecting it to culturally critical self-reflection. Based on a presentation of music and clothing in four central texts, this study shows how stereotypical patterns of argumentation in Latin court criticism made their way into courtly epic literature and counterbalanced excessively exalted topoi of courtliness.

The author applies ethnomethodological approaches to interpret Heinrich Wittenwiler’s “Der Ring” as a breaching experiment, one that reveals the constitutive expectations of didactic communication through a strategy of disruption and uncertainty. It forces readers to think about what they know, and generates in this way new knowledge. Goldenbaum’s study contributes to the debate about the knowledge of literature.

Does medieval poetry narrate? The study adopts a new perspective, taking metaphor as the point of departure for further reflection. It contextualizes topos, diagrammatics, and the role of performance. The emphasis is to examine the polymorphic and indomitable nature of narrative options, to deepen lyrical readings, while also expanding the complexity of lyrical narratology beyond classical narrative theory.

The Dominican Johannes Meyer (1422/23–1485) left a body of texts that cover a broad range of topics and sources. The study examines the specific literary patterns and textual strategies found in his texts, and employs discourse analysis to ask how Meyer positioned himself in the context of late medieval monastic reform, the theology of piety, and the reception of mysticism, and to assess his contribution to 15^th-century German literature.

One of the basic achievements of the modern period is an open future. This postulation governs research and occludes our view of pre-modern concepts of the future. This study of early prose novels written in the German language during the 15^th and 16^th centuries (Hug Schapler, Melusine, Hartliebs Alexander, Fortunatus) focuses on the conceptional change in narrative representations of notions of the future in early prose novels.

The study explores bible epic narratives as a narrative process across media and genres and investigates the medieval reception of the Transitus Mariae B by Pseudo-Melito of Sardis. Interdiscursive analytic case studies uncover discursive inferences in textual and pictorial sources, Assumptionist argumentation structures, and courtly adaptations of the apocryphal material that fell between scholarship and popular practices of piety.

This study argues that exemplary fables, allegories, and historical examples from the medieval period are located at the juncture between argument and narration. In contrast to previous works devoted to this subject, which tend to focus on questions of historical transmission, this book contextualizes their rhetorical aspects harnessing new impetus from the theory of topics and the epistemology of the exemplary.

The volume presents a collection of case studies by leading Medievalists on the subject of literary interculturation strategies in the biblical narratives of the Middle Ages and early modern period. It thus makes a contribution to research on the genre of the "biblical epic," unpacking its controversial hybridity at the intersection between sacred texts and aesthetic invention.

Middle High German short narratives show a sophisticated level of playfulness in their ways of seeing and visualizing female sexuality. Female gender and desire are visualized by means of a deliberate set of linguistic and narrative strategies that highlight sex and provide a stage for the ideals of female passion.

The study examines the earliest – and with over 100,000 verses, the most extensive – vernacular legendary concerning its portrayals of holiness. Rather than emphasizing formal and historical motifs, it focuses on the specific poetics of legendary narrative. The analytic findings are also applicable to hagiographic narratives in general.

This volume features contributions on premodern literature, art, and society, written from the perspectives of object theory. It reflects in particular on theories of gift-exchange, as well as the concepts of agency and interconnections between humans and objects. Related fields of study that contribute to the discussions are historical narratology as well as the phenomena of artificiality and aesthetics.

The Colmar literary figure, Meistersinger, and painter Jörg Wickram employed the pictorial dimension of his early modern romances as a creative backdrop for his narrative. This book engages in a comprehensive analysis of the narrative, para-textual and trans-textual structure of the romances Galmy (1539), Gabriotto und Reinhart (1551), Knabenspiegel (1554), and Goldfaden (1557) to examine the diverse influences of intermedial structural elements.

Using the methodology of cultural criticism as applied to medieval studies, this work examines different manifestations of wildness in medieval literary narratives, with an equal emphasis on issues of poetology and literary anthropology. Close textual readings newly illuminate the complex connections between self-understanding and representations of the wild.

