Nr. 38, Fall/Winter 2014/15

 

 

 

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo 2013.

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2013

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 2013 will be Erik Born (University of California at Berkeley) for his submission “Der Wechsel: Forms of Dialogue and Media of Exchange” We are very much looking forward to his presentation in SMGS Session I at Kalamazoo 2013.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

 

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Heinrich-Heine Universität-Düsseldorf) Wallfahrt und Kulturbegegnung. Das Rheinland als Ausgangspunkt und Ziel spätmittelalterlicher Pilgerreisen. In: Schriften des Heimatvereins der Erkelenzer Lande e.V. 2012. Vol. 26. ISBN: 978-3-9815182-1-4.   

 

Carl P.E. Springer (Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville), Luther’s Aesop, Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2011. 249 pp. ISBN: 978-1-61248-068-8.

Joseph Salmons, (University of Wisconsin at Madison), A History of German: What the Past Reveals about Today’s Language, Oxford Press, 2012.

SMGS Reviews

Albrecht Classen (Ed.), Handbook of Medieval Studies, Terms-Methods-Trends. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2010. Vols. 1-3. 2736 pp.

 

Reminiscent of a medieval chronicle as historia universalis, the Handbook of Medieval Studies chronicles our world as medievalists. It is our story. Albrecht Classen has successfully edited a well-organized and accessible compendium of information useful to experienced medievalists, graduate- and undergraduate students alike. The editor aptly introduces the rationale: “The goal pursued in this Handbook does not consist in an attempt to complete with such seminal reference works as the Lexikon des Mittelalters or Dictionnaire de Spiritualité. Instead, the question pursued here focuses on how individual subject matters have developed in historical-scholarly terms over time. What were the various methodological approaches to specific themes, and what source materials were regarded as most relevant? What primary documents have been seen as truly relevant at what time and by whom for what purposes? In fact, all theses questions allow us to probe not only further into the history of the Middle Ages at large, they also facilitate a much better understanding of how we have learned to understand the medieval world form our modern perspectives, if not how we have misunderstood it.”(XVII) The thematic organization that shapes and contains such a large and disparate undertaking consists of four categories: (1) topics germane to individual disciplines, (2) specific terms influential in Medieval Studies, e.g., curialitas, game, satire, etc., (3) a range of “textual genres,” and (4) major scholars from the founding period of Medieval Studies to circa 1950. As a reader, I found this thematic orientation to be very helpful in approaching what might have otherwise been simply a collection of disparate articles. Accordingly, the three volumes of the Handbook correspond in kind with a modicum of overlapping that is unavoidable with such a massive project.

Following the introduction, readers will be pleased to find an excellent overview of related works, namely, the “Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies.” Every scholar in the field is certain to benefit from the addition of this section. Ulrich Müller once observed that without a survey up front, it is often difficult for the reader to contextualize and place a new study in relation to its predecessors and surrounding works. The editor has done well in its inclusion.

As a medievalist whose expertise is chiefly limited to German and Latin literature, I was delighted to be introduced to areas of which I either knew nothing of or very little. One scarcely considers a three-volume tome to be inviting, but readers may well find this Handbook as enriching as it is deservedly humbling. A review cannot pay tribute to every contribution in a collaboration of this scale. To my surprise, I enjoyed the entire collection and found myself enlightened by the vastness and depth of medieval studies in general, and the dedication of so many colleagues in specialty areas other than my own. There are many individual articles that deserve greater mention than this review can accommodate. A cursory mention of but a few of many valuable contributions in areas related to the German Middle Ages would include the following: Ulrich Müller on “Performance of Medieval Texts,” “Trobadors, Trouvères, Minnesinger” and “Medievalism”; Francis G. Gentry on “German Studies”; Albrecht Classen on “Communication” as well as “Dictionaries/Glossaries”; Salvatore Calomino on “Folklore in Medieval Studies”; Siegrid Schmidt on “Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature” and “Museums and Exhibitions”; Debra Stoudt on “Mysticism” and Stephen Mark Carey on “Baktinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia” and “Fictionality”; Scott Pincikowski on “Violence” and “Body”; James Rushing on “Text and Image in the Middle Ages”;  Maurice Sprague on “Deconstruction in Medieval Studies,” “Game” and “Minnereden”; Graeme Dunphy on “Chronicles”; Rosmarie Thee Morewedge on “Lapidaries” and “Proverbs”; David F. Tinsley on “Sisterbooks” and Maria E. Dorniger on “Travelogues.”  In addition, readers are sure to find of interest the articles by Peter Dinzelbacher on “Eschatology” and “Religious Studies (The Latin West)” as well as two contributions by Brian Murdoch on “Cornish Literature” and “Bibles (Popular). Many readers may recall with pleasure the sense of discovery that surrounds the book exhibitions at Kalamazoo and Leeds or is to be found by attending a talk outside one’s area of expertise on the final day. I was pleased to experience much the same academic excitement in the Handbook.

