Nr. 35, Fall/Winter 2012/13

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted that The Society for Medieval German Studies is sponsoring five sessions at the Forty Third Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. We wish to thank our SMGS Organizer, Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University), who has put together another exciting program for us. We are also pleased that the third recipient of the Sidney M. Johnson Award, Karina Marie Ash (University of California–Los Angeles) will be presenting at one of our SMGS sessions. At the New Books Round Table this year, SMGS features the recent book by Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona). To all our colleagues and friends we wish a pleasant spring and a relaxing and productive summer.

Table of Contents

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2008

New Books Roundtable

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2008

New Books Received for SMGS Review

SMGS Review

News from Colleagues

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2008

Session I (201)

Valley 1 109

Friday, 9 May, 10:00 a.m.

Amazons in Medieval German Sources

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

201) Valley 1 109Friday, 9 May, 10:00 a.m.Amazons in Medieval German SourcesOrganizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)“The German Invention of the Amazons”

Alissandra Paschkowiak (University of Massachusetts–Amherst)

“Nach der Mannesnamen Site? Amazons and Their Challenge to Normative Masculinity in Medieval German Literature”

Cordula Politis (Trinty College, University of Dublin)

“In Praise of Amazons and Heathens: A Consideration of the Normative Role of Femininity in Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois” (SMJ Winner)

Karina Marie Ash (University of California–Los Angeles)

“Amazons in Parzival”

Sarah Westphal-Wihl (Rice University)

Session II (394)

Bernhard 157

Saturday, 10 May, 10:00 a.m.

New Research in Medieval German Studies II: James Schultz: Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Presider: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)

(394)Bernhard 157Saturday, 10 May, 10:00 a.m.New Research in Medieval German Studies II: James Schultz: Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)Presider: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)“Literary Representation of Masculinity in the Teutonic Order’

Rasma Lazda-Cazers (University of Alabama)

“Love, System, Sex: A Tribute”

Helmut Puff (University of Michigan–Ann Arbor)

“Backlash: Creative Obscenity and the History of Sexuality”

Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University)

Respondent: James Schultz (University of California–Los Angeles)

Session III (450)

Bernhard 157

Saturday, 10 May, 1:30 p.m.

Literacy and Orality in the Middle Ages

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Presider: Matthias Meyer (Universität Wien)

“Mnemonic Images in the Codices Picturati of the Sachsenspiegel”

Henrike Manuwald (Universität zu Köln)

“Die Predigtsammlung Albrechts des Kolben (1387) als schriftliche Quelle für die gesprochene Sprache? Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der historischen Dialektologie”

Klaus Amann (Universität Innsbruck)

“Spuren soziolektaler Mündlichkeit im deutschen Drama des Mittelalters”

Max Siller (Universität Innsbruck)

Session IV (503)

Bernhard 157

Saturday, 10 May, 3:30 p.m.

Reading Movement and Movements

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

“Anatomy of the Fall: Taking a Tumble in Hartmann’s Iwein and Chrétien’s Yvain”

Joseph M. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma)

“War and Peace in the Sermons by Berthold von Regensburg”

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

“Wolfram’s Theology Revisited: The Improverished Reading “

James W. Marchand (University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign)

Recent Research in Medieval German Drama: Honoring Eckehard Simon

(103) Valley II 205

Thursday, 8 May, 3:30 p.m.

Sponsor: Hill Museum & Manuscript (HMML) and the Society for Medieval German Studies

Organizer: Matthew Z. Heintzelman, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML)

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

(103) Valley II 205Thursday, 8 May, 3:30 p.m.Sponsor: Hill Museum & Manuscript (HMML) and the Society for Medieval German StudiesOrganizer: Matthew Z. Heintzelman, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML)Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

 

Related Sessions of Interest

Fear in the Holy Roman Empire

(288) Bernhard 157

Friday May 9, 1:30 p.m.

Organizer: James R. Palmitessa (Western Michigan University)

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

(288) Bernhard 157Friday May 9, 1:30 p.m.Organizer: James R. Palmitessa (Western Michigan University)Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)The Medieval Narrative: The Body, the Senses

(600) Bernhard 212

Sunday May 11, 10:30 a.m.

Organizer: Carola Mattord (Georgia State University)

Writing and Relationship in the Lives of Medieval Religious Women II: Women’s Relationship with Each Other

(434) Schneider 1140

Saturday May 10, 1:30 p.m

Organizer: Laura M. Grimes, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Presider: Sara S. Poor (Princeton University)

Writing and Relationship in the Lives of Medieval Religious Women III: Women’s Relationship with Each Other

(485) Schneider 1140

Saturday May 10, 3:30 p.m.

Organizer: Laura M. Grimes, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Presider: Ann W. Astell (University of Notre Dame)

War and Peace in the Middle Ages I

(54) Valley II 205

Thursday May 8, 1:30 p.m.

Organizer: Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

Presider: Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

War and Peace in the Middle Ages II

(120) Fetzer 1055

Thursday May 8, 3:30 p.m.

 

 

 

 

ew Books Roundtable

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) will be presenting his recent contribution to our field:

The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process, Pelgrave MacMillan, 2007.

ISBN: 13-978-1-4039-7558-4.

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo, Friday evening, 9 May, Bernhard 157, 8:00 p.m.

A brief business meeting will follow the Roundtables.

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2008

SMGS is delighted to announce the second Sidney M. Johnson Award for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student. The recipient for 2008 will be Karina Marie Ash (University of California-Los Angeles) for her submission “In Praise of Amazons and Heathens: A Consideration of the Normative Role of Femininity in Wigalois” We are looking forward to hearing her presentation in SMGS Session I at Kalamazoo, 2008.

The SMGS Forum

SMGS invites you to inform our medievalist community of your forthcoming, new and recent publications. Email SMGS with the details of publication and we will notify the community for you.

The SMGS Yearbook

The Society for Medieval German Studies is pleased to offer members the opportunity to publish their presented papers from SMGS sessions at Kalamazoo. The SMGS Yearbook will begin with 2008 sessions. The purchase price will be $25.00 to cover printing and distribution. A portion of the price will go to fund the Sidney M. Johnson Prize.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

Claudia Brinker-von der Heide, Die literarische Welt des Mittelalters

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007.

ISBN: 978-3-534-18758-4.

, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007.ISBN: 978-3-534-18758-4.Alois Wolf, minne – aventiure – herzenjâmer

Freiburg: Rombach Verlag, 2007.

ISBN: 978-3-7930-9496-8.

SMGS welcomes members’ books for peer review.

SMGS Reviews

Ritter Löwhardus Edited with an afterword by Ernst S. Dick. Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, 2003. 212 pp. $41.00 softcover.

This edition is the eighth in Hans-Gert Roloff’s series, Bibliothek Seltener Texte in Studienausgaben. Professor Emeritus of the University of Kansas, Ernst S. Dick provides an excellent balance between philological rigor and readability of a text that has not been available since the end of the seventeenth century. A thorough introduction to the work, the current research, and critical expansion of that research comprises one third of the text in the form Dick’s afterword. The concluding essay alone would make this text a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the Nibelungenstoff, publishing history, and the reception of medieval tropes in the early modern period. However, the story of Ritter Löwhardus, much more than a mere scholarly curiosity, stands on its own literary merits.

The format and structure of the edition are superbly conceived and executed. Dick avoids any normalization or modernization of the text in as far as possible. The edition includes a reproduction of the original title page, a full explanation of the editing methodology with an index of alterations and a bibliography. Every single alteration in the text is marked in cursive. The text reproduces the orthography according the manuscript, with only some exceptions. The “s” variations, for example, are simplified, some proper names are normalized to avoid confusion, and all abbreviations are written out. The recto and verso numbers of the manuscript leafs are marked in the text, which also means that this edition serves as a guide through the manuscript itself.

Ritter Löwhardus tells the story of Siegfried’s son and is a sequel to Die wunderschöne Historie von dem gehörnten Siegfried. The text, referenced in the oldest existing print of Gehörntem Siegfried from Braunschweig in 1726, was first rediscovered in 1965 by Harold Jantz. The Special Collections Library of Duke University houses the manuscript today. One finds a clue for the terminus post quem of Ritter Löwhardus in the conclusion, “Diese History welche auf sechß Bigen/ und wol werth zu lesen ist zu Hamburg Anno 57. gedrucket/ da hin ich den liebhabenden Leser wil gewisen haben” (123). The author of Ritter Löwhardus, therefore, draws from a lost printing of Gehörntem Siegfried from 1657, which among other factors, lead both Jantz and Dick to date Ritter Löwhardus to the 1660s. The publisher, mentioned on the title page, Martha Hertz in Erfurt, actively produced Volksbücher in the 1660s. Since her function in this role was taken up by Georg Hertz after 1664, it is reasonable to believe the book was published between 1657 and 1664.

The author of the text still remains unknown. Dick provides a number of very fruitful leads as to identifying the author, but even his own exhaustive research produced no definite conclusions. Nonetheless, as Dick demonstrates, the notion that the author was writing in, or, at least, has some deep and long personal relationship to, Pomerania is beyond doubt. Dick recounts the search for the author in the libraries and archives of Stralsund and Greifswald which yielded several possible authors, but found no irrefutable evidence to make a clear identification. Given the structure of the text, Dick does not rule out the possibility of multiple authors.

Dick, who had already begun publishing research on Ritter Löwhardus in the 1980s, summarizes the state of research and provides some analysis of the text in his afterword. The reader is treated to a commentary on the partite structure of the text and the host of intertexts and motifs, historical and literary, early modern and medieval, which form the basis of the story. The frame narrative, a Brautwerbung interrupted by shipwrecks, one of which is depicted the woodcut on the title page, features one of the most interesting brides in the entire genre, Siciliana. Echoing the standard medieval trope of armored knights failing to recognize close friends and relatives on the battlefield, the novel features an episode in which Siciliana and Löwhardus unwittingly cross swords and nearly kill each other (96-98). Siciliana and Löwhardus are saved by the hero’s faithful lion, only to be sentenced to burn at the stake by the King of Babylon for refusing to pay homage to a golden image. They are, however, again saved by the lion. The Iwein-motif, as Dick points out, more likely stems from other texts the author mentions (Herpin and Kaiser Octavian). The interweaving of medieval motifs, the issue of early modern Orientalism and reception of the Near East, and a very interesting spin on the Brautwerbung certainly make this text far more than just a curiosity for those interested in the Nibelungenstoff. Of course, Ritter Löwhardus is Siegfried’s son (Gunther) and the unavoidable commentary on the Nibelungenstoff remains a main attraction of the text. Alone the fact that the author changes all of the names except Siegfried’s (Kriemhild becomes Florigunda) deserves attention. As Dick puts it, “Nur Siegfried bleibt nach wie vor Siegfried” (152). Ritter Löwhardus is three times longer than Gehörntem Siegfried and the marriage of the world of the Nibelungs to the crusading epic provide countless insights into Early Modern medievalisms and the reception of the Nibelungenstoff.