The colors displayed by courtly figures in the romances of the 12^th and 13^th c establish an independent semantics of color, which has been largely unresearched until now. The bodies of courtly figures and the colors of garments worn offer great potential for expressing personal or collective identify. The study shows how the colors of the body directly contribute to constructing the identity of a character in courtly romances.

Considering poetological, narratological, and structural viewpoints, Mareike Klein uses close readings to investigate the concepts of color and brilliance in the Song of Roland and King Rother as well as in Willehalm and Herzog Ernst (Version B). Her systematic analysis of discourse on color in heroic epic texts shows how colorfulness could idealize or critically accentuate ruling power and its implications.

This work explores how phenomena of secularization were expressed in the literature dating from the 11th to the 15th century. Exemplary analyses show how the concepts of the aesthetic and the religious in these texts overlapped and at the same time began to diverge from one another. Literary texts from a variety of genres will be studied for the strategies of secularization they employ.

This book explores the categories of beginning and ending in their narratological, cultural, and anthropological dimensions. Individuals, collectives, and history overall are all contingent on epoch-specific causalities and finalities. Essays by literary theorists are supplemented by papers by cultural scientists and historians in order to locate the question in its various cultural contexts, both diachronically and synchronically.

Die mittelalterlichen Artusromane stehen in einer bereits Jahrhunderte andauernden Tradition des Erzählens von König Artus, das über volkssprachige wie lateinisch-historiographische Überlieferungen eine europaweite Verbreitung erlangte. Bis in die literarischen Bearbeitungen des 12. Jahrhunderts hinein haben sich so Inhalte und Erzählschemata vornehmlich aus der inselkeltischen Mythologie erhalten, während die Annahme einer historischen Faktizität des Erzählten zugleich Ausgangspunkt für ein mithin legitimierendes und weltmodellierendes Erzählen sein konnte. In textnahen Lektüren wird diesem Verhältnis von Mythischem und Erzählen in den Artusromanen „Erec“ und „Iwein“ Hartmanns von Aue erstmals umfassend nachgegangen. Dabei geraten zum einen diachrone Verhältnisse von stofflicher Grundlage und literarischer Bearbeitung in den Blick, zum anderen wird eine synchron ausgerichtete Perspektive auf den kulturellen Kontext hin eröffnet. Da das Mythische sowohl auf der inhaltlichen Ebene des Textes als auch auf der strukturellen Ebene in Ausdrucksformen mythischen Denkens präsent ist, wird auf zwei den Mythos je anders perspektivierende philosophische Theoriemodelle zurückgegriffen. Der Ansatz von Hans Blumenberg, der die Funktion und Rezeption des Mythos fokussiert, wird mit dem Ansatz von Ernst Cassirer vermittelt, der den Mythos als symbolische Form beschreibt. So wird ein Instrumentarium entwickelt, anhand dessen die Mythizität der Romane umfassend beschrieben und begrifflich dargestellt wird. Auf diese Weise kann aufgezeigt werden, wie ein von Inhalten und Strukturen des Mythos gleichermaßen geprägtes Erzählen kulturelle Konfigurationen im literarischen Text formulieren lässt und so der Reflexion spezifischer Leit- und Wertvorstellungen einer hochmittelalterlichen Adelskultur dienen kann.