In sum, together with fellow medievalists, Albrecht Classen has contributed a valuable work, one that is sure to nurture our profession for years to come. I can recommend the Handbook of Medieval Studies for library acquisition and private scholarly endeavors without reservation. I personally enjoyed all three volumes of the Handbook for it recounts and commemorates the story of medieval studies—our story.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

SMGS News from Colleagues

 

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) has edited a collection of articles: Wallfahrt und Kulturbegegnung, Das Rheinland als Ausgangspunkt und Ziel Spätmittelalterlicher Pilgerreisen, with a contributing article of his own, “Unterwegs im Heiligen Land. Rheinische Pilgerberichte des 14. Jahrhunderts zwischen Tradition und Augenschein,” 143-87. In: Schriften des Heimatsvereins der Erkelenzer Lande e.V., 2012.

Stephen Mark Carey (University of Minnesota-Morris) has a new tenure-track position in the University of Minnesota system.

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) is currently on sabbatical research leave at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg for the academic year 2012-13.

Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania) has organized three sessions for the International Congress on Medieval Studies for 2013. Two sessions are sponsored by the Oswald-von-Wolkenstein Gesellschaft in Memory of Joachim Bumke.                               I. Hartmann von Aue: Erek, Iwein, Gregorius, Der arme Heinrich, die Klage, Lyrik

II. Wolfram von Eschenback: Parzival, Willehalm, Titurel, Lieder

III. One special session: Low German Medieval Literature: Legends, Drama, Epics, Translations, and Others.

Sieglinde Hartmann (Universität Würzburg) has invited colleagues to an International and Interdisciplinary Convocation on the theme “Das Geistliche Spiel des europäischen Spätmittelalters,” April 3-6, 2013 at the Stift Admont, Steiermark. She also has a new contribution to our field: Deutsche Liebeslyrik vom Kürenberger bis zu Oswald von Wolkenstein oder die Erfindung der Liebe im Mittelalter. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2012 (=Einführung die die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Vol. 1).

Alison Beringer (Montclair State University), Katja Altpeter-Jones (Lewis and Clark College) and Claire Taylor Jones (University of Notre Dame) are organizing sessions: (1) Behind Prison Walls, (2) Global Stories in the German Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, and (3) Representations: The Visual in the Verbal and Vice Versa for YMAGINA (Young Medievalist Germanists in North America, http://www.ymagina.org) for the Thirty-Seventh Annual Conference of the German Studies in Denver, Colorado, October 3-6, 2013. Abstracts are welcome by Friday, February 1^st, 2013 with a brief CV.

(e-mail submissions only). Please send abstracts and CVs to all the organizers:

Dr. Alison Beringer, Department of Classics and General Humanities, Montclair State University, beringera@montclair.edu

Dr. Katja Altpeter-Jones, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Lewis and Clark College, altpeter@clark.college

Dr. Claire Taylor Jones, Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures,

University of Notre Dame, cjones23@nd.edu

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 2013.

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

All good wishes from SMGS for 2013!

Dear Colleagues,

The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is delighted to sponsor five sessions at the 46th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in May 2011. We wish again to thank Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) and Alexander Sager (University of Georgia, Athens), for organizing another exciting program for us this year at Kalamazoo.

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  

Session I  Thursday 3:30 p.m. Bernard 211

Communication and Narration in Medieval Arthurian Romance:

Presider: Susanne Hafner (Fordham University)

“Doch sag ich dir ein Maere: Histoire and Discourse in Hartmann’s Iwein”

Markus Greulich (Universität Wien)

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

Jeffrey Turco (Purdue University)

“The Epistemology of Infidelity in Gotfrid’s Tristan”

Jerold C. Frakes (State University of New York-Buffalo

Session II Friday 10:00 a.m. Valley 1, 106

Hôher êren pflegen: A Session in Honor of Ed Haymes

Presider: Ray M. Wakefield (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities)

“Siegfried the Blue-Helmet:  Negotiating the Germanic Heroic Ethos in Nibelungenlied Adaptations of Wolfgang Hohlbein and Thorsten Dewi”

Kevin Richards (Ohio State University)

“Daz sol iuch unverdaget sîn: The Language of Hiding and Revealing in the Nibelungenlied”

Jon Sherman (Northern Michigan University)

“Richard Wagner’s Wieland der Schmied”

Danielle Buschinger (Univ. de Picardie-Jules Verne, and Galina Baeva, Sankt Petersburger Staatliche Univ.)

Session III Saturday 1:30 p.m. Schneider 1135

Working Theology in Medieval German Literature

Presider: Evelyn Meyer  (Saint Louis University)

“Kissing the Pagan: Unity, Identity, and the Failure of Metaphysical Community in Willehalm”

Claire Taylor Jones (University of Pennsylvania)

“Nehain lip wane Christ unde daz Wip: Negotiating Feminine Narrative Space in Ava’s Daz Leben Jesu”

Joshua Davis (University of Montana)

“Liturgical Symbolism in Parzival”

J.A. Wayne Hellmann, OFM Conv. (Saint Louis University)

Session IV Saturday 3:30 p.m. Schneider 1135

Science, Law, and History: Medieval German Didactic Literature

Presider: Alexander Sager (University of Georgia)

“Teaching the Unknown: Cosmological Concepts in Didactic Literature of the Thirteenth Century”

Michaela Wiesinger (Universität Wien/Internationales Forschungszentrum)

“Reinhard Fuchs, Legally Revolutionizing Tierepos

Mary Marshall Campbell (Princeton University/University of Notre Dame)

“Medievalism and Reformation: Matthias Flacius Illyricus as Medievalist”

Alana King (Princeton University) Recipient of the Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2011

New Books Roundtable

Presider: Alexander Sager (University of Georgia, Athens)

William Layher (Washington University in Saint Louis) presents his significant contribution to our field:

Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Friday evening 8:00 p.m.

