Search

Undoubtedly, the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg brought about a profound paradigm shift, transforming both the late medieval book markets and the general reading culture. However, as with many paradigm shifts, we need to differentiate in this regard more than scholarship has acknowledged so far. First, many medieval narrative motives, topics and themes continued to be rather popular well into the seventeenth century, if not beyond. Second, manuscript culture did not simply disappear. Instead, as this article outlines, in many areas and especially among the upper social classes, luxury items in the form of manuscripts remained critically important. A closer analysis also indicates that many times practical knowledge (fencing, horse training, medicine, etc.) and personal observations were copied down by hand and thus passed on to the specific audiences without the printing press involved. The manuscript did not disappear at all; instead, it assumed a more specialized function in terms of knowledge, autobiographical reflections and social representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 2023, published by the Internationale Gutenberg-Gesellschaft, covers a wide range of topics related to the history of printing, book publishing, printers, and incunabula. The volume includes eleven articles and a review of recent research, with contributions in English, German, French, and Italian. Topics covered include the publications of Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, charges of blood libel and host desecration against Jews, the increase in paper products for book printers, illustrated books, German culinary recipes, and the identity of the author of a treatise on logic. The volume is well-regarded for its scholarly quality, but there are some issues with typos and mistakes in grammar and syntax. [Extracted from the article]

It is highly fashionable today to project either a very negative or a very positive image of the Middle Ages. The invention of the printing press has hence often been associated with a radical change in literature, religion, politics, and generally the public media. Indeed, we can observe an imminent paradigm shift, ultimately leading, above all, to the Protestant Reformation, which would not have been possible without the printing press. However, technological revolutions do not necessarily transform the Zeitgeist or the history of mentality, the general value systems, and hence the fundamental concepts of literature. Although many medieval romances and heroic epics were soon eclipsed by new types of prose novels, for instance, printed and sold on the early modern book markets, in many other cases the medieval narratives, such as the various versions of the Melusine novel and the jest narratives of Till Eulenspiegel, experienced an astounding afterlife and renewed interests through the printed versions, and this far into the seventeenth century. This article does not intend to diminish the huge impact of the printing press on late medieval culture, but wants to qualify further and discriminate more in detail what really changed and what remained the same within the history of literature. Both the narratives discussed here and their accompanying woodcuts demonstrate a smooth continuation of late medieval topics well into the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of medieval literature, irrespective of the genre, contains considerable criticism of the hero or protagonist. In fact, in many cases the narrator voices rather harsh condemnation of his or her main characters who often demonstrate a lack of rationality, fail to observe basic rules and laws, and tend to act rather foolishly. In a survey at first, this article illustrates the presence of this phenomenon in a number of European literary texts from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. The focus of the present article, however, rests on the anonymous thirteenth-century Old French chanson de geste (or romance) Huon de Bordeaux. Here, more than in most other medieval narratives, the protagonist regularly rejects or disregards all concrete instructions, severe warnings, or commands and promptly runs into major problems. Although these contribute to the narrative development (more adventures), the critical analysis reveals, after all, a disturbingly negligent, irresponsible, and defiant character whose behavior might mirror profound social problems with late medieval knighthood and the political structure of that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout time, alcohol has been used by people all over the world, and its negative effects have commonly been the subject of many comments by critics and poets. Medieval literature is actually filled with references to wine and its excessive consumption. This paper examines the evidence we can find primarily in medieval German literature, but it also includes parallel remarks by didactic and religious writers, along with those by some English, French, and Italian contemporaries who addressed the same issue. While the criticism voiced is loud and clear, the literary treatment of drinking of wine ‒ rarely of beer, mead, or ale ‒ allows us to gain a deeper insight into the basic everyday-life conditions at that time. Reports about excess only reflect the common consumption of wine especially among aristocrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

However, Drucker does not linger on the Middle Ages too much and turns her attention mostly to those scholars who pondered the issue of the alphabet since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many times, a reviewer faces a fairly easy task because the study under investigation presents a straightforward, focused point and develops this through a variety of lenses. Johanna Drucker: Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present: University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA, 2022, 380 pp., numerous b/w ill. and figures, Hardcover, ISBN 978-0226815817. [Extracted from the article]