The author’s stated goal in producing this editon, “Mit der hier vorgelegten Edition soll das neuartige und rezeptionsgeschichtlich auschlußreiche Werk erstmalig einem breiteren Forschungs- und Leserkreis zugänglich gemacht werden” (134), also includes an invitation for further research. Dick has certainly met this goal and his afterword provides a wealth of stimulus for continued scholarly engagement with the text. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, the quality of the edition, and critical commentary. I whole heartedly recommend this work for both scholarly edification and for the pleasure of a good tale.

Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process, Albrecht Classen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 222 pp. $80.00 hardcover.

The author is to be commended for addressing an ever immediate issue for medievalists, the persistence of myths that distort and falsify the contemporary perception of the Middle Ages. Classen does so by examining the „myth-making process“ from the early fifteenth century onward as exemplified by one of its most negative manifestations–the chastity belt. Indeed, his book is as much a study of process rather than mythologized objects and beliefs in themselves, and therein lies the scholarly significance for medieval studies and us as medievalists.

In deconstructing the myth-making process, the author applies a sound methodology; he examines the accretion of “authoritative” sources over generations and determines how these sources acquired legitimacy to become an historical truism and unquestioned anecdotal wisdom. In doing so, Classen deals with several illustrative constructs. He introduces his “case study“ of the chastity belt, by first exemplifying the formation of the hermeneutic circle through a consideration of the Flat-Earth theory—a belief remarkably at odds with the scientific communities of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An important by-product of this book is the epistemological rehabilitation of medieval and early-modern societies by demonstrating how popular misconceptions arise and become validated over time. Not surprisingly, many myths may enjoy greater general creditability in the early twenty-first century than in the periods to which they are attributed. Classen remarks: “The reason I focus on this one myth has not so much to do with is highly curious and salacious nature with might titillate so many an uninformed reader, but because of its enormous popularity, especially in modern times, particularly outside of the world of academic Medieval Studies, hence its mythical dimension (17).”

The author also does well to provide the reader with an overview of “myth theory” from major exponents: Ernst Cassirer, Kathleen Biddick, Mark Jones, Michel Tournier, Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthe and Angela Carter, including a summative review by Eleazar M. Meletinsky.

In the second part of the book entitled: “Modern and Medieval Myth-Making,” the reader learns how the myth of the chastity belt gained further academic credence through the influential work of the dilettante art historian, Eduard Fuchs and his Illustrierte Sittengeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Classen convincely shows how historical attributions can be transmitted without the relevant sources and earlier accounts having been checked for repetition and inaccuracy, i.e., how the hermeneutic circle can readily be self-perpetuating. Especially interesting is the section on literary and historical evidence, in particular, “Marie de France—The Symbolic Belt and its Profound Misinterpretation.” Classen remarks: “A sensitive reading of Marie de France’s Guigemar demonstrates that the belt itself has only allegorical meaning, especially since the belt guarantees the purity of love between two young people, while all those who fail to open the belt are determined by nothing but sexual desires and treat women in a violent manner (110).” Part two concludes with an examination of the myth’s transmission into the Renaissance- and Baroque literature and art and as well as a consideration of the theme in modern art.

The third part of the book complements the treatment of the chastity belt myth through an excursus on another myth, “The Jus Primae Noctis, the Droit du Cuissage (Droit du Seigneur)”. Classen aptly completes his study by returning to the myth-making process in regard to the chastity belt: “The Nature of Myths Revisited.” The author notes in conclusion: “…the purpose of this study was to trace the history of this myth-making process from the late Middle Ages until today, to examine how older scholarship, if we want to call it that, dealt with this topic, how its findings influenced authors of relevant lexicon and encyclopedia entries, and hence how this erotic myth deeply impacted popular opinions” (156).”

The reader will find that Albrecht Classen’s contribution is not only a caveat about the dangers of taking source material on face value alone, but also a fascinating study of how myths can evolve and flourish. In sum, this is a good and useful book.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

SMGS News from Colleagues

Karina Marie Ash (University of California–Los Angeles) is the 2008 recipient of the Sidney M. Johnson Prize from SMGS. She has been conducting research in Konstanz to transcribe a Marienleben from the early 15^th century and examine it in relation to Werhner’s Marienleben.

Francis B. Brévart (University of Pennsylvania) has recently published a major article, “Between Medicine, Magic, and Religion: Wonder Drugs in German Medico-Pharmaceutical Treatises of the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries,” Speculum 83 (2008), 1-57.

(University of Pennsylvania) has recently published a major article, “Between Medicine, Magic, and Religion: Wonder Drugs in German Medico-Pharmaceutical Treatises of the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries,” 83 (2008), 1-57.Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) has recently been honored at his university with the Henry Koffler Award for 2008 as the most prolific scholar university-wide.

Congratulations!

Arthur Groos (Cornell University) is currently on sabbatical having spent the fall as Fowler Hamilton Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and this spring in Berlin as part of the Nachkontakt program for winners of the Alexander von Humboldt Forschungspreis.

Siglinde Hartmann (Universität Frankfurt) has issued the following invitation:

Die Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft is sponsoring the following symposium:

Konrad von Megenberg (1309-1374): ein spätmittelalterlicher ,Enzyklopädist’ im europäischen Kontext. 27 –29 August 2009 in the Thon Dittmer-Palais, Regensburg.

You may contact:

Wolkenstein.Gesellschaft@t-online.de

http://www.wolkenstein-gesellschaft.com

William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis) is currently on a year-long sabbatical in Bamberg, Germany. On Saint Valentine’s Day, his second daughter, Else Magdalene, was born in the Luisenstraße.

Sara S. Poor (Princeton University) has recently received a major honor from the Medieval Academy of America: The John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book, Mechthild of Madgeburg and her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Her book also won the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Book Prize in 2006. Congratulations from SMGS!

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University).

We wish to thank our technical expert, Ben Ogden, for his expertise in providing the online version with both readability and elegance. We also wish to thank the Department of Classical & Modern Languages at Truman State University for its support of this publication. All errors and oversights are attributable solely to me as editor.

The SMGS readership continues to grow steadily as is the interest in receiving the SMGS News & Reviews online. Should you wish to contribute to the section on SMGS News from Colleagues or if you know of a colleague who would be interested in membership (there are no dues), you may contact me at ehintz@truman.edu or fax (660-785-7486), or write to the following address: Ernst Ralf Hintz, German and Medieval Studies, Truman State University, McClain Hall 310, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221 (U.S.A.).

The next issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in November 2008.

On behalf of Stephen Mark Carey and Ernst Ralf Hintz,

All good wishes from SMGS!

 

Dear Colleagues,

The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is delighted to be sponsoring four sessions at the 50th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo May 9-12, 2015. We wish to thank our SMGS Organizers, Marian Polhill (University of Puerto Rico) and Jeffry Turco (Purdue University) for their time and considerable efforts in assembling yet another exciting program for us.

Table of Contents
SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2015
New Books Roundtable
The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for 2015
New Books Received for SMGS Review
SMGS Review
News from Colleagues

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2015
Organizers: Marian Polhill (University of Puerto Rico),
                   Jeffery Turco (Purdue University)

SMGS sponsored sessions, Kalamazoo 2015

1. Memory, Text and Image in Medieval German Literature

 
Presider: Marian Polhill (University of Puerto Rico)
Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Appalachian State University)
Looking for the Join: Memory and the Interfigures of Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein
 
Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College): Shaping Cultural Memory at the Interface of Text and Image: The Berlin Manuscript (Ms. germ. fol. 282) of Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneit

1. Authority and Control in Medieval German Literature

Presider: Adam Oberlin (University of Ghent/Bergen)
Mary Marshall Campbell (University of New Hampshire) “Prophecy and Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Germany”
Christopher Liebtag Miller (University of Toronto) “Order in the Court
The Constitution of Authority and the Character of Courtly Office in Medieval German Epic”
Alexander Sager (University of Georgia-Athens) “The Moralizing Watchman in German Dawnsongs from Otto von Botenlauben to Hugo von Montfort”
III. Words and Verses
 
Presider: Susanne Haftner (Fordham University)

Adam Oberlin (University of Ghent/Bergen) “Early Yiddish and Late Middle High German Phraseology”

Nelson Goering (University of Oxford) “The Atlakviða, ‘Inverted’ Verses, and the Word-foot Theory of Old Germanic Metre”

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University) “Muspilli: Old High German Justice and Judgment”

New Books Roundtable
Moderator: Jeffry Turco (Purdue University)
Olga Trohhimenko presents her book Constructing Virtue and Vice: Femininity and Laughter in Courtly Society (ca. 1150-1300). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress, 2014.

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo 2015.

The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for 2015
SMGS is delighted to announce The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student or former graduate student within one semester of having received a doctorate. This year we have two recipients of equal merit. Our recipients for 2015 will be Mary Marshall Campbell (University of New Hampshire)) for her abstract “Prophecy and Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Germany” and Adam Oberlin (University of Ghent/Bergen) for his submission “Early Yiddish and Late Middle High German Phraseology.” We are looking forward to their presentations in SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2015.

New Books Received for SMGS Review
 
Olga V. Trokhimenko (University of North Carolina at Wilmington) Constructing Virtue and Vice: Femininity and Laughter in Courtly Society (ca. 1150-1300). In: Transatlantic Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture. Vol. 5. ISBN: 978-3-8471-0119-2. V&R unipress, Göttingen, 2014.

SMGS Reviews
Reviews will resume in our next issue.

SMGS News from Colleagues
 
Katja Altpeter-Jones (Lewis and Clark College), Alison Beringer (Montclair State University) and Claire Taylor Jones (University of Notre Dame) organized well-attended sessions for YMAGINA at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association in Kansas City, September 2014.

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) presented a paper entitled “Geistige Heimat. Grundmuster einer bewohnbaren Welt” at the interdisciplinary conference Heimat in Literatur, Sprache und Kunst – Annäherung an einen problematischen Begriff held at the former Kreuzherrenkloster Hohenbusch near Erkelenz, July 11, 2014.