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo in 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.  The recipient for this year is Alana King (Princeton University) for her submission “Medievalism and Reformation: Matthias Flacius Illyricus as Medievalist.” We are looking forward to her presentation at SMGS Session 4, Saturday 3:30 p.m. in Schneider 1135.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

Ulrich Müller – Gesammelte Schriften zur Literaturwissenschaft, (eds.) Margarete Springeth, Gertraud Mitterauer, Ruth Weichselbaumer, 4 vols. Kümmerle Verlag, Göppingen 2010.  ISBN: 978-3-86758-005-2

Handbook of Medieval Studies – Terms – Methods – Trends, (ed.) Albrecht Classen,

3 vols. De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2010. ISBN: 978-3-11-018409-9

SMGS Reviews

William Layher, Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe: New York, Palgrave Macmillan,  2010, 237. 1 map, 3 lineage charts. ISBN 978-0-230-10465-5

Following his Harvard dissertation in 1999, William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis) has completed a new study, one that Universities in German-speaking lands would most certainly classify as Habilitationsschrift. His book provides us with an instrumentarium for assessing the medieval perspective of vox exemplified in the exercise of “lordship” by three Scandinavian queens-Agnes of Denmark, Euphemia of Norway, and Margareta of Denmark. In dealing with threats to their authority, whether by the death of the king and the ensuing power vacuum of his silence or through dynastic ambition, each of the queens had to rely on her use of “voice” for political survival and a measure of security. Layher’s approach yields valuable and often surprising insights by offering an alternative perspective to the “gaze” as an agency of power. In doing so, he reconstitutes the auditory dimension of lordship / “queenship”-a dimension under-researched in contemporary scholarship, yet powerfully effectual in medieval practice. Indeed, the recent film, The King’s Speech, echos this very fascination and with “voice” as political agency. Yet, the legitimacy of Edward VI was never in question. As such, his “voice” was only a pale echo of the subtlety, strategizing and calculation required in the thirteenth- and fourteenth century courts of the women above. Perhaps their counterpart would more likely have been Elizabeth I of England and her unending struggle against intrigues from within and foreign threats from without. In his study, the author deals with how the three queens sought and discovered their “voice” as rulers by means of literary patronage, and literature itself as a medium for consolidating and magnifying their authority.

The author does well in framing his study in a clear, concise introduction:

“This book presents evidence confirming the importance of auditivity as a mode of cultural and historical analysis. This approach, it is granted, must grapple with a number of serious methodological challenges that visuality does not face. Although vision, too, is a physiological process that is culturally constructed and not fully recoverable, there is a wealth of material culture still before our eyes. We can look at these items and reconstruct their value in medieval economies of visuality and vision, pondering the degree of overlap between the medieval gaze and the modern. For sound, such direct mediation is impossible. And yet, through a careful interrogation of literary texts produced for courtly audiences in medieval Scandinavia, we can evaluate how hearing-or more directly, how the process of listening (as a kind of attuned hearing)-functioned as an acoustic equivalent to “the gaze” in medieval Europe.” (4-5)

With emphasis placed on “listening” rather than merely hearing (an important differentiation even today), the author grounds this distinction and the rationale for his study in antique and medieval definitions of what constitutes “voice” and, accordingly, its complement in “listening.” Following Aristotle’s De Anima, Layher aptly distinguishes between vox as intelligible, rational “voice” and sonus as mere “noise.” Yet, in accord with good scholarship, he does not rely solely on this fundamental definition, but traces its subtle variants over time via Boethius, Albertus Magnus, and his renowned student, Thomas Aquinas. The voice is then an “ensouled sound” that conveys not only the spirit but also the physical dimension of the speaker herself as a powerful force of royal female agency, especially in the vernacular. Layher also makes elegant use of contemporary theories of voice such as that of Mladen Dolar’s construct of “the listening Other,” a notion closely aligned with Lacanian theory and capable of teasing meaning out of the complicated multilingual culture of medieval Scandinavian courts. The author’s study provides us with fascinating instances in the life of each of the three queens. With regard to Eufemia’s voice and the Norwegian court, Layher observes:

