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It ought to be an ongoing effort by all scholars/researchers to question the validity, legitimacy, and purposes of their own discipline because we live in an ever-changing world. This also applies to the field of medieval studies that faces considerable difficulties and challenges today with declining numbers of students enrolling in respective classes and lacking support by university administrators. This study begins with a general reflection on where we are today in terms of justifying the humanities at large, that is, of the study of literature particularly, and hence of medieval literature. Then this paper focuses on two universal themes, love and tolerance. While love has been associated with the courtly world since the twelfth century, tolerance does not seem to fit within the medieval context. However, the discussion of tolerance can be utilized as a catalyst for further investigations of medieval culture and literature within the framework of modern and postmodern responses to the Middle Ages. The exploration of this theme as it emerged already at that time offers intriguing opportunities to make the study of medieval literature relevant and important for us today.

In the late Middle Ages, aristocratic and urban circles competed against each other for esteem, legitimacy, authority, and fame. Family chronicles gained significant importance in that process, but we can also identify a definite discourse on dynastic interests in historiographical terms in contemporary literature. This study illuminates in three cases how individual authors conceived of the notion of dynasty and traced the rise and/or fall of their protagonists. Even in the case of an utter demise, the topic itself, the emergence and development of a dynasty, appealed to the wider readership, as reflected in some of the major late medieval German prose narratives and novels. The concept of a mythical origin of the family was particularly attractive, but also the miraculous rise from a low social status to the rank of a king, unheard of in reality, of course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrespective of our comfort level, the topic of prostitution assumes an important role also within late medieval and early modern history, literature, law, and art history. While many scholars have already engaged with this issue drawing from legal or social-economic sources, the literary evidence also deserves to be considered in this context. The German-Swabian Franciscan preacher and poet, Johannes Pauli, is famous for his extensive discussion of everyday-life situations in his close to 700 prose narratives. There is hardly any aspect in human existence left out, whether we think of truth, fools, gender, peasants, judges, clerics, women, or the many different vices and virtues. Practically overlooked by scholarship, however, in one section, Pauli also turns his attention to prostitutes and entertains his audience with humorous narratives about various situations in the lives of those women, certainly an important sliver of human society during the pre-modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of countless problems, the modern world faces, especially religious fanaticism, violence, and hatred, it is high time to reflect on some of the older literary statements once again that had already voiced critical concerns about the principles of human interaction determined by good communication, love, and tolerance. Maybe surprisingly, when we turn to Lessing's Nathan der Weise (1779), we come across a major literary document in which those ideals are formulated convincingly and dramatically. While German scholarship has already discussed this play for a long time, it deserves much wider attention because of its strong advocation of those ideals, which we are in the highest need as of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]