Stephen Mark Carey (University of Minnesota-Morris) continues to serve the medievalist community as Editor of the SMGS Yearbook.
See: http://digitalcommons.morris.edu/smgs/

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) has recently edited a new book entitled: Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age In: Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 15 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), VI, 738 pp., 32 ill.
Articles include: “The Mirror Image in Neidhart’s Poetry: Destabilization of the Social Structure by Means of Sexual Competition,” Studi medievali 55.1 (2014) 165-88.; “Irony in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature (NIbelungenlied, Mauritius von Craûn, Johannes von Tepl’s Ackermann): The Encounter of the Menschlich-Allzumenschlich in a Medieval Context,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 113.2 (2014) 184-205; “Vom Mære zum Prosa-Schwank des 16. Und 17. Jahrhunderts: Tradition und Transformation einer literarischen Gattung vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Frühneuzeit,” in: Kontinuitäten und Neuerungen in Textsorten- und Textallianztraditionen vom 13. Bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, eds. Jörg Meier and Peter Ernst. Germanisitische Arbeiten zur Sprachgeschichte, 10 (Berlin: Weidler, 2014), 298-32; “Anticlericalism and Criticism of Clerics in Medieval and Early-Modern German Literature,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 72 (2014): 283-306.; “Storms, Shipwrecks, and Life-Changing Experiences in Late Medieval German Literature. From Oswald von Wolkenstein to Emperor Maximilian,” Oxford German Studies 43.3 (2014): 212-28: “Vergangen aber nicht vergessen: Mittelalterliche Literatur im heutigen Deutschunterricht: Fremde, zugleich aufregende Perspektiven für Studenten des 21. Jahrhunderts,” in: Literatur in Deutsch als Fremdsprache und internationaler Germanistik: Konzepte, Themen, Forschungsperspektiven, ed. Claus Altmayer, Michael Dobstadt, Renate Riedner, and Carmen Schier (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2014) 107-18.

John L. Flood (University of London) has a recent contribution: ‘Thorne [Dorn(e)], John, (fl. 1493-1548?).’ In: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (online update, September 2014: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/106754].

Susanne Hafner (Fordham University) has brought to our attention The 35^th Annual Conference of The Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University: Reading and Writing in City, Court, and Cloister: Conference in Honor of Mary C. Erler, Saturday, March 7, 2015. Lincoln Center Campus, Fordham University, New York, NY.

Hubert Heinen (University of Texas, emeritus) has a recent contribution, “Die Sinnlichkeit der ‚entsinnlchten’ Minnedame bei Reimar dem Alten,“ Earthly and Spiritual Pleasures in Medieval Life, Literature, Art, and Music: In Memory of Ulrich Müller I, ed. Sibylle Jefferis, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 779, Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 2014, 45-61. Further contributions by American medievalists:
Maria Dobozy; Francis G. Gentry; Edward R. Haymes; Winder McConnell; James Ogier, and Martin P. Sheehan.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University) presented at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association in Kansas City, September 2014. His paper was entitled: “Hildegard, Elisabeth and Herrad: Two Benedictines, a Canoness and the Virtues Required for Salvation.” He also contributed an article: “Descensus as Spiritual Realignment and Divine Legitimation in Hartmann’s Later Works.” 265-74. In: Text Analyses and Interpretations: In Memory of Joachim Bumke (Kalamazoo Papers 2012-2013), ed. Sibylle Jefferis, Kümmerle Verlag, 2013.

Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania) has noted that the Bumke Memorial volume has now appeared. Sibylle Jefferis, ed. Text Analyses and Interpretations: In Memory of Joachim Bumke (Kalamazoo Papers 2012-2013). Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 776. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 2013. She also has contributed two articles to the volume: “Schondochs Märe Die Königin von Frankreich und der ungetreue Marschall im Vergleich mit dem Sibillenroman von Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken,” 105-12, and “Hartmanns Gregorius und die Prosareduktion Gregorius auf dem Stein,” 221-36.

On behalf of all colleagues who cared deeply for Uli Müller, our special thanks to Albrecht Classen, Sibylle Jefferis and Evelyn Meyer for their efforts in organizing the Ulrich Müller and his Legacy — Sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo 2014. SMGS would also like to express its gratitude to Sieglinde Hartmann and the Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft for their support in making the tribute a reality.

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) presented a paper entitled: “Sigune as Martyr and/or Pietà in Wolfram’s Parzival” at the GSA conference in a panel organized by YMAGINA on female virtue in September 2014. She also gave the following presentation in the Womens and Gender Studies Program at Saint Louis University: “Otherness, Race and Gender in Text and image in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (ca. 1220): Some Highlights.”

Sara S. Poor (Princeton University) has organized a session at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, May 14-17, 2015 on the topic of “Money in the Middle Ages.”

Ann Marie Rasmussen (University of Waterloo, Canada) has left Duke University to become the Right Honorable John G. Diefenbaker Memorial Chair of German Literary Studies in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She joined her colleagues there on 1. January 2015, starting out on a thoroughly medieval note by teaching an undergraduate seminar on the Siegfried stories and a graduate seminar on King Arthur in Medieval Europe. Her most recent talk was “Pilgerzeichen in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, University of Greifswald, Germany, 8 October 2014. Earlier contributions include: “Moving beyond Sexuality in Medieval Sexual Badges,” in From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe, eds. E. Jane Burns and Peggy McCracken. Notre Dame. IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. pp. 296-335; also a co-authored piece with Heidi Madden, Western European Studies Librarian (Duke University) in: College and Research Library News March 2013, pp. 140-43, available online: http://crln.acrl.org/content/current

Debra L. Stoudt (Virginia Tech) is an ongoing financial contributor to the Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award. SMGS is grateful in acknowledging her support of new and future colleagues in the field of medieval Germanic Studies.

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University).
We wish to thank our new technical expert, Ben Ogden, for his expertise in providing the online version with both readability and elegance. We also wish to thank the Department of Classical & Modern Languages at Truman State University for its support of this publication.

The SMGS readership continues to grow steadily as is the interest in receiving the SMGS News & Reviews online. Should you wish to contribute to the section on SMGS News from Colleagues or if you know of a colleague who would be interested in membership (there are no dues), you may contact me by at ehintz@truman.edu or fax (660-785-7486), or write to the following address: Ernst Ralf Hintz, German and Medieval Studies, Truman State University, Department of Classical & Modern Languages, McClain Hall 310, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221 (U.S.A.).

The next issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in early May 2015.

On behalf of Marian Polhill, Jeffry Turco and Ernst Ralf Hintz,
All good wishes from SMGS for 2015!

Dear Colleagues,

The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is delighted to be sponsoring five sessions at the 46th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in May 12-15, 2011. We wish to thank our SMGS Organizers, Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) and Alexander Sager (University of Georgia, Athens) for their considerable efforts in putting together yet another exciting program for us.

 

 

Table of Contents

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2011

New Books Roundtable

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2011

New Books Received for SMGS Review

SMGS Review

News from Colleagues

 

 

 

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2011

 

I.       hôher êren pflegen: A Session in Honor of Ed Haymes

Session Chair: Ray M. Wakefield (University of Minnesota)

 

Kevin Richards (Ohio State University) “Siegfried the Blue-Helmet: Negotiating the Germanic Heroic Ethos in the Nibelungenlied Adaptations of Wolfgang Hohlbein and Thorsten Dewi.”

 

Jon Sherman (Northern Michigan University) “daz sol iuch unverdaget sîn: The Language of Hiding and Revealing in the Nibelungenlied”

 

Danielle Buschinger (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne) & Galina Baeva (Staatliche Universität Sankt-Petersburg) “Richard Wagners Wieland der Schmid”

 

 

II.    Working Theology in Medieval German Literature

Session Chair: Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University)

 

Claire Taylor Jones (University of Pennsylvania) “Kissing the Pagan: Unity, Identity, and the Failure of Metaphysical Community in Willehalm”

 

Joshua Davis (University of Montana) “Nehain lip wane Christ unde daz wip: Negotiating Feminine Narrative Space in Ava’s daz leben Jesu”

 

J. A. Wayne Hellmann (Saint Louis University) “Liturgical Symbolism in Parzival”

 

 

III. Communication and Narration in Medieval Arthurian Romance

Session Chair: Susanne Hafner (Fordham University)

 

Markus Greulich (Universität Wien) “doch sag ich dir ein mære. histoire and discours in Hartmanns Iwein”

 

Jeffrey Turco (Purdue University) “Wolfram’s Bow and the Technology of the Book (Parzival 241,1-30)”

 

Jerold C. Frakes (State University of New York at Buffalo) “The Epistemology of Infidelity in Gotfrit’s Tristan”

 

 

IV. Science, Law and History: Medieval German Didactic Literature

Session Chair: Alexander Sager (University of Georgia, Athens)

 

Michaela Wiesinger (Universität Wien, IFK) “Teaching the Unknown. Cosmological Concepts in Didactic Literature of the 13th Century”

 

Mary Campbell (Princeton University) “Reinhard Fuchs, Legally Revolutionizing Tierepos”

 

Alana King (Princeton University) “Medievalism and Reformation: Matthias Flacius Illyricus as Medievalist” Winner of the SMGS Prize for Best Abstract Submitted By a Graduate Student

 

 

ew Books Roundtable

Moderator: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

 

William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis) presents his book Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe (Palgrave McMillan, 2010).

 

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo 2011.

 

 

 

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2011

SMGS is delighted to announce The Sidney M. Johnson Award for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student or former graduate student within one semester of having received a doctorate.  Our recipient for 2011 will be Alana King (Princeton University) for her submission “Medievalism and Reformation: Matthias Flacius Illyricus as Medievalist” We are very much looking forward to her presentation in SMGS Session IV at Kalamazoo 2011.

 

 

 

New Books Received for SMGS Review

William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis), Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe. New York: Palgrave McMillan 2010. 248 pp.

ISBN: 978-0-230-10465-5.

 

Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University) and Sarah Westphal-Wihl (Washington University in St. Louis), Ladies, Whores, and Holy Women: A Sourcebook in Courtly, Religious, and Urban Cultures of Late Medieval Germany, In: Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions, V, Introductions, Translations, and Notes by Ann Marie Rasmussen and Sarah Westphal-Wihl. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications 2010. 155 pp. ISBN: 978-3-1-58044-151-3.

 

 

 

SMGS Reviews

Peter Dinzelbacher, Lebenswelten des Mittelalters. Badenweiler: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Bachmann, 2010. 562 pp. 177 illustrations.  