“The premise of this book holds that there was a great deal of political advantage to be won in the thirteenth- to fifteenth-century northern Europe in the manner in which the queen’s voice is made audible: in which literary forms, through which intermediaries, and in which idiom. Let us consider, for example, the decision of Queen Eufemia of Norway to sponsor the translation of courtly romances into Old Swedish rather than Old Norwegian, the language of her court. Here the cultural power of the queen’s literary patronage is embedded in a corpus of romances that through their use of a foreign vernacular are made strange to the courtiers of the Oslo court. The works-among them a version of Chrétien’s Yvain and the Old French Flores och Blanzeflor-are quite literally in the wrong voice. At the same time, however, the Old Swedish versification used in these romances is suffused with an ideological and cultural resonance that is highly attractive to the Swedish noblemen whom Eufemia seeks to win as potential suitors for her infant daughter. On the one hand Eufemia’s sponsorship of a translation into Old Swedish represents a deliberate estrangement, an improper utilization of the royal vox that neglects the prevailing idiom of her court. Her allegiances, it is plain to hear, are suspect; the voice of sovereignty has been devalued. But seen from the opposite side of the equation, from the perspective of the Swedish nobility, the Eufemiavisor function as the vehicle for a new and politically engaging vox that draws the ear-and the political goodwill-of a new audience of influential courtiers that are attuned to its significance.” (47) The “listening Other” is then the Swedish nobility, whose auditors constituted potential suitors, attuned to Eufemia’s trans-cultural overture as mediated in their own vernacular.

The author also provides compelling examples of the use of voice for the remaining two queens: Margareta of Denmark in her “political instrumentalization” of both the mystical prophecy of St. Birgitta and the Old Swedish allegorical poem, King Albrecht, in successfully opposing Albrecht III, and after the regicide of 1286, Agnes of Denmark and the act of “voice proxying” in commissioning poems by Rumelant von Sachsen in Middle Low German-her own language as a northern German noblewoman and that of her supporters among the Danish elite at court.

In sum, William Layher has written an important work that promises to benefit methodological reflection on the performance of “voice” and its consequences for gendered identity throughout our field. I can strongly recommend it to you and your upper-level students. We are fortunate to number a scholar of his magnitude among our colleagues.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

SMGS News from Colleagues

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Universität Düsseldorf) has contributed a new article, “Emotion und Wahrnehmung – Beobachtungen zur Spruchdichtung Walters von der Vogelweide,” in: Walter von der Vogelweide – Überlieferung, Deutung, Forschungsgeschichte, Sonderdruck 2010, Peter Lang.

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona-Tucson) has just offered a symposium, “Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times,” May 5-8, 2011, the latest sequel in his series of international symposia. He also completed editing the imposing project on our history as medievalists: Handbook of Medieval Studies – Terms – Methods – Trends, De Gruyter 2010.

Susanne Hafner (Fordham University) will be teaching a new summer course at Fordham’s London campus this year: “The Knights of the Round Table,” offered through the Center for Medieval Studies. For information contact: hafner@fordham.edu

Edward R. Haymes, emeritus (Cleveland State University) has a session dedicated to him for his many contributions to our field and his service as President of SMGS from 1997-2004: SMGS Session 2, Friday 10:00 a.m. in Valley 1, 106.

Best wishes from all our colleagues!

Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania) has edited a new book: Intertextuality, Reception, and Performance: Interpretations and Texts of Medieval German Literature (Kalamazoo Papers 2007-2009). GAG 758. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 2010. Accordingly several articles: as well: “The Doctor Scene in Wittenwiler’s Ring: The Reception of the Novella Aristoteles und Phyllis“, “The Influence of the Alexius-Legend on the Sigune-Scenes in Wolfram’s Parzival and Titurel“, and “Das Dorotheenspiel und Ein Passienbüchlein von den vier Hauptjungfrauen (einschließlich: Karte der Dorotheenspiele; Stemma der Dorothealegenden; Edition der Dorothealegende aus der Handschrift MS. Germ. Qu. 2025, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.”

Saturday 1:30 p.m.

She also organized two sessions sponsored by the Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft for Kalamazoo this year:

Session 154, Schneider 1225, Thursday 7:30 p.m., Topics in Middle High German Literature. SMGS colleagues presenting are: Max Siller (Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck), Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania), Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona, Tucson), and Volker Mertens (Freie Universität Berlin).

Session 219, Schneider 2345, Friday 10.00 a.m., Low German Medieval Literature: Legends, Drama, Epics, Translations.

Kathleen J. Meyer (Bemidji State University) has a new edition and translation of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s work: German Romance IV: Lanzelet, Boydell & Brewer: Rochester, NY. Forthcoming June 2011. ISBN: 978-1-843-84266-8

Ulrich Müller, emeritus (Universität Salzburg) has his extensive contributions to our field now appearing in a four volume collection in the Kümmerle Verlag.  Editors are Margarete Springeth, Ruth Weichselhauer and Gertraud Mitterauer, together with Annemarie Eder and Verena Vitzthum.

He would also like to call our attention to a new, complete translation of the poems of Tannhäuser (Manessische Handschrift). Tannhäuser: Die Gedichte der manessischen Handschrift; Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Introduction, editing and commentary by Maria Grazia Cammarota. Translation by Jürgen Kühnel. Kümmerle Verlag, Göppinger,  2009, 307. ISBN 978-3-86758-004-5. EUR 20.00 (Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik; 749). This is an affordable text that promises to benefit both students and faculty alike.

