mit vlacheme sverte sluch er uf die cristenheit: Religious Dedifferentiation in 'Graf Rudolf' mit vlacheme sverte sluch er uf die cristenheit: Religiöse Entdifferenzierung im 'Graf Rudolf'

The present paper outlines a narrative programme of religious dedifferentiation for 'Graf Rudolf'. Guiding this understanding is the observation that the concept of tolerance derived from 'Willehalm' does not do justice to 'Graf Rudolf', which has not received much attention until now due to the precarious situation regarding traditional sources. Taking account of the particularities specific to its tradition, the text is at the same time read as a solitary example of the interaction between the religious and the secular in Middle High German literature. Der vorliegende Beitrag konturiert für den 'Graf Rudolf' ein narratives Programm der religiösen Entdifferenzierung. Erkenntnisleitend ist die Beobachtung, dass dem aufgrund seiner prekären Überlieferungslage bisher wenig beachteten 'Graf Rudolf' der am 'Willehalm' gewonnene Toleranzbegriff nicht gerecht wird. Unter Berücksichtigung der überlieferungsspezifischen Besonderheiten wird der Text zugleich als Solitär des Zusammenspiels von Religiösem und Weltlichem in der mittelhochdeutschen Literatur gelesen.

A Bernese Fragment of Brother Philipp's 'Marienleben' Ein Berner Fragment von Bruder Philipps 'Marienleben'

Brother Philipp's 'Marienleben' (written around 1300) is the most widespread religious verse epic in Middle High German literature. Up to now, 120 textual witnesses have been known. The new fragment documents a slightly modified version that circulated in East Swabian around the middle of the 14 th century, it is therefore informative for the early reception of the work in this region. Bruder Philipps 'Marienleben' (entstanden um 1300) ist das am weitesten verbreitete geistliche Versepos der mittelhochdeutschen Literatur. Bis heute sind 120 Textzeugen bekannt. Das neue Fragment bezeugt eine leicht bearbeitete Version, die um die Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts im Ostschwäbischen verbreitet war; es ist daher aufschlussreich für die frühe Rezeption des Werkes in diesem Gebiet.

Mittelhochdeutsche Erzählverfahren und theologisches Wissen

The question of the cultural conditions of narrations as a paradigm of historical narratology corresponds to one of the main interests of medieval literary studies: how is literature anchored in its extra-literary fields of reference? However, problems with the modeling of text and context have led to literary texts being understood in a more abstract way as forms of cultural practice, whereas the concrete contexts are neglected. As a result of this development, different cultural theoretical premises are encountered in the field of historical narratology that can hardly be related to one another. In this situation, our paper wants to highlight the importance of very specific text-context references, especially between theological knowledge and the narrative methods (Erzählverfahren) of Middle High German literature. Firstly, the autodiegesis in Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart is interpreted with respect to the question of intentionality, as discussed in Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences. Secondly, ambiguities in the figuration and the narrative perspective in Ritter von Staufenberg are explained in the horizon of a literary demonology, as it is rooted in Augustinian theology and is developed by Walter Map and Gervasius of Tilbury. With this approach we want to argue that theological knowledge influenced the vernacular narrative not only on the level of content, but also in narrative methods.

Simone Schultz-Baluff. Wissenswelt Triuwe. Kollokationen – Semantisierung – Konzeptualisierung. Germanistische Bibliothek 59. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2018, 434 pp.

Informed by Frame Semantics and discourse linguistic regression modeling, this study provides a corpus-based approach to cross-genre and -text type usage of one of the key terms of Middle High German literature – triuwe (loyalty, faithfulness) – here treated “als wichtigster ethischer Faktor und grundlegendes gesellschaftskonstituierendes Element des Mittelalters” (rear cover text). The volume consists of an introduction; five chapters; appendices on primary and secondary sources, various aspects of the lexical corpus consulted, and a list of the 94 figures; and one single-sided sheet of corrigenda (giving the correct placement of figures 55 and 86, respectively on pp. 193 and 340).

‘Some have it from Birth, Some by Disposition’:1 Foolishness in Medieval German Literature

This chapter examines depictions of fools in Middle High German literature to demonstrate that the medieval idea of folly is more complex than a simple opposition to reason, and to ascertain if there are notions of intellectual disability in the German Middle Ages. To understand medieval ideas of foolishness, this chapter explores the difference between ‘will fool’ and ‘natural fool’ as depicted by Konrad von Megenberg in the 14th century. This medieval differentiation is then tracked through several different Middle High German texts, including the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Middle High German stories Die halbe Birne and Des Mönches Not.

Exemplarik und Erfahrung in allegorischen Ich-Erzählungen (am Beispiel von Konrads von Würzburg ›Klage der Kunst‹)

Most of the longer worldly fictional Middle High German first-person narrations are allegorical. The article discusses the reasons for this interdependence between allegory and the first-person narrative form, which is observable not only in Middle High German literature, but also in texts belonging to other European vernacular literatures of the time. In my article I develop two main thesis: The first is that the use of allegoric forms marks on the one hand a highbrow literary level and serves as a stylistic ornament of texts, which tend to present themselves mainly as author-speech. This is also the reason why in these texts the ›I‹ is often not only a narrating ›I‹, but also takes over the role of an author on the narrative level of the

Heinrich von Veldeke's and the Tradition of the Alliterating Word-Pair

Building on recent findings from Early Middle High German literature, this study compiles and analyses for the first time completely the circa eighty alliterating word-pairs from Heinrich's , a work dated just after the evasive temporal boundary between Early Middle High and Middle High German (circa 1170). Comparisons are established to pairs from Heinrich's somewhat earlier texts and comprehensive data available on Old High and Early Middle High German. Methodology considers speculation on the figurative nature of some of the expressions and formal issues related to idiomatic usage.