 

For those who earned their doctorates in the final decades of the past century, the work of the celebrated historian Arno Borst, especially his Lebensformen im Mittelalter (Propyläen Verlag, 1973), attained a near canonical status. His thematic dichotomy of Condicio Humana and Societas Humana provided a perspective of medieval life as inspiring as it was useful. For the current generation of aspiring medievalists—and those already serving the profession, the new book by Peter Dinzelbacher, Lebenswelten des Mittelalters, offers a contemporizing, fresh look at familiar topics encompassing circa 1000 to 1500.  The reader will welcome the pictorial dimension of this study: “Dabei ist es wichtig, sich bewußt, zu machen, daß die aus jener Zeit überkommenen Bildquellen genauso informative sind wie die Texte. Aus diesem Grund ist dieser Band im Unterschied zu den meisten analogen mit 177 Illustrationen ausführlich bebildert, von denen etwas die Hälfte hier zum ersten Mal veröffentlicht werden. Sie dienen keineswegs als ‘Aufputz’, sondern sind der schriftlichen Überlieferung gleichgestellte ‘Quellenzitate’. (10) Since medieval studies are intrinsically interdisciplinary and vast in format, it is scarcely possible be acquainted with each of its constituent disciplines. Thus, the inclusion of such a wide range of literary and societal references affords us the opportunity to look beyond the confines of our particular specialty areas. Dinzelbacher methodologically aims to clarify anthropological constants and fundamental societal constructs according to their medieval instantiations as Mentalitätsgeschichte. In doing so, he draws from a compendium of historical and literary sources that inform and entertain through a fascinating synthesis of overarching topics and compelling examples. Although the author casts a wide scholarly net, he still manages to combine breadth and depth. In doing so, he skillfully avoids combining disparate and loosely related sources into a contrived whole. Compelling and coherent in its overall composition, Dinzelbacher’s study provides the reader with a surprisingly diverse range of thematic units. Indeed, it is this diversity that makes this study not only enjoyable to read, but valuable as an interdisciplinary broadening of knowledge within medieval studies.

 

The author aptly divides his book into seven parts: In the first, Anthropologie, he situates men and women within medieval patriarchal society to ascertain their perception, i.e., mental construct of sexuality and love, family life and old age. Part two, Arbeit und Alltag, affords the reader insight into types of labor in rural and urban contexts, and in particular, attitudes toward work according to its practice and practitioners. Dinzelbacher takes care to juxtapose the drudgery of daily work with the religious feast days that offered respite and relief within the cycle of the Church year. Indeed, this study does not simply offer diverse examples; it does so without the loss of thematic focus—an achievement when one considers the scope of the topic and concomitant dangers to sound scholarship. Part Three, Herrschaft und Recht, has a tripartite structure. The first of these emphasizes rule: its methods, forms and legitimating practices in both the religious and secular spheres. The author accords the second emphasis to ideology in the institution of sacral kingship, theory and symbolic representation as well as propaganda. The third offers the reader a summative overview of the complex medieval construct of law in its secular and religious manifestations. Illustrations from the Sachenspiegel, Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis and lesser known documents lend contour to this section. Dinzelbacher’s explains with admirable clarity the juridical inter-weave of secular and religious concepts and praxis so generic to medieval mentality. Of particular interest to me was the subsection entitled: Gott selber ist das Recht, in which the author details with numerous examples the prevalence of the Old Law notion of ius talionis into the late medieval period. In Part Four, Krieg und Frieden, the author relates not only the interrelation of two seemingly opposite phenomena within their given societal contexts, but also general medieval attitudes and reflections on war and peace. Not surprisingly, the prime justification and explanation for the fortunes of war was almost always religious in both tone and authority. Dinzelbacher does well to outline the progression from Hrabanus Maurus’ ninth-century condemnation of killing in war irrespective of circumstance to papal approval of “Ketzerkreuzzüge” in the thirteenth century, and conversely to Cardinal Nikolaus of Cues’ De pace fidei with its goal of ending religious warfare in perpetuam. Parts Five and Six explore the courtly and academic worlds respectively. The author’s treatment of these two quintessential components of medieval life yields a compendium of salient perspectives and practices. Part Five, Die Höfische Welt, relates the elements that constitute a “court” and “courtly life.” In addition to their depiction via the heroes of courtly romance, there is also the figure of the Wild Mann, who demonstrates ex negativo all that is counter-courtly in demeanor and action. Part Six begins with the exemplum of scholarly knowledge and learned practice throughout the medieval period, namely, St. Jerome. Dinzelbacher take care to differentiate between “Wissen” and “Gelehrsamkeit”: “Wissen muß sich ja nicht auf Bildung im elitären Sinn beziehen, sondern kann ebensogut das für praktischeTätigkeiten nötige Wissen meinen, wie es das ganze Mittelalter hindurch (und vielfach noch heute) allein oder vorzugsweise mündlich und handelnd überliefert wurde” (325-26). In doing so, he explores the ways in which medieval society generally perceived differing types of knowledge and learning, and their practitioners. In Part Seven, Formen der Frömmigkeit, the final and most extensive chapter, the author offers us a thorough exposition of spiritual mental constructs and related manners of conduct. Of particular interest is the section entitled: Medien der Offenbarung, which presents the reader with an entire communicative spectrum from oral instruction to a wide range of artistic expression.

 

I am pleased to recommend this book to both seasoned medievalists and graduate students alike—indeed to anyone interested in the Middle Ages. I enjoyed and benefited from its wide display of learning—a true work of interdisciplinary medieval studies. The reader may occasionally notice minor typographical errors, but these do not distract from the material and could be easily emended in a second edition. In sum, Peter Dinzelbacher has succeeded well in contributing yet another valuable work to our field.  

 

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

 

 

SMGS News from Colleagues

 

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) has an article on the cultural influence of landscape forthcoming in Mediävistik.

 

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona-Tucson) has recently edited The Handbook of Medieval Studies in three volumes for De Gruyter with contributions from numerous colleagues in our field.

 

Francis G. Gentry (The Pennsylvania State University emeritus / University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus) has completed editing the English-language version of the Lexicon of the Middle Ages for Brill.

 

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) has recently co-edited a new volume on Exile Studies. In Fall 2008, the German Division at SLU hosted a meeting of the North American Society for Exile Studies. Selected papers from the conference, edited by Reinhard Andress, and co-edited by Evelyn Meyer and Gregory Divers, has now appeared entitled: Weltanschauliche Orientierungsversuche im Exil/New Orientations of World View in Exile, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2010, II. 371.

 

Olga Trokhimenko (University of North Carolina-Wilmington) and Marcus Stock (University of Toronto) are organizing sessions: (1) Premodern Transformations, (2) Art in Literature – Literature in Art in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, and (3) Motion in Text and Image for YMAGINA (Young Medievalist Germanists in North America) for the Thirty-Firth Annual Conference of the German Studies in Louisville, Kentucky, September 22-25, 2011. Abstracts are welcome.

http://www.ymagina.org

                    

 

 

 

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University).

We wish to thank our technical expert, Ben Ogden, for his expertise in providing the online version with both readability and elegance. We also wish to thank the Department of Classical & Modern Languages at Truman State University for its support of this publication.

 

The SMGS readership continues to grow steadily as is the interest in receiving the SMGS News & Reviews online. Should you wish to contribute to the section on SMGS News from Colleagues or if you know of a colleague who would be interested in membership (there are no dues), you may contact me at ehintz@truman.edu or fax (660-785-7486), or write to the following address: Ernst Ralf Hintz, German and Medieval Studies, Truman State University, Department of Classical & Modern Languages, McClain Hall 310, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221 (U.S.A.).

 

The next issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in May 2011.

 

On behalf of Evelyn Meyer, Alexander Sager and Ernst Ralf Hintz,

All good wishes from SMGS for 2011!

Dear Colleagues,

Our Society for Medieval German Studies is sponsoring five sessions at the 43nd Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in May 2008. We again thank Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University) for organizing what promises to be an exciting and valuable program. Each of our presenters at Kalamazoo 2007 deserves high praise for having made our sessions a pleasure to attend.

SMGS also thanks Matthew Heintzelman (The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library and Glenn Ehrstine (University of Iowa) for co-sponsoring our tribute to Eckehard Simon in celebration of his considerable contribution to the study of medieval drama, and perhaps more importantly, for his exemplary collegiality and humanity.

Links to important websites are available under News from Colleagues.

Table of Contents

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2008

New Books Roundtable

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2008

New Books Received for SMGS Review

SMGS Review

News from Colleagues

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2008

New Research I

Amazons in Medieval German Sources

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Amazons in Medieval German SourcesPresider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)“The German Invention of the Amazons“

Alissandra Paschkowiak (University of Massachusetts)

“nach der mannesnamen site? Amazons and their challenge to normative masculinity“

Cordula Politis (Trinity College Dublin)

“In Praise of Amazons and Heathens: A Consideration of the Normative Role of Femininity in Wigalois.”

Karina Marie Ash (SMJ Prize Winner 2008, University of California, Los Angeles)

Sarah Westhphal-Wihl (Respondent) “Amazons in Parzival“ (Rice University)

New Research II

James Schultz (University of California at Los Angeles): Courtly Love, the love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality

Presider: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)

“Literary Representation of Masculinity in the Teutonic Order”

Rasma Lazda-Cazers (University of Alabama)

“Backlash: Creative Obscenity and the History of Sexuality”

Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University)

“Love, System, Sex: A Tribute.”

Helmut Puff (University of Michigan)

New Research III

Literacy and Orality in the Middle Ages

Presider: Matthias Meyer (Universität Wien)

“Spuren soziolektaler Mündlichkeit im deutschen”

Max Siller (Universität Innsbruck)

“Tempus muliebre in Thirteenth-century Courtly Literature?”

Klaus Amann (Die Predigtsammlung Albrechts des Kolben (1387) als schriftliche Quelle für die gesprochene Sprache? Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der historischen Dialektologie.“(Universität Innsbruck )

“Mnemonic Images in the ‘Codices picturati’ of the Sachsenspiegel”

Henrike Manuwald (Universität zu Köln)

New Research IV

Reading Movement and Movements

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

“Anatomy of the Fall: Taking a Tumble in Hartmann’s Iwein und Chrétien’s Yvain ”

Joseph Sullivan (University of Oklahoma)

“Wolfram’s Theology Revisited: the Impovished Reading”

James W. Marchand (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Related Sessions of Interest

We received many abstracts this year and these three were adopted into a session organized by Carol Mattord, a colleague in the English Department at Georgia State University.

The Medieval Narrative: The Body, The Senses

Presider/Organizer: Carola Mattord (Georgia State University)

“Prologue Aesthetics and the Problem of Reception in the Trojanerkrieg ”

Michael Hougentogler (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign)

“‘nach sineme pilede getan’: Adam’s Body and the Image of God in the Vienna Genesis”

Rachael Salyer (University of Massachusetts)

“The very Picture of Man. Or: Exphrasis as Space for a Heartless Hero”

Margaret Mauer (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

ew Books Roundtable

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona at Tucson) will be presenting his recent contribution to our field:

The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process

Palgrave, 2007, ISBN 13:978-1-4039-7558-4.

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo in 2007.