Once again, our congratulations on his recent emeritus status!

Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College) is currently a Humboldt Finalist. He is also presenting a paper on: “The Castle Aflame: The Destruction of Architecture and Cultural Memory Making” in Session 527, Sunday 8:30 a.m. in Fetzer 2016.

Gary C. Shockey (Ed.) with Gail E. Finney and Clifford A. Bernd,

Ain güt geboren edel man, A Festschrift for Winder McConnell on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Kümmerle Verlag, Göppingen, 2011.

SMGS congratulates Winder McConnell as the only German Medievalist of his generation in America-other than Francis G. Gentry (2003)-to be honored by a Festschrift.

Anton Schwob and Ute Monika Schwob (eds.), Die Lebenszeugnisse Oswalds von Wolkenstein. Gesamtwerk in 5 Bänden, Teilband 4. Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau-Verlag, 2011.

Markus Stock (University of Toronto) has organized two sessions:

Session 527, “Spatial Practices in Medieval German Culture I: Space, Destruction, Seclusion,” Sunday 8:30 a.m., Fetzer 2016, as well as

Session 549, “Spatial Practices in Medieval German Culture II: Epic Spaces,” Sunday 10:30 a.m., Valley II Garneau Lounge. He is also delivering a paper in the 10:30 session on “Space, Place, and Movement in König Rother.”

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

We especially wish to thank our technical expert, Ben Ogden (Truman State University) 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 & Letters at Truman State University for 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, Professor of 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 December 2011.

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

All good wishes for the summer from SMGS!

Dear Colleagues,

For the New Year, our Society for Medieval German Studies is pleased to announce five sessions at the 44thCongress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in May 2009. We wish to thank Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University) for organizing what promises to be another exciting and valuable program. All of our presenters from Kalamazoo 2008 merit high praise for having made our sessions both valuable and a pleasure to attend.

SMGS also wishes to thank everyone who donated to the Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2009 for their generosity with special thanks to Debra Stoudt (Virginia Tech).

Links to important websites are available under News from Colleagues.

Table of Contents

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2009

New Books Roundtable

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2009

New Books Received for SMGS Review

SMGS Review

News from Colleagues

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2009

New Research I

“Emotions in Medieval German Literature.”

Presider: Scott Pincikowski (Hood College)

“Emotions in Medieval German Literature.”Presider: Scott Pincikowski (Hood College)“in zorne wunders vil geschiht (Pz 152,13).

Keie and the Codification of Emotions in Middle High German Arthurian Romances”

Stefan Seeber (Universität Freiburg)

“The Medieval Sublime and its Emotions”

C. Stephen Jaeger (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

“Aporias of the Lament in Albrecht’s Juengerer Titurel”

Alexander Sager (University of Georgia at Athens)

New Research II

Rountable: “The Origins of Courtliness 25 Years Later”

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Discussion Panel: Richard Barton (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Mark Chinca (University of Cambridge), Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona at Tucson), Rüdiger Schnell (Universität Basel), Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Appalachian State University)

New Research III

Germania-Romania

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

“Old High German in 9th-Century Fulda”

Hailey LaVoy (University of Notre Dame)

“Germania und Romania in der ´Wielandsage`? Der Meisterschütze Egil und das Runenkästchen von Auzon (British Museum, um 700)”

Max Siller (Universität Innsbruck)

“Christianizing the Heathen? The Bridal-Quest Motif in Arabel und Rennewart”

Cordula Böcking-Politis (Trinity College Dublin)

“Nuremberg Stadtlob, 1447-1530”

Arthur Groos (Cornell University)

New Research IV

Lives and Legends of the Virgin Mary in Medieval German Literature

Presider: Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University)

“The Monk’s Miraculous Vision of the Virgin Mary in Chronicles of the Teutonic Order”

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

“Viewing the life of Mary: Bruder Philipps Marienleben in a Late Medieval Austrian Manuscript”

Alison Beringer (Colgate University)

“Comparing the Lives of Mary: from Priester Wernher’s Maria to an Anonymous Fifteenth-Century Marienleben from Konstanz”

Karina Marie Ash (University of California, Los Angeles)

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2009

SMGS is delighted to announce The Sidney M. Johnson Award for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student. The recipient for 2009 will be Hailey LaVoy (University of Notre Dame) for her submission “Old High German in 9th Century Fulda.” We are looking forward to hearing her presentation in the SMGS New Research III session at Kalamazoo, May 2009.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

Colleagues interested in reviewing should contact SMGS

Hildegard Elisabeth Keller (editor), Jacob Ruf. Leben, Werk und Studien

5 Bände im Schuber mit 2 CD-Rom, 3350 Seiten, 450 s/w Abbildungen,

Format 17 x 24 cm, gebunden, NZZ libro, 2008

IBSN 978-3-03823-415-9.

Society for Medieval German Studies

Yearbook Spring 2009

You may subscribe to your SMGS Yearbook at the following website:

http://www.avaripress.com

 

Your $25 subscription also contributes to the Sidney M. Johnson Award.

SMGS Reviews

Claudia Brinker-von der Heyde: Die literarische Welt des Mittelalters. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2007.