The volume itself is an impressive example of bibliophile publications; the era of book printing is certainly not over, although it is changing rapidly, as this yearbook also indicates. Falk Eisermann offers a bibliography of recent publications concerning recent research on incunabula, and Ralf de Jong discusses the new print font, the Comma Base by Martin Majoor. Every second year, a new print font is used, and the present volume has appeared in the Comma Base font developed by Martin Majoor. [Extracted from the article]

The world of book publishing is currently undergoing a major paradigm shift, but this was already fully under way in the 1990s. In the German novel Abstieg vom Zauberberg, published in 1997 by an anonymous author under the pseudonym Jens Walther, we are given an excellent insider view of the concrete situation within literary publishing houses and how they operate behind the scene and in public to secure the best possible titles and to fend off manuscripts that appear to be trivial literature. The author proves to be highly educated in the history of German and western literature at large and also demonstrates great expertise regarding book fairs, book reviews, and book prizes, framing all this by a somewhat twisted love story involving a young author, Anna Becker, and two men, first the young Johannes Rieger, then his father Helmut Rieger, both representing the fictional publishing house Engsfeld. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medieval literature is filled with references to criminal acts, to evil characters, and so also to murder. This paper examines the complex of killing as depicted in four medieval texts, Herzog Ernst, the Nibelungenlied, Heinrich Kaufringer's "Die unschuldige Mörderin," and Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken's Königin Sibille, attempting to discriminate between manslaughter, assassination, and murder. In each case, the act of murder is rationalized and explained through a different lens, depending on the literary context. As the analysis demonstrates, already pre-modern writers were fully aware of the rich discourse on law, for which murder constituted the most egregious case. Not every murder, however, is simply condemned because at times the perpetrator seeks justified revenge, at other times the killing is condoned, if not even approved, by the king himself in order to preserve the honor of the court. Kaufringer even goes so far as to present a case where multiple murders are explained as a form of self-defense according to God's laws, whereas Elisabeth simplifies and vilifies the killing to an extreme once again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A surprisingly large number of late medieval German verse narratives are deeply occupied with conflicts in love due to the commodifying nature of the relationship established by the male wooer or his beloved lady. Instead of pursuing love in accordance with the ideals and norms of courtly culture, in these texts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we observe that suddenly contracts are set up either to force the woman to grant her body to the wooer, or to block the lover from imposing himself upon the lady. Late medieval poets such as Jans Enikel, the anonymous author of Mauritius von Craûn, or Dietrich von der Gletze/Glezze present increasingly problematic cases where love is substituted by contractual conditions, bartering, and exchange commercializing and perverting the erotic aspect altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the phenomenon of 'sarcasm' seems not yet to have existed in the pre-modern world, a careful selection of relevant texts from medieval and early modern German, Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and Latin texts amply proves the opposite. Sarcasm is possibly the worst form of comedy or humor, being biting, angry, and reflecting a sense of desperation. While previous scholarship has extensively worked on irony, satire, and parody, the existence of sarcasm at that early time also deserves to be taken into account, since it often appears to undermine harshly the idyllic impressions of courtly life and threatens to destroy the last shreds of social harmony and to remove any hope for the reconstruction of a happier form of cohabitation and collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The meaning of space with respect to human beings finds vivid expression in literary texts throughout world history. But even though literary protagonists travel on a regular basis and thus experience themselves and the reality around them quite dramatically, space remained a rather vague dimension far throughout the Middle Ages. By the fifteenth century, however, we recognize a noteworthy paradigm shift regarding the perception and relevance of space as a relevant entity determining the individual's life, as reflected by poets and writers across Europe. After reviewing how most medieval poets dealt with space, this phenomenon is then discussed particularly in light of Eleonore of Austria's Pontus und Sidonia (ca. 1450-1460), where the western world of Europe in its geo-political dimension emerges perhaps more clearly than ever before and where space in concrete geo-political terms matters significantly, setting a new tone which would lead over to the early modern age and facilitated an astounding popularity of this novel far into the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As much as courtly life in the Middle