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2007

SMGS is delighted to announce The Sidney M. Johnson Award for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student. The recipient for 2008 will be Karina Marie Ash (University of California, Los Angeles) for her submission “In Praise of Amazons and Heathens: A Consideration of the Normative role of Femininity in Wigalois.” We are looking forward to hearing her presentation in the SMGS New Research I session at Kalamazoo, 2008.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

Helmut Brall-Tuchel, Folker Reichert, Rom Jerusalem Santiago: Das Pilgertagebuch des Ritters Arnold von Harff, , 2007,

ISBN 978-3-412-20026-8..

Alois Wolf, minne-aventiure-herzenjâmer

begleitende und ergänzende Beobachtungen und Uberlegungen zur Literaturgeschichte des volkssprachlichen Mittelalters, Rombach Litterae Band 155, Rombach Verlag, 2007 IBSN 978-3-7930-9496-8.

Nigel Harris (ed.), The Light of the Soul

The Lumen anime C und Ulrich Putsch’s Das liecht der sel

Peter Lang, 2007, IBSN 978-3-03910-737-7

SMGS Reviews

Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity. Edited by Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 312 pp. $74.95 hardcover.

Although there are a few anthologies that explore the roles of women in medieval epics, it appears that this anthology is exceptional in its selection of essays from a variety of cultural traditions ranging from the chronicles of Persian Empire to the sagas of the Vikings. Considering gender and genre within this kaleidoscope of cultural representations not only removes the epics from their traditional enclave of national affiliation, but also offers the reader an opportunity to focus on various cross-cultural and/or trans-historical implications of gender ideologies. Such an approach invites the reader to look beyond the mirror of masculinity so often embodied by the epic protagonists and affirmed by numerous scholars to see the occasional nuanced and subtle reflection of femininity as well. Indeed, the focal point of the anthology centers on the dynamic between representations of masculinity and femininity that creates literary worlds and expresses communal ideals within each epic.

SMGS members may be particularly interested in the contributions by William Layher, Jana K. Schulman, Kaaren Grimstad and Ray M. Wakefield, and Kathryn Starkey. Layher’s article, “Caught between Worlds: Gendering the Maiden Warrior in Old Norse,” presents two female characters from the Old Norse Fornaldarsögur who not only are depicted as cross-dressing women behaving like male warriors, but are even grammatically designated as males through appellative use of the male pronoun during their period of masculine activity. Layher concludes that these depictions affirm that gender in Norse culture “was not coterminous with biological sex but rather always infinitely variable, and that it was based almost entirely on how a person’s deeds – not their sex – measured up on the omnibus masculine yardstick of drenskapr [manly courage]” (189). Although the significance of Layher’s article is obvious for scholars of Old Norse literature, within the context of such an anthology one can also see how Layher’s study offers another cultural image and a fresh interpretation of the maiden who temporarily excels as a knight motif found in the Frauenturnier and the Old French Roman de Silence as well as how Layher’s theory of Icelandic women measuring up to an ideal of manly courage may evoke an interesting comparison with Christian women measuring up to an ideal of manly fortitude as denoted by Jerome’s concept of a virago.

Jana K. Schulman’s article, “‘A Guest in the Hall’: Women, Feasts, and Violence in Icelandic Epic,” also looks at the depiction of women in Old Norse sagas, but shifts the focus away from violent women warriors to women who incite male warriors in the Laxdaela saga and in Njals’ saga to violence and to women who perform acts of violence without the cloak of masculine appeal in the Völsunga saga. Schulman asserts that the genre differences between the Laxdaela saga and Njals’ saga based on the historical settlements in Iceland and the Völsunga saga based on heroic-mythical material can explain the different degrees of violence enacted by the female characters since the “historicity [of Laxdaela saga and Njals’ saga] precludes women from physical acts of violence” (221). The question of women and violence in Old Norse sagas and in the Nibelungenlied is also explored by Kaaren Grimstad and Ray M. Wakefield in their article “Monstrous Mates: The Leading Ladies of the Nibelungenlied and the Völsunga Saga.” While Schulman examines the issue of violent female characters from the perspective of genre and the importance of honor for women in Icelandic culture, Grimstad and Wakefield approach the depiction of violent female characters within the context of oath-taking to show how the female characters’ reactions to the breaking of contractual oaths point toward ideological differences between Norse and Germanic societies in which the former appears to value familial loyalty and the latter appears to value spousal loyalty.

Kathryn Starkey’s article, “Performative Emotion and the Politics of Gender in the Nibelungenlied,” resettles our gaze exclusively on an epic that all SMGS members should feel at home with. Instead of comparing the depiction of women in different literary works, genres, or cultures, this essay zooms in to focus on the performativity of smiling within the codicological context of the Nibelungenlied. Starkey explains how the Nibelungen poet uses two distinct verbs to denote two different types of smiles that have significantly different connotations within the fictional world of the epic. The verb smielen can be read as a type of smirk that confirms the political prowess of the character smirking. The verb lachen, on the other hand, is used to convey a gesture of joy when a character flashes a conventional courtly smile. By spotlighting the performitivity of these two verbs and how they can be deployed to denote power within the narrative, Starkey finds a discrepancy regarding the depiction of female political power in Manuscript C: ” The redactor for Ms. C (may have) perceived Brunhild’s claim to authority as problematic […since he] downplays Brunhild’s ability to assert her authority using the same non-verbal strategies as the male characters” (263). Further inquiry shows that the redactor of the C alters the performative gestures of the female characters to such an extent that “the struggle for power between the sexes [becomes] less central to the social dynamics of the poem” (266). Although the primacy of which manuscript tradition A, B, or C is closest to the “original” Nibelungenlied, Joachim Bumke’s contention that C is the closest along with Karin Schneider’s recently revised (2005) dating of the C version to the second quarter of the thirteenth century should encourage more of us to examine the C version and perhaps revise some of our assumptions about gender dynamics in the Nibelungenlied and in the Blütezeit in general. Starkey’s contribution also raises more questions about the correspondence between the cultural agenda of the Klage and the C version and may inspire more work on the perceived incongruence between the epic and its contemporary commentary.

Least we forget the diversity of literature represented in this anthology, I would like to conclude by recommending a couple articles that may fall outside of the Germanic orientation of SMGS, but would certainly be a pleasure for all medievalists to read. Christine Chism’s article, “Winning Women in Two Middle English Alexander Poems,” convincingly shows how women are involved “in the production and consumption of epic representation” and even how “the social work of the epic is done through women and for them as well” (36). William Burgwinkle’s article, “Ethical Acts and Annihilation: Feminine Heroics in Girard de Roussillon,” frames the representation of Berthe as a type of secular sanctity that problematizes heroic masculinity in Occitan chanson de geste Girart de Roussillon. Both articles and many others beyond the scope of this review glisten in this kaleidoscope of gems that both Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman should be commended for selecting and editing from the panels they organized at Kalamazoo in 2002.

Karina Marie Ash (University of California, Los Angeles)

SMGS News from Colleagues

Karina Marie Ash (University of California, Los Angeles) has received a DAAD scholarship and to transcribe an early 15^th-century Marienleben at the city archives in Konstanz.

Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Ohio State University) has announced three sessions arranged by the Division German Literature to 1700 for the MLA, December 28-30, 2007, in Chicago. For additional information: becker-cantarino.1@osu.edu

(Ohio State University) has announced three sessions arranged by the for the,in ChicagoFor additional information:Thursday, 28 December

Session 217. Medieval German Literature, 1:145 – 3:00 p.m., Washington B, Loews

Presiding: Sara Suzanne Poor (Princeton University)

(1) “The Romance of Narcissus in Heinrich von Morungen”

Seth Lerer (Stanford University)

(2) “A Reconsideration of Das Mädchen: The Reception of Bridal Mysticism in Thirteenth-Century German Literature”

Karina Marie Ash (University of California, Los Angeles)

(3) “Gender and Salvation in Ofrid’s Evangelienbuch”

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

Friday, 29 December

Session 394. Performance and Ritual, 10:15-11:30 a.m., Jefferson, Loews

Presiding: Rosmarie T. Morewedge (State University of New York, Binghamton)

(1)“Laughter as the Ultimate Epistemological Vehicle in the Hands of Till Eulenspiegel”

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona, Tucson)

(2) “A Marriage of Protestant Union: Creating Saxon Identity with the Danish-Saxon Wedding of 1548”

Mara R. Wade (University of Illinois, Urbana)

Friday, 29 December

Session 625. Migration, Asylum, Exile, 9:00-10:15 p.m., Anthony, Loews

Presiding: Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Ohio State University, Columbus)

(1) “Johann Schiltberger’s Account of His Life in the Ottoman and Mongol Empires: Questions of Genre and Ideology”

(2) “Transatlantic Visions: Moravian Migration from Herrnhut to Bethlehem”

Josef K. Glowa (Moravian College)

(3) “From Exile to Insanity: The Works of Daniel Klesch”

Jonathan Clark (Concordia College, Moorhead)

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Lehrstuhl für Ältere deutsche Sprache und Literatur, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) and Folker Reichert (Universität Stuttgart) have a new contribution to our field: Rom Jerusamem Santiago: Das Pilgertagebuch des Ritters Arnold von Harff (1496-1498), Böhlau Verlag, 2007. ISBN 978-3-412-20026-8. There is also an accompanying exhibition and lecture series entitled: “Arnold von Harff: Ritter-Pilger-Dichter: Die grossen Pilgerreisen nach Rom, Jerusalem und Santiago de Compostella” at Villa Erckens in Grevenbroich (21.10 – 21.01.08).

(Lehrstuhl für Ältere deutsche Sprache und Literatur, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) and (Universität Stuttgart) have a new contribution to our field: , Böhlau Verlag, 2007. ISBN 978-3-412-20026-8. There is also an accompanying exhibition and lecture series entitled: “Arnold von Harff: Ritter-Pilger-Dichter: Die grossen Pilgerreisen nach Rom, Jerusalem und Santiago de Compostellaat Villa Erckens in Grevenbroich (21.10 – 21.01.08).For further information contact:

brall@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) has two books appearing this year. The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process, Palgrave Maximillan, 2007. ISBN: 13-978-1-4039-7558-4; and The Power of a Woman’s Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures, De Gruyter 2007. ISBN: 978-3-11-019941-3.

(University of Arizona) has two books appearing this year. , Palgrave Maximillan, 2007. ISBN: 13-978-1-4039-7558-4; and , De Gruyter 2007. ISBN: 978-3-11-019941-3.aclassen@u.arizona.edu

Christoph Flüeler (Abbey Library of St. Gall, Switzerland online) has organized access to the CESG online: www.cesg.unifr.ch with more than 100 complete manuscripts and regular updates.