Das hier anzuzeigende Buch ist eine handliche, leicht lesbare Monographie zur Medien- und Literaturgeschichte zwischen dem 12. und 15. Jahrhundert im deutschen Sprachraum. Die Autorin navigiert klug zwischen Forschungsresümé und kultur-, sozial- und literaturgeschichtlicher Darstellung und Kontextualisierung von Texten, Themen sowie ausgewählten Handschriften. Dies macht den Gegenstand, der in der jüngeren Forschung mit dem Label „Materialität der Kommunikation“ versehen worden ist, überaus anschaulich und leicht zugänglich. Diese Darstellung ist deshalb sowohl als Übersichtsdarstellung wie auch als Sammlung von Fallstudien sehr willkommen.

Handschriften sind von ihrer Entstehung her immer lokal gebunden und tragen den Stempel ihrer historischen Entstehungsumstände. Beispielsweise ist ihr Schreibort an den dialektalen Einfärbungen der auf ihnen überlieferten Texte zu erkennen, Elemente wie der Prolog oder das Kolophon zeugen oft von involvierten Personen, sei dies nun der Auftraggeber, der Autor, Redaktor oder Kompilator oder auch der Schreiber. Manchmal sind ihre Auskünfte auch verwirrend, beispielsweise wenn ein zugewanderter Schreiber seiner Sprechsprache treu geblieben war oder auch wenn ein Schreiber seiner in einem anderen Dialekt gehaltenen Vorlage sehr eng folgte. Handschriften geben zudem auch Auskunft über die am Ort ansässigen Literaturfreunde und –förderer, über jene Kreise also, die ein Interesse an der mehr oder weniger exklusiv ausgestatteten Schriftlichkeit von Pergament- oder später Papierhandschriften hatten.

Handschriften sind auch heute noch – trotz den inzwischen intensiv vorangetriebenen Digitalisierungsprojekten, dank denen bereits zahlreiche Handschriften online zugänglich gemacht wurden – an einen spezifischen Ort gebunden. Es ist dies der Ort ihrer Aufbewahrung, sehr oft die letzte Station ihrer Überlieferung durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch. Claudia Brinkers Buch wendet sich zwei Orten und einigen herausragenden, dort entstandenen oder aufbewahrten Handschriften besonders eingehend zu: Kassel einerseits, Zürich andererseits. Es handelt sich um die beiden Städte, in denen Claudia Brinker als Professorin, Projektleiterin und Ausstellungskuratorin tätig war bzw. ist.

Das Buch ist wie folgt aufgebaut: Ein erstes, umfangreiches Kapitel („Ein Buch entsteht“) ist den unterschiedlichen buchhandwerklichen Aspekten gewidmet und führt bis knapp über die Schwelle des Buchdrucks. Dieses längste Kapitel stellt Beschreibstoffe vor, die seit der Antike und bis zum Beginn des Buchdrucks verwendet wurden (Papyrus, verschiedene Arten von Pergament, Papier, Wachstafeln), Schreibmaterialien (darunter die fünf grossen Schwungfedern von Gänsen, deren harter Kiel sie zum prädestinierten Schreibwerkzeug machten) sowie die damit verbundenen Tätigkeiten, also das Schreiben und Illuminieren. In diesem Teil wird auch das entsprechende Personal vorgestellt: Schreiberinnen und Schreiber, seien es nun Laien oder Berufsschreiber in der klösterlichen oder städtischen Schreibstube. Sie hinterliessen Spuren, die von ihrer Einstellung zur Schreibarbeit zeugen. Die Kolophone sprechen eine deutliche Sprache, was Freud und Mühsal des Schreibens sowie den von der Kopistin oder dem Schreiber erwarteten Gotteslohn angeht. Zur Mediengeschichte gehört somit auch eine verborgene Geschichte der Emotionen, denn es waren Menschen, die mit ihren Händen die Überlieferungsträger herstellten und beschrieben.

Das zweite Kapitel („Bücher auf Bestellung“) führt in die Literatursoziologie ein, vornehmlich jene der höfischen Gesellschaft des Hochmittelalters und jene der Städte. Mäzene und ihre Motive kommen dabei ebenso zur Sprache wie politische Repräsentationsprogramme durch Kulturleistungen. Besonders anschaulich wird dies bei den Ausführungen zum Codex Manesse.

Das dritte Kapitel („Das Buch und seine Rezipienten“) ist den Rezeptionsmodi und somit einer in der jüngsten Forschung stark beachteten Perspektive gewidmet. Im Zentrum stehen das Hören bzw. Lesen, deren Wechselbeziehung bei der mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Wissensvermittlung sowie die jeweilige Funktion des Hörens, Zuhörens, Lesens und Vorlesens in der ‚privaten’ bzw. ‚öffentlichen’ Rezeption. Bereits für die mittelalterliche Medienästhetik sind indes auch andere kognitive Funktionen wesentlich, so die Imagination, die Vorstellungskraft als Grundbedingung sensorieller und intellektueller Aktivität schlechthin, wie Claudia Brinker mit Rekurs auf Thomasin von Zerclære erörtert. Zu dem hier behandelten Fragenkomplex gehören ferner die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen und Verschränkungen von textuellen und piktoralen Elementen in den Handschriften und Frühdrucken.