Ages was determined by the royal and aristocratic celebrations and festivities, as much disruptions and dangerous tensions also emerged easily, as reflected by numerous late medieval poets. In the course of time, the ideals and the theatricality of courtly life seem to have become increasingly fragile and deceptive, which finds powerful expression in such works as the anonymous Mauritius von Craûn, Der Stricker's Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal, and Heinrich Wittenwiler's Der Ring. This paper presents the way how those poets utilized the concept of the courtly festivity and its radical disruption as subtle criticism of an ever more duplicitous and untrustworthy courtly existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research has often reflected on the phenomenon of monsters in medieval literature, identifying them as existential threats, reflections of imagination, or as symbols of the monstrous and evil in an apotropaic sence, here I suggest to refine our investigations of monsters in light of their epistemological function. Examining literary examples from the early to the late Middle Ages ( Beowulf to  Melusine), we can recognize how much monsters indeed serve consistently for the development of the individual protagonists, for coping with otherness at large, which commonly rests within the heroes and heroines as part of their characters. External challenges thus prove to be reflections of internal problems and issues, and the struggle against the monsters constitutes a struggle against or with the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While we tend to discuss multilingualism as a primarily modern phenomenon, that is, as the result of massive migrations all over the globe today, people in the European Middle Ages were already extensively on the move, either on crusades or pilgrimages, on business trips or attending major political or clerical meetings. Multilingualism was consequently not an unusual phenomenon. This article brings together evidence from history, the history of language, and from medieval literature at large to confirm how much the knowledge of at least one, if not two and more, foreign languages was quite common at that age. Significantly, however, a number of poets far into the seventeenth century voiced great concern about the consequences of poor foreign language skills, revealing the true extent to which multilingualism was an important matter. Generally, we can assume that the less courtly poets addressed the issue of multilingualism, the more that phenomenon must have been present already then. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Georgius of Hungary's Tractatus (ca. 1480) we learn of a slave's long-term experience in Turkey, reflected upon after his eventual escape. While Georgius provides extensive details about the culture and religion in the Ottoman Empire, he ultimately utilized his account to overcome the trauma that he had suffered when he was taken prisoner and made into a slave. The term 'life-writing' fits the Tractatus well because despite the brevity of the autobiographical references the author outlines to an impressive degree how much his later condemnation of Islam provided him with the necessary narrative framework to reconstitute his own identity as a Christian. Radical rejection thus becomes the epistemological tool for the rebuilding of the own self after slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Already in the twelfth century European audiences learned about the later significantly popular account of Floire and Blancheflor which emphasizes the far-reaching impact that deeply erotic emotions can have on political power structures. The Middle High German sentimental version by Konrad Fleck serves here as a platform to analyze how much influence true love could have on the behavior of society at large, influencing it to embrace courtly values and ethics on a large scale. Whereas recent research has mostly focused on the performativity of emotions, here I examine the function of emotions for social and cultural developments. As Fleck demonstrates, when the two young lovers face their certain death at the hand of the Babylonian ruler, they demonstrate so much ardent love for each other that they fight over who would die first. This then moves the despotic Admiral to such an extent, along with all his people, that he lifts the death penalty, allows these two young people to marry, and enters into friendship with the young male protagonist. In fact, he changes his entire outlook on life and behavior, transforming into an almost ideal ruler who would fit right into the courtly world. The analysis demonstrates how much Fleck, similar to his European contemporary writers, advocated the value of emotions for didactic, moral, and even political purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the theme of friendship in the Middle Ages has traditionally been associated with the world of courtly literature and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, deeply influenced by Cicero, there are also other strands of friendship that determine, contrary to our expectations, the world of heroic epics. As much as the heroic individuals often seem to be wood-cut like figures with no or little feelings, a closer analysis of Beowulf, Le Chanson de Roland, the Nibelungenlied, and Njal's Saga demonstrates that some of the true tragic elements contained in them are the conflicts among friends or the inability of friendship to avoid the massive killing. This friendship often comes to the surface only in the ultimate situation of death and dying, but the poets of those heroic epics were apparently deeply inspired to elaborate on the profound value of friendship in a bellicose and catastrophic world