Karl Heinz (Institute for the Research on Ecclesiastical Sources IEEkQ) has expanded the website for the Virtual Archive of Historical Documents in Central Europe. The website www.monasterium.net provides unlimited access to numerous original historical sources dating from the Early Middle Ages up to the present time The MOM archive offers valuable research opportunities to all interested SMGS colleagues.

You may contact Karl Heinz at karl.heinz@monasterium.net for additional information. SMGS wishes to thank him for continuing this invaluable work.

Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania) has two contributions that SMGS colleagues will find of interest:

Sibylle Jefferis (ed.) The Nibelungenlied: Genesis, Interpretation, Reception (Kalamazoo Papers 1997-2005). Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 735. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 2006; and Ein spätmittelalterliches Katharinenspiel aus dem Cod. Ger. 4 der University of Pennsylvania: Text und Studien zu seiner legendengeschichtlichen Einordnung. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 430, Kümmerle Verlag, 2007.

Max Siller (Universität Innsbrück) presented a well-received paper on his most recent Nibelunglied-research at a SMGS session in 2007. SMGS is again delighted that he will be presenting for us again at Kalamazoo 2008.

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University).

We wish to thank our technical expert, Ben Ogden, for his expertise in providing the online version with both readability and elegance. We also wish to thank the Division of Language & Literature at Truman State University for its support of this publication.

The SMGS readership continues to grow steadily as is the interest in receiving the SMGS News & Reviews online. Should you wish to contribute to the section on SMGS News from Colleagues or if you know of a colleague who would be interested in membership (there are no dues), you may contact me at ehintz@truman.edu or fax (660-785-7486), or write to the following address: Ernst Ralf Hintz, German and Medieval Studies, Truman State University, Department of Classical & Modern Languages, McClain Hall 310, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221 (U.S.A.).

The next issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in April, 2008.

On behalf of Stephen Mark Carey and Ernst Ralf Hintz,

All good wishes from SMGS for the Holidays and the New Year 2008!

 

Dear Colleagues,
The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is sponsoring four sessions at the 54th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo May 9-12, 2019. We wish to thank our SMGS Organizers, Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University), Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Appalachia State University) and Joseph M. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma) for their time and effort in assembling this year’s program of new research.

Table of Contents
SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2019
New Books Roundtable
The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for 2019
SMGS Review

SMGS sponsored Sessions at Kalamazoo 2019
 

1. Experiencing Textiles in Medieval Culture and German Literature

Session Organizers: Evelyn Meyer, Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Joseph M. Sullivan
Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

Hannah Hunter-Parker (Princeton University): Mit kunkeln und mit schaeren: Tools for Reading Textiles in Medieval German Texts
Winner of the Johnson-Müller Prize for Best Abstract Submitted by a Graduate Student

Kathryn Starkey (Stanford University): Weaving Words, Spinning Yarns, and Embroidering the Truth in Medieval German Literature

Ann Marie Rasmussen (University of Waterloo): Who and What Do You Pin It On? Badges and Belonging in late Medieval Europe

Respondent: Monica L. Wright (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)

1. German Courtly Narrative and Lyric: Rethinking Sources and Influences

Sponsoring Organisation: Society for Medieval Germanic Studies
Session Organizers: Evelyn Meyer, Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Joseph M. Sullivan
Presider: Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Appalachia State University)

Jonathan Seelye Martin (Illinois State University): Unequal Equality: Erec as Head of his Wife in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec

Matthias Daeumer (University of Vienna): Of Sentinels and Neutral Angels: On the Connection Between the Jewish ‘Book of Watchers’ and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Grail Mythology

Susanne Hafner (Fordham University): What happened at the sumer von triere? Friedrich von Hausen and his crux 

Respondent: Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Appalachia State University)

III. Longs, Shorts, and Shouts: Attitudes and Strategies in Poetry and Narrative
Sponsoring Organisation: Society for Medieval Germanic Studies
Session Organizers: Evelyn Meyer, Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Joseph M. Sullivan
Presider: Joseph M. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma)

Olga V. Trokhimenko (University of North Carolina at Wilmington) “Long Hair, Little Sense”: Revisiting the Proverbial Stereotype

Lena Zudrell (University of Vienna) One Tenth of Tandareis: On Characters and Programmatic Reduction of Arthurian Literature

Matthias Meyer (University of Vienna) Aha-Experiences in Middle High German Poetry? The Case of Frauenlob.

Respondent: Joseph M. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma)

New Books Roundtable

Moderator: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)
Tina M. Boyer (Wake Forest University) The Giant Hero in Medieval Literature (2016)
Respondent: Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University)
 
 
 

The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for 2019
The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student will be presented to Hannah Hunter-Parker (   )
for her submission: Mit kunkeln und mit schaeren: Tools for Reading Textiles in Medieval German Texts.

We strongly encourage the submission of abstracts beginning September 2019 for the 2020 award.

Books received for Review
The Medieval Risk-Reward Society: Courts, Adventure, and Love in the European Middle Ages, Will Hasty, Ohio State University Press: Columbus, 2016. ISBN 9780814213032

Ruling the Spirit: Women, Liturgy, and Dominican Reform in Late Medieval Germany,
Claire Taylor Jones, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 2018.
ISBN 9780812249552

The Giant Hero in Medieval Literature, Tina Marie Boyer, Series: Explorations in Medieval Culture, Vol. 2, Brill:  2016. ISBN: 978-90-04-31641-6

Beringer, Alison L. The Sight of Semiramis: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Babylonian Queen. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016.

Alison L. Beringer’s new book seeks to present and shed light on various medieval and early modern legends surrounding the ancient Babylonian Queen, Semiramis.  Legendary builder of Babylon and other ancient cities, military conqueror, invader of India, beautiful noble woman, cross-dresser, daughter of a goddess, raised by doves, Semiramis has attracted attention throughout the ages, and her story was told in many different versions. Beringer’s principal sources include several texts in medieval and early modern German dialects, and she compares these with a number of ancient and medieval legends from various linguistic and geographic contexts.
“The Statue of Liberty is not Semiramis – whatever Google says” (xiii). So begins Beringer’s book. After a brief introduction that exposes the questionable scholarship that has encouraged popular views of Semiramis that are not supported by premodern textual evidence – in other words, after considering what Semiramis is NOT – Beringer provides six chapters on the classical, medieval, and early modern evidence constructing images of the ancient queen. The first chapter, nonetheless, argues that the premodern situation was no less convoluted than contemporary mis-identification of Semiramis, with many versions of the queen’s history circulating in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern periods. Semiramis could apparently stand in for many an ancient Babylonian or Persian queen, even being equated in one story with the mythological Rhea, wife of Kronos, and elements were continually being added and modified to her image. Beringer thus argues for the fluidity of the story, depending highly on the context in which the legend is included: “Semiramis—woman, name, story—is of interest precisely because her identity consists of a lack of identity, in that potential for narrative plurality that defies any attempt at the neat and the definitive—and creates a fertile openness in the tales told of her over the centuries” (4). Despite the diverse material analyzed, Beringer confirms the view of earlier scholarship that the classical versions of the queen’s story tend to portray her more positively for her engineering successes and military prowess, whereas, not surprisingly, the medieval traditions arising at the time of the early Church Fathers associate her more negatively with lechery and sexual transgressions. There is much variation, though, within that general trajectory, and so Beringer focuses, in the remainder of her book, on the motif of sight and viewing, seeing or being seen alluded to in the title. This organizational method provides a theoretical and innovative way to present the various accounts of Semiramis.
The second chapter discusses a particular version of Semiramis’s life by Diodorus Siculus from the first century BCE, the lengthiest and most complete of her stories extant from Antiquity.  Chapters three to five focus on the visual topographies alluded to in the title of the book. Chapter three “Manipulating the Sight and Site of Royal Bodies” explores the literary representations of Semiramis revealing or concealing royal bodies, particularly her own through cross-dressing, and considers the repercussions of this on the construction and destabilization of gendered roles.  Beringer concludes that “what the stories [of Semiramis] suggest is that real power lies not in language and commandments, not in what the ear hears, but in sights, in what the eye sees” (98).
“Viewing the Royal Body” is the title of chapter four. Here Beringer focuses on the effects that witnessing Semiramis’s body, dead or alive, have on the mostly male viewers within the narratives. The latter part of this chapter analyzes in some detail the late Byzantine romance known as “The Narrative of Alexander and Semiramis” and considers its similarities to the myth of Perseus and Medusa.
Chapter five, “Semiramis as Viewer” discusses “the idea that seeing can lead to destruction” (169) by analyzing representations of idolatry and incest—both manifestations of luxuria in the medieval understanding of the sin, as Beringer points out—in the story of Semiramis found in Rudolf von Ems’s Weltchronik , and in illustrations of the queen’s story from a selection of manuscripts. A concise conclusion rounds out the study, followed by an appendix with transcriptions of some of the Meisterlieder referenced in the analysis.
Beringer analyzes material from a diverse representation of texts, including the accounts from the first century BCE Library of History by Diodorus Siculus, the late antique Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus by Justinus, The Seven Books of History against the Pagans by Paulus Orosius, a pre-eleventh century anonymous Latin poem Semiramis, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, and Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, as well as several German texts, such as Rudolf von Ems’s Weltchronik, the anonymous Christherre –Chronik, and Meisterlieder by Hans Sachs, Kaspar Klippisch, Georg Braun, and Georg Danbeck.
Notable aspects of Beringer’s study include her focus on Semiramis’s cross-dressing, her military successes and her frequent gender identification as male within the texts; as well as the consideration of how the various contexts differ widely in their treatment of Semiramis’s alleged sexual transgressions such as incestuous desire and excessive passion. Beringer’s inclusion of transcriptions and analysis of the Meisterlieder makes this study unique and a noteworthy contribution to scholarship on the representation of Semiramis throughout the ages, both within German Studies, as well as in a comparative context.  A wider reach and analysis of a greater number of non-Western sources would be a welcome possibility for further study.
Marian Elizabeth Polhill (University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras)

The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from an Historical Perspective, Albrecht Classen, Lexington Books: London, 2015.
ISBN: 978-0-7391-9518-5. (reprinted from the 2018 Kalamazoo edition per request)