Das vierte und letzte Kapitel („Autoren und Texte“) sucht zahlreiche Beobachtungen und Lesefrüchte zu einzelnen Werken und deren Produktion und Rezeption zu synthetisieren. Intendiert ist dabei nicht ein systematisches literaturhistorisches oder poetologisches Panorama zur Literatur zwischen 1200 und 1500; vielmehr wollen die abschliessenden Darlegungen das Bewusstsein für verschiedene Autorschaftsprofile und Stile der Selbstdarstellung in der vormodernen Literatur schärfen und – im Einklang mit der jüngeren germanistischen Forschung – überlieferungs- und funktionsgeschichtliche Konstanten hinterfragen.

Das Buch bietet somit in einem grundlegenden Sinne Orientierung über zahlreiche Problemstellungen, welche in der gegenwärtigen Forschung grosse Beachtung funden. Ein besonderes Lob verdienen die zahlreichen Querbezüge, die sich Claudia Brinkers geschickter Technik der polyperspektivischen Argumentation verdanken. Rekurrente Figuren (so etwa Heinrich der Löwe) und Handschriften (beispielsweise prominente Kasseler Handschriften, die Gutenberg-Bibel), die in mehrfach und in ganz unterschiedlichen Zusammenhängen besprochen werden, tragen wesentlich zur Dichte und Anschaulichkeit der Darstellung bei. Die Leser gelangen nicht nur auf elegante Weise zu einer Fülle von Detailkenntnissen, sondern sie entwickeln auch eine Beweglichkeit in Bezug auf die Betrachtungsperspektiven. Mit Leichtigkeit und Anschaulichkeit werden hier Text-, Medien- und Literaturgeschichte verknüpft.

Die Autorin berücksichtigt die genuine Sinnlichkeit der geistig-intellektuellen Beschäftigung, welche die Medien des Mittelalters ermöglichten, in vielerlei Hinsicht. Das ist ein bedeutsamer Aspekt, der in einer Darstellung mit Übersichts- und Einführungscharakter kaum genug betont werden kann. Ein wenig verwunderlich bleibt deshalb, warum Claudia Brinker nicht wenigstens in ihrem Serviceteil auf die gegenwärtig auf dem Markt verfügbaren Audiomedien mit mittelalterlicher Literatur zu sprechen kommt. Sie tragen in unterschiedlicher Weise der vielzitierten Performativität Rechnung und machen die von der Autorin plausibilisierte Sinnlichkeit wohl mindestens so direkt erfahrbar als die (im Anhang erwähnten) CD-ROMs mit digitalisierten Handschriften. Die elektronischen Reproduktionen bleiben in der Regel meist ebenso stumm wie die in den Schatzkammern aufbewahrten Handschriften selbst – die mittelalterliche Literatur ist ohne Animation durch die menschliche Stimme (die Stimme des Rezitators, Vorlesers oder auch die Stimme des Einzelnen, die aktiv am privaten Leseakt teilnimmt) medienhistorisch kaum adäquat denkbar, wie die Autorin zu Recht darlegt.

Hildegard Elisabeth Keller (Indiana University Bloomington / Universität Zürich)

Cultural-historical information about a social class and its mentality can be easily gleaned from such chronicles as the famous but still much too little studied Zimmern Chronicle, composed by the Swabian Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern in the mid 1560s. This monumental family chronicle contains vast data on a variety of aspects, beginning with the narrow family itself, then extending to the wider circle of noble Swabian families, and also including references to general mores, mentality, ethics, and morality. On the one hand Froben discusses, on the basis of his own notes and those by his father and uncles (especially Johann Werner II) the family history, on the other he also includes a considerable number of short prose narratives with scandalous, erotic, or even sexual content (see now Albrecht Classen, Erotic Tales of Medieval Germany, 2007).

In her impressive monograph, Judith J. Hurwich utilizes this chronicle, and much parallel material, in order to shed light on the family strategies among the sixteenth-century nobility in the Southwest of Germany. She also endeavors to compare the legal and moral norms among that group with those in England, France, and the Iberian Peninsula. Whereas most other contemporary chronicles were composed by professional scribes, Froben wrote the chronicle himself with the assistance of his secretary Johannes Muller, thereby providing a unique, because personal, perspective.

This intriguing study is divided into three parts, the first dealing with the general family strategy pursued by the Zimmern family, focusing on inheritance and dowry, marriage age, intermarriage, and rank of spouse. The second analyzes the actual marriage practices, such as choice of marriage partner, marriage negotiations, and the personal experience of marriage, including happiness and hatred among the partners. The third section, most interestingly, discusses sexual practices, particular with an emphasis on the honor code regarding maintaining concubines, having bastards, and affairs by the male and female family members.

Some of the most fascinating aspects of Hurwich’s study prove to be her effort to examine how the noble families married off their children, that is, with whom, and at what time, and with how much dowry and inheritance, and this always in light of marriage practices in other parts of sixteenth-century Europe for comparison’s sake. One feature, for instance, proves to be that the nobility tended to marry the daughters off at a maximum rate, irrespective of the social class of the marriage partner (meaning, down), whereas the sons normally tried to marry up or were pushed to do so.

Of course, the situations often differed considerably, and the trend outlined above is then tested carefully in light of the Zimmern chronicle in the subsequent chapter. Hurwich observes, for instance, that there were numerous cases of young women who married without familial consent, but they did not experience a real financial loss thereby because increasingly individual wishes regarding marriage partners were accepted because “affection became an important factor in the choice of a spouse among urban elites” (124) and, as we can add now, among the nobility as well, though there pragmatic, i.e. economic and political, interests continued to dominate, leading to extensive negotiations concerning the marriage.

The author offers convincing supporting evidence both from general research and from the Zimmern chronicle, indeed a rich source of relevant material regarding sixteenth-century noble marriage practices. Of course, as she also illustrates in the seventh chapter, the nobility experienced many internal conflicts and faced many struggles because of illicit affairs. The chronicle proves to be most telling in this regard, both in its historiographical and fictional components, especially because both the author Froben and many of his contemporaries of whom he also reports experienced challenges of various kinds, although they hardly resorted to legal means to settle difficult or harsh cases.

The details within marriage, hence primarily the topic of sexuality, forms the focus of the eighth chapter where Hurwich discusses premarital sex, extramarital affairs, bastard children, and the subjective evaluation of affairs initiated by women (negatively viewed) and those initiated by men (mostly tolerated), strongly reflecting a continuing patriarchal power structure. The last two chapters turn to the role of concubines and bastard children in particular, as presented in the Zimmern chronicle, but also in many other sources in early-modern Europe. The legal status of illegitimate children differed widely, depending on local customs, dynastic approaches to this matter, and the role of the church, not counting the need of individual families to utilize bastard children to occupy important positions in the upper administration and the church. Froben von Zimmern did not criticize bastardy on the basis of religion and morality, but on the basis of pragmatic and financial concerns.

Over all, this is a remarkable study on social-economic, legal, religious, and cultural-historical conditions in Southwest Germany during the sixteenth century mostly based on this rich chronicle, but also on numerous other contemporary sources.

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

SMGS News from Colleagues

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Lehrstuhl für Ältere deutsche Sprache und Literatur, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) has been a guest professor in Jakarta this past year as well as speaking at two exhibitions in a lecture series at Villa Erckens in Grevenbroich on his latest work: Helmut Brall-Tuchel, Folker Reichert, Rom Jerusalem Santiago: Das Pilgertagebuch des Ritters Arnold von Harff, , 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-20026-8. brall@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de

 

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) has a new translation now available:

(University of Arizona) has a new translation now available:The Poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein: An English Translation of the Complete Works (1376/77-1445). In the series, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), xi, 253 pp. 4.ill. aclassen@u.arizona.edu

 

Graeme Dunphy (Universität Regensburg), General Editor, has completed the final phase of the imposing Brill project: Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle.

Winfried Frey (Universität Frankfurt) has completed an extended study that SMGS recommends to all its members: Das Judenbild in den Flugschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts. Kontinuität und Wandel. Nordhausen: Bautz 2008. ISBN 978-3-88309-470-0.

Francis G. Gentry (The Pennsylvania State University/University of Wisconsin-Madison, emeritus), in addition to being one of the few scholars of his generation to be honored by a Festschrift: (Nu lôn’ ich iu der gâbe, Kümmerle Verlag 2003), was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz am Band on November 14, 2008 from the German Consul General in New York.

Karl Heinz (Institute for the Research on Ecclesiastical Sources IEEkQ) provides an expanded 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 a new contribution that SMGS colleagues will find of interest:

Sibylle Jefferis (ed.):Current Topics in Medieval German Literature: Texts and Analyses (Kalamazoo Papers 2000-2006), Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 748, Kümmerle Verlag, 2008. ISBN: 978-3-86758-003-8. Contributors include: Karina Marie Ash; Albrecht Classen; Maria Dobozy; Maria Elisabeth Dorninger; Ernst Ralf Hintz, and Sibylle Jefferis.

William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis) completed a successful sabbatical year in Bamberg (2007-2008) and has just presented at the MLA conference in San Francisco on “Sound as Narcotic in Gottfried’s Tristan: Petitcreiu’s Bell.”

Leslie Morgan (Loyola College in Maryland) invites colleagues in German Medieval Studies on behalf of The Société Rencevals to contribute to Olifant. You may contact: lmorgan@loyola.edu for additional information.

Ulrich Müller (Universität Salzburg), Werner Wunderlich (Universität St. Gallen) in colaboration with Bettina Hatheyer, Elke Renner, Margarete Springeth and Ruth Weichselbaumer have published the final volume in the Mittelalter Mythen-Serien: Burgen, Länder, Orte, Vol. 5. (UVK, 2008) ISBN 978-3-89669-636-6.

Sara S. Poor (Princeton University) won 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).

Alexander Sager (University of Georgia at Athens) has made an audiobook-type recording of Iwein, which is available