where human existence was at great risk. One of the greatest strengths of these heroes proves to be their deeply moving effort to reach out to their friends even in the most deadly situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Carmina Burana have too easily fallen into stifling categories of interpretation, treating them as exclusively poems by students, by learned scholars, or by minstrels who demand our respect. In reality, as this paper illustrates, they represent a very dense corpus of songs in Latin and in a mixtures of Latin and Middle High German in which highly educated intellects reflect upon the wide range of everyday themes, interests, concerns, and desires common at that time, including sexuality, drinking, entertainment, and music. But at closer analysis we also discover a plethora of critical songs in which the loss of ethics, morality, and social norms both at court and in the church are sardonically attacked and ridiculed. Although the poets usually resort to the norms and models of ancient-classical and medieval courtly poetry, they regularly transgress those and present drastically opposite perspectives. In this process they also reveal the extent to which they actually closely interacted with vernacular literature. Laughter is often the name of the game, but it is not simply light and untroubled comic that finds expression here. This article demonstrates the extent to which the poets of the Carmina Burana actually interacted in a very intensive fashion with the learned literary traditions and the standard ideals of courtly love, undermining the common pretenses of a peaceful, harmonious, and honorable courtly society and of a reputable clergy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a literary work proves to be open to ever new (valid) interpretations, we can be certain that it represents a truly great piece of literature. This is the case with the Nibelungenlied which is here viewed in light of modern sociological theory regarding communication and communicative action as defined by Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and Karl-Otto Apel, among others. Certainly, this epic poem is characterized by its heroic features, as battles, slaughter, destiny, and fate dominate all events. Nevertheless, a close reading of relevant passages also demonstrates that some of the protagonists are seriously concerned about the role of human language and its function within society. The theory of communicative action proves to be surprisingly applicable for the critical examination of the Nibelungenlied and also for the subsequent Diu Klage in which the Armageddon which has befallen the Burgundian heroes, is profoundly mourned. Whereas the former poem illustrates the tragedy when human language is misused, or simply disregarded as an essential vehicle for the communicative community, the latter outlines avenues out of the calamity especially by way of language and a return to this lost community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores the way how medieval people thought about time and organized their lives in light of the constant passing of time. Whereas modern philosophers and historians have generally credited the Middle Ages with a radically different time concept in contrast to the modern world, here I will argue that occasionally the differences were considerably less stringent and perhaps not even existent. Often, quite naturally, the mental-historical framework was deeply influenced by the Catholic Church which perceived human life within the extremes of life and death, or of secular time and eternity. The analysis will take us from Old High German heroic epic poetry represented by the “Hildebrandslied” with its noteworthy emphasis on the many years in which the father did not see his son, to the late Middle Ages when Oswald von Wolkenstein, through his poetry, and Helene Kottannerin, through her unique diary, indicated their full awareness of the meaning of time in its measurable quality. Not every author reflected the same concept of time, and many of them simply took their readers to the timeless world of King Arthur. Other authors, however, such as the Stricker, expressed a clear idea of time almost in the modern sense of the word by way of positioning their protagonists in problematic situations when they are suddenly pressed for time and need to reach painful decisions. The article does not intend to blur the differences between the Middle Ages and our own cultural period, but it wants to deconstruct the romantic sentiment that the consciousness of time prevalent in the Middle Ages was completely different to the modern concept of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the mediaval church preached that happiness was possible only in the afterlife if one pursued a virtuous and pious existence on earth, both a number of poets and of philosophers outlined avenues for the opposite approach. John Buridan strongly defended the idea that human life should be based on happiness, and Marie de France outlined clear strategies for her literary protagonists to realize this dream during their earthly existence. In this article both their testimonies, but also those of Hartmann von Aue, Walther von der Vogelweide, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Albertanus da Brescia are considered as support for the thesis that medieval people did accept, at least under special circumstances, a very secular position with respect to human happiness. The literary and philosophical documents do not belittle or undermine the theological arguments, instead they simply open new perspectives which demonstrate considerable anthropological similarities between people in medieval and modern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]