As a student in Heidelberg I often climbed to the Philosophenweg to look down at the Neckar and wander through the forest, only stopping at the Celtic fortifications to imagine the sight of Roman legions marching over the horizon ca. 50 BCE. Classen shares in this fascination for the forest. Looking at the transformative agency of the forest spanning classical works from Hartmann, Wolfram and Gottfried to late medieval texts from The Pleier and Konrad von Würzburg, to early modern works represented by Königen Sibille of Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken and Thüring von Ringoltigen’s Melusine, the author offers us a valuable ecocritical analysis and interpretative approach. Yet, the motivation for researching this area is not purely academic: “The burning question in medieval studies centers nowadays very much on how we can motivate our students to pay attention to literary texts from the premodern era, how to make them relevant again, or how to preserve their traditional role within the larger canon of Western literature.” (16) In doing so, Classen reevaluates the iconographical meaning of sylvan space for medieval culture in terms of “symbol, value and metaphor.” In the author’s words: “… I will simply ask what the forest mattered for a variety of medieval German poets and how they utilized that space for their specific purposes in the development of the characters and the plot.” (17) The forest as a “biotope sui generis” that captivates eco-friendly people today will hardly have interested medieval poets, yet the forest had a demonstrative narrative function that was more than mere backdrop. Analyzing Tristan from an ecocritical perspective, Classen calls our attention to the highly neglected dynamic quality of the forest. “In terms of narratology, … the forest as a fictional space provided Gottfried with a great opportunity to explore existential challenges and to outline how the protagonists cope with fundamental conflicts pitting them against the mores of courtly society.” (119) Accordingly, this dynamic quality of the forest often signals an imminent transformative change that is about to overtake the protagonist(s). Classen observes further that the forest as cultural and literary motif goes beyond a simple binary concept of light and darkness, good and evil. Sylvan narrative iconology can be fluid and complex to reflect a central tenet of good literature and life itself—ambiguity. The author convincingly demonstrates the centrality of this notion in his analysis of Thüring von Ringoltigen’s 15^th-century rendition of the tale of Melusine. The reader will also find the photograph of the 1483 “Memorial Stone Cross” near the Wartburg illustrative as it depicts the wild boar and inadvertent killing of Emrich by Reymund. (192)

In sum, the book is well written and researched. Classen introduces us to a useful literary approach that enables us with greater precision to see the forest for the trees. I am certain the reader will enjoy reading Classen’s ecocritical study of The Forest in Medieval Literature as much as I did.
Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

SMGS Reviews
Reviews to appear in the Fall/Winter edition of the SMGS News & Reviews

News from Colleagues
You are welcome to submit news of papers presented, articles and books written, promotions and new positions to SMGS for the next edition.

Helmut Brall-Tuchel, Anke Peters (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf): „Krankheiten die man nicht heilen kann“, in: Bechmann, Sascha (Hrsg.) Sprache und Medizin. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur medizinischen Sprache und Kommunikation, Berlin 2017, 373-397

Helmut Brall-Tuchel, Jerusalem im Pilgerbericht Arnolds von Harff (1496-98), in: Jerusalem in Aachen – „Aachener“ in Jerusalem. Mittelalter und Frühe Neuzeit. Vorträgedes Studientages in Aachen am 5. November 2016, Hrsg. Vom Geschichtsvereinfür das Bistum Aachen e.V., Neustadt a. d. Aisch, 2018 (Geschichte im Bistum Aachen – Beiheft 9, 145-170)

-, Arnold von Harff: Ritter – Pilger – Dichter, in:  Karlheinz Wiegmann (Hg.): Aufbruch in die Ferne. Mit Gladbacher Reisenden durch die Jahrhunderte, Mönchengladbach (2017), 36 – 45

-,  Orientdiskurse in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, in: Germanistische Studien. Eine Zeitschrift des Vereins Deutsche Sprache, Nr. 11, Dortmund/Tiflis (2017), S.180-195

-, Stadt – Land – Fluss. Zum Verhältnis von Kultur und Natur in frühhumanistischen Reiseberichten, in: Elmar Schafroth, Domenico Conte (Hgg.): Natura e cultura nelle scienze dell’uomo – Natur und Kultur in den Geisteswissenschaften, Oberhausen (2017), im Druck

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) has two symposia to announce:
1. Fantasy and Imagination in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time, May 2-5, 2019: https://aclassen.faculty.arizona.edu/content/2019-16th-symposium

and

2. Symposium on Africans in Europe and Europeans in Africa
https://aclassen.faculty.arizona.edu/content/symposium-africans-europe-and-europeans-africa
April 4-7, 2019

Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern European Literature. Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture, 8 (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), viii, 329.

Eros und Logos: Literarische Formen des sinnlichen Begehrens in der (deutschsprachigen) Literatur vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Albrecht Classen, Wolfgang Brylla, and Andrey Kotin. Popular Fiction Studies, 4 (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2018), 342.

Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Explorations of Worldly Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 22 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), XIX, 704.

Japanisch-deutsche Gespräche über Fremdheit im Mittelalter: Interkulturelle und interdisziplinäre Forschungen in Ost und West, ed. Manshu Ide and Albrecht Classen. Stauffenburg Mediävistik, 2 (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2018), 231. 40 b/w ill.

Mediaevistik: Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung, vol. 30 (Berlin, Bern, et al.: Peter Lang, 2017; appeared in 2018)

and collaborated with
Reiner Cornelius, Gunhild Classen, and Albrecht Classen, Zur Rhön hinauf (Niederaula: Auwel-Verlag, 2018)

Glenn Ehrstine (University of Iowa), “Raymond Peraudi in Zerbst: Corpus Christi Theater, Material Devotion, and the Indulgence Microeconomy on the Eve of the Reformation,” Speculum 93 (2018): 319-56.

Glenn Ehrstine, „Eine meisterliche Fälschung? Zum Warning’schen Begriff der Pseudokommunikation.” InAmbivalenzen des geistlichen Spiels. Re-Visionen von Texten und Methoden, ed. Jörn Bockmann and Regina Toepfer, 65-77. Historische Semantik 29. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018.

CJ Jones (University of Notre Dame) has won a Humboldt fellowship for 18 months of support. She will be under the sponsorship of Jutta Eming at the Freie Universitat Berlin for May-July 2019, May-July 2020, and academic year 21-22. The award supports her second monograph, tentatively titled “Washing the Altars: Shaping Religious Community in Medieval Holy Week Ritual.”

Sabine Seelbach(Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Angelika Kemper (Eds.): Documenta mnemonica Bad. 3. Zentrale Gedächtnislehren des Spätmittelalters. Eine Auswahl von Traktaten mit Übersetzung und Kommentar. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter 2018 (= Frühe Neuzeit Band 217); 452 S.;ISBN: 978-3-11-056451-8.

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University).
We wish to thank our technical expert, Ben Ogden, for his expertise in providing the online version with both readability and elegance. We also wish to thank the Department of Classical & Modern Languages and the School of Arts and Letters at Truman State University for their support of this publication.

The SMGS readership continues to grow steadily as is the interest in receiving the SMGS News & Reviews online. Should you wish to contribute to the section on SMGS News from Colleagues or if you know of a colleague who would be interested in membership (there are no dues), you may contact me by at ehintz@truman.edu, or write to the following address: Ernst Ralf Hintz, German and Medieval Studies, Truman State University, Department of Classical & Modern Languages, McClain Hall 310, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221 (U.S.A.).

The Fall/Winter issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in late 2019.

On behalf of Evelyn Meyer, Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Joseph M Sullivan and Ernst Ralf Hintz,
All good wishes from SMGS for spring 2019!

Dear Colleagues,
The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is sponsoring four sessions at the 50th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo May 12-15, 2016. We wish to thank our SMGS Organizers, Marian Elisabeth Polhill (University of Puerto Rico) and Jeffrey Turco (Purdue University) for their time and considerable efforts in assembling this year’s program of new research.

Table of Contents
SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2016
New Books Roundtable
The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for 2016
SMGS Review

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2016
Organizers: Marian Polhill (University of Puerto Rico),
Jeffrey Turco (Purdue University)

SMGS sponsored sessions, Kalamazoo 2016

1. New Research in Medieval Germanic Studies I: History, Narrative, and Authority

(Friday, May 13 10:00 a.m. Session 218 Bernard 208)
Presider: Jeffrey Turco (Purdue University)

Claire Taylor Jones (University of Notre Dame) Historical Truth and Narrative Exemplarity in the Fourteenth-Century Dominican Sisterbooks

Stephen Mark Carey (University of Minnesota-Morris): The Historiographic Program of Hermann I’s Literary Patronage

Rebecca L.R. Garber (Cambridge Historical European Martial Arts Study) The Medieval Fechtbuch: Questions regarding Authors, Authority, and Audience

1. New Research in Medieval Germanic Studies II: Words and Transmission

(Friday, May 13 1:30 p.m. Session 270 Bernard 208)
Presider: Marian Elizabeth Polhill (University of Puerto Rico-Recinto de Rio)
Adam Oberlin (Atlanta International School) Gegenrede im gar gebrach: Lacunae in MHD Phraseology and Figurative Language
Russell Stepp (Cornell University) What is a Dragon? Mythological and Legendary Reptilian Taxonomy
Jonathan Green (Auburn University) German Medieval Literature’s Unseen Species Problem

III. New Research in Medieval German Studies III: Myth, Monsters, and Pagans
(Friday, May 13 3:30 p.m. Session 322 Bernard 208)
Presider: Ann Marie Rasmussen (University of Waterloo)

Alison L. Beringer (Montclair State University) Dead or Alive? The Statue in Picture and Text in Der Stricker’s Karl der Grosse

Christopher Liebtag Miller (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto) Death and the (Heathen) Maiden: The Ambiguously Noble Ends of Non-Christian Women

Tina Boyer (Wake Forest University) Religious Identities and Giants in Medieval German Literature

Sessions organized by SMGS colleagues

(Thursday, May 12 10:00 a.m. Session 30 Schneider 1340)
Medieval German Trojan War Stories of Herbort von Fritzlar, Konrad von Würzburg and Others: Interpretations, Translations, Interpolations, Adaptations, sponsored by Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft, Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania) Organizer, Siegrid Schmidt (Universität Salzburg) Presider,

Ingrid Bennewitz (Otto-Friedrich-Unversität Bamberg) Der Troyanerkrieg

Antje Wittstock (Universität Siegen) Konrad von Würzburg Troyanerkrieg und die Alchemie

Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania) Der Einfluss des Lieds von Troja Herborts von Fritzlar (und seiner Quelle, Benoîts Roman de Troie) auf die Minnegrotte in Gottfrieds von Strassburg Tristan: Das Alabasterzimmer (La Chambre de Beautés)

New Books Roundtable

(Friday evening at 8:00 in Bernard 204)
Moderator: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)
Jerold C. Frakes (University at Buffalo) presents his book Vernacular and Latin Literary Discourses of the Muslin Other in Medieval Germany. Palgrave Macmillan: 2011. ISBN: 978-0-230-11087-8

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo 2016.

The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for 2016
Due to lack of submissions, SMGS will not be awarding The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award this year for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student or former graduate student within one semester of having received a doctorate. We strongly encourage the submission of abstracts beginning September 2016 for the 2017 award.