Für die Kulturgeschichte des westlichen Abendlandes seit der Antike sind Imaginationen von Farben in Literatur und Kunst konstitutiv. Besonders das christliche Mittelalter bedient sich der Farben, vielfach in Form einer bildkünstlerischen oder sprachlich erzeugten Zusammensetzung monochromer Flächen, um etwa die Substantiierung des Göttlichen in den "colores" zur Anschauung zu bringen oder Aspekte des sozialen Status von Personen, höfischer Pracht oder sozialer Unordnung darzulegen. Zu zeigen gilt es, dass Farben mithin im Rahmen kultureller Selbstvergewisserungsdebatten auch in Literatur und Kunst als sinngenerierende Medien und keineswegs als bloßes Dekorum fungieren. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge gehen davon aus, dass die vielfältigen Verfahren der Farbevokation, wie sie in Literatur und Kunst vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart begegnen, Teil jener historisch allererst präzise zu ermittelnden Selbstbeschreibungsverfahren sind, die Konzepte von gesellschaftlicher und personaler Identität erzeugen. An exemplarischen Erzähltexten aus Mittelalter und Neuzeit sowie an Beispielen aus der Kunstgeschichte erarbeiten die Autoren einerseits poetologisch-ästhetische Implikationen von Farballusionen und andererseits deren diskurshistorische Zusammenhänge. Der Band umfasst in seinem Kern Arbeiten zu den Farbsemantiken in der höfischen Erzählliteratur. Ausgehend von diesem Zentrum werden die Farbdiskurse der neueren Literatur exemplarisch erörtert. Dies geschieht z. B. an Goethes Farbenlehre, dem Antikediskurs der deutschen Klassik oder an rassistischen Farbstereotypen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Darüber hinaus werden die Funktionen von Blutseiten in spätmittelalterlichen Handschriften erörtert, die Rezeption von Pontormo in Video-Klang-Installationen der Gegenwartskunst sowie die Farben der Karthographie.

Es wimmelt nur so von Tieren in den mittelalterlichen Texten und Bildern. Sie dienen nicht nur zur Dekoration, denn im Verhältnis zu Tieren spiegeln sich die Menschen selbst. Dieses Buch untersucht Begegnungen von Menschen und Wildtieren in mittelalterlichen Erzählungen. In der Regel treten Bären, Löwen und Hirsche als ungezähmte Antagonisten des Menschen auf, die auf der Jagd bezwungen, aber auch in Szenarien der Zähmung zu Gefährten und Helfern werden können. Dieser machtvolle Gestus gegenüber einer als angsteinflößend empfundenen Natur war für das christliche Mittelalter prägend und wirkt bis heute nach. Die Begegnungen erzählen aber auch von den Freiräumen, die sich daraus eröffnen können, und thematisieren in didaktischer Absicht Formen der Wildheit, die nicht im Wald zu finden sind, sondern den Menschen selbst innewohnen.
Untersuchungsgegenstand sind Legenden und höfische Romane des 6.–13. Jahrhunderts. Die mit Wildtieren verbundenen Motive sind für die mittelalterlichen Erzähl-kulturen bedeutsam und bestimmen – als eigene Form animalischer Handlungsmacht – bis heute unseren Blick auf Tiere.

Reinbot von Durne bezeichnet seine Georgslegende als eine ‚Blume der Wahrheit‘. Entsprechend ‚geblümt‘ und sprachlich verziert fällt denn auch seine Erzählung über das Leben und Martyrium des Heiligen aus. Aber ist es überhaupt angemessen, eine geistliche Wahrheit in solchem Maße auszuschmücken? Gemeinhin gilt doch, dass Legenden gemäß dem biblischen Ideal des sermo humilis auf allzu ausladende Verzierungen des Geschriebenen verzichten sollten. Dennoch gibt es Legenden, in denen eine geschmückte und ausführliche Redeweise für den heiligen Erzählgegenstand geltend gemacht wird. Im Sinne der lateinischen Dichtungslehren des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts wenden sie Verfahren der amplificatio an. Die amplificatio ist – so die These – das dezidierte Mittel der Wahl, um der erzählten Heiligkeit epische Plausibilität zu verleihen. Drei amplifizierte Beispiele nimmt die folgende Arbeit in den Blick: Neben dem Heiligen Georg werden Heinrichs von Veldeke Sente Servas und Rudolfs von Ems Barlaam und Josaphat vor dem Hintergrund ihrer lateinischen Texttradition behandelt. Ein besonderer Fokus der Analyse liegt auf amplifizierenden Wiederholungstechniken.