Books received for Review
A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, edited by Michael A. Ryan, Brill 2015.
ISBN: 978-90-04-24309-5.

Heimat in Literatur, Sprache und Kunst, Annäherungen an einen problematischen Begriff. Edited by Helmut Brall-Tuchel and Anke Peters, Verlagsdruckerei Schmidt: Neustadt an der Aisch 2015. ISBN: 978-3-9815182-7-6.

SMGS Reviews
Sullivan, Joseph M. German Romance VI: Wigamur. Arthurian Archives XXI. Woodbridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2015.

Wigamur is a handsome volume, presenting a skillful edition and translation by Joseph M. Sullivan.

An anonymous thirteenth-century German romance, Wigamur is probably the most completely developed example of the Fair Unknown motif in the medieval German tradition. Joseph Sullivan’s edition provides the first translation into English, making more widely accessible this romance characterized by numerous marvelous elements, including a child abduction by a mermaid, Lespia, a wondrous rock-bath that tests chastity and virtue, a fountain of youth and plenty, and an eagle companion to the knight who eventually assumes his identity and proper place, first as Knight with the Eagle, and then as King Wigamur.

Sullivan’s introduction discusses the three manuscripts containing Wigamur, one in nearly complete form, and two fragments, as well as earlier editions of the text. He then presents prior scholarship’s generally negative assessments of the romance as a segue to his own discussion, which highlights the artistic merits and salient themes: its exemplarity as a Fair Unknown romance; the complex development of its main characters; and “the weaving of three core thematic programmes … throughout the text” (xxi): the prominence of reht, or ‘the proper’ within the verse narrative; the tendency to weigh ties of blood and family over merit to legitimize kingship; and an emphasis on property and its proper use. The introductory sections are followed by the text, translation and notes.

Sullivan based his edition on the only (nearly) complete existing text contained in the manuscript Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 51.2. Aug. 4^o (W), which dates from the second half of the fifteenth-century. Following current international trends in Medieval Studies, Sullivan chose a conservative method for his critical edition, preserving as much as possible the East Swabian language and orthography of the late manuscript, which was written in a legible Bastarda hand, but with numerous scribal inconsistencies. In the extensive notes section, Sullivan identifies and weighs the merits of previous scholarship’s emendations, makes apparent his own interventions, and provides considerable background information on words, passages, and motifs.

There are at least two important merits of Sullivan’s endeavor: 1) his edition and translation make this important, yet understudied, thirteenth-century romance in the German language available to a wider English speaking public. 2) His volume also makes accessible to English speaking researchers the previous German and French scholarship on Wigamur, most recently by Danielle Buschinger in her French edition, and Nathanael Busch, author of a 2009 normalizing critical edition and translation into modern German. Sullivan, a talented comparativist, invites us to participate in freshly appreciating and assessing this important medieval German romance.

Marian E. Polhill (University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras)

Jerold C. Frakes (University at Buffalo) In: Vernacular and Latin Literary Discourses of the Muslin Other in Medieval Germany. ISBN: 978-0-230-11087-8, Palgrave Mamillian, 2011.

As medievalists we often allude to nexus between medieval studies and contemporary events to underscore the relevance of our area for students and administrators alike. Frakes’ book does so courageously and scholarly acumen in seven chapters. Chapter One introduces his study by situating it in Western societal perception that extends from Brian de Palma’s film Redacted (2006) about rape and murder in Iraq to medieval instantiations of the “Muslin Other.” The literary representations aptly chosen are Hrotsvit von Gandersheim’s Pelagius, the Ludus de Antichristo, Wolframs’ Parzival and Willehalm, and Crusader lyric by Walther von der Vogelweide such as his “Kreuzlied” and “Palästinalied.” In regard to the frequent attribution of “tolerance,” Frakes’ analysis exposes an undercurrent often overlooked by scholars: “While the bold statement in Walter’s lyric that Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship a single God complicates all these questions, it does not render them irrelevant. Indeed one might still ask whether Muslins are there not still viewed … deserving either of conversion to Christianity and subordination to Christian political control or of death so that Christians may possess their land?—an issue, for instance, on which Walter ‘s poems demonstrate no accommodation toward tolerance in any sense.” (144) Navigating between “isms” such as Orientalism, Eurocentrism, and liminal modes of perception, that can quickly serve the propagandistic purpose of one or another ideological camp, Frakes’ skillfully problemizes orthodox interpretations of medieval narrative to question the notion of a “twelfth-century paradigm shift.” He examines afresh, for example, the images of Muslims as monstrous races “for they participate in larger cultural, military, and geopolitical movements that ultimately brought about the conquest, displacement, subjugation, conversion, and long-term Otherizing of massive populations.” (165) These literary historical precedents assume vivid contour in our twenty-first century media and Western interpretive lens, especially in the transmission of stereotypical, generalizing conceptions of Muslims with regard to assimilation and integration into Western societies as currently experienced in the Syrian refugee crisis.

In sum, this is an important book for both its actuality and contemporary application to medieval and cultural studies. Jerold C. Frakes has made a contribution to our field that merits our praise and gratitude for his willingness to challenge the ideological “given” and to do so successfully.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

News from Colleagues
Tina Boyer (Wake Forest University) has earned tenure. SMGS congratulates you!

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf) has new contributions to our field: “Geistige Heimat. Literarische Grundmuster einer bewohnbaren Welt” (35-58) and “Rückblick auf die Kunstausstellung HEIMATZEIT im ehemaligen Kreuzherrenkloster Hohenbusch,” (197-204) In: Heimat in Literatur, Sprache und Kunst, Annäherungen an einen problematischen Begriff, Verlagsdruckeri Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch, 2015.

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) has the following recent publications:
Bestseller – gestern und heute: Ein Blick vom Rand zum Zentrum der Literaturwissenschaft / Bestseller – Yesterday and Today: A Look from the Margin to the Center of Literary Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen and Eva Parra Membrives). Popular Fiction Studies, 2 (Tübingen: Narr, 2016).
“Toleration and Tolerance in the Middle Ages: Medieval Perspectives for Our Future,” The Living Pulpit 24 (2015): 9-14.
“Schrecken und Grauen, Mord und Totschlag: Das Entsetzen literarisch eingefangen.
Spiegelung des Schmerzes und brutaler Misshandlungen in Elisabeths von Nassau-Saarbrücken Loher und Maller (1437),” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen CXVI.1 (2015): 133-47.
“Mystical Visions and Spiritual Health: Medieval Mysticism As A Platform for the Exploration of Human Spirituality and Happiness: The Transcendence of the Body in the Quest for the Godhead – A Message for Us Today?,” Studies in Spirituality 25 (2015): 117-38.
“Stolberg-Wernigerode, Anna zu,” Frauen in Sachsen-Anhalt: Ein biographisch-bibliographisches Lexikon vom Mittelalter bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Eva Labouvie (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2016), 350-51.
“Haselnüsse, Erotik und Epistemologie in der Literatur des Mittelalters,” Fabula 56.1-2 (2015): 79-94.
“Ein großes Gelage mit ernsthaften Folgen, erzählerisch reflektiert: Weinkonsum und Wirtshausszene in ‘Der Wiener Meerfahrt’,” ‘Tschuldigung…: Kuriose Miszellen. Andreas Meyer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Dorett Elodie Werhahn-Piorkowski, Hendrik Baumbach, and Alexander Maul (Marburg: private printing, 2015), 7-10.
“Royal Figures as Nation Builders – King Kamehameha and Charlemagne: Myth Formation in the European Early Middle Ages and in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Polynesian Hawai’i,” Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal 3.2 (2016): 112-15 (http://scholarpublishing.org/index.php/ASSRJ/article/view/1837/pdf)
“Introduction,” Bestseller – Yesterday and Today: A Look from the Margin to the Center of Literary Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen and Eva Parra Membrives. Popular Fiction Studies, 2 (Tübingen: Narr, 2016), 7-29.
“Bestsellers in the European Middle Ages? An Examination of Some of the Most Popular Books in the Premodern Era. With Reflections on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival,” Bestseller – Yesterday and Today: A Look from the Margin to the Center of Literary Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen and Eva Parra Membrives. Popular Fiction Studies, 2 (Tübingen: Narr, 2016), 83-103.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University) has contributed a chapter: “Muspilli: Old High German Judgment Day — Judicial Practice and Salvation in the Ninth Century,” to A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, Brill: Leiden: 2016, 209-32.

Evelyn Meyer (St. Louis University)
“’Der Maler konnte oder wollte nicht lesen’ – oder vielleicht doch? Die Text-Bild-Bezüge der Blutstropfenepisode in den illustrierten Parzival-Handschriften” Geschichten sehen, Bilder hören. Bildprogramme im Mittelalter Andrea Schindler and Evelyn Meyer (eds.). Uni. Bamberg Press, 2015. 191-214.

Ann Marie Rasmussen (University of Waterloo)
“Problematizing Medieval Misogyny: Aristotle and Phyllis in the German Tradition,” in Verstellung und Betrug im Mittelalter und in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, eds. Mathias Meyer and Alexander Sager. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2015, pp. 195-220.

Selected talks:
“Medieval Badges: Connect and Communicate in the Blink of an Eye,” Design Studio, HERE Berlin, 18. March 2016.
“Storyworlds,” University of Hamburg, 18. January 2016 and University of Greifswald, 25. January 2016.
“The Polyfunctionality of Script on Medieval Badges,” Harvard University, 3. December 2015 and Princeton University, 14. April 2016.
“Die Polyfunktionalität der Schrift auf mittelalterlichen Tragezeichen,“ University of Bamberg, Germany, 14. July 2015.
“Humanities Collaboration Between Universities,” New Directions for Humanities Graduate Education, Jackman Humanities Institute and School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto, Canada, 17. April 2015.

Joseph M. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma)
Sullivan, Joseph M. German Romance VI: Wigamur. Arthurian Archives XXI. Woodbridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2015.

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University).
We wish to thank our technical expert, Ben Ogden, for his expertise in providing the online version with both readability and elegance. We also wish to thank the Department of Classical & Modern Languages at Truman State University for its support of this publication.

The SMGS readership continues to grow steadily as is the interest in receiving the SMGS News & Reviews online. Should you wish to contribute to the section on SMGS News from Colleagues or if you know of a colleague who would be interested in membership (there are no dues), you may contact me by at ehintz@truman.edu or fax (660-785-7486), or write to the following address: Ernst Ralf Hintz, German and Medieval Studies, Truman State University, Department of Classical & Modern Languages, McClain Hall 310, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221 (U.S.A.).

The Fall/Winter issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in late 2016.

On behalf of Marian Elizabeth Polhill, Jeffrey Turco and Ernst Ralf Hintz,
All good wishes from SMGS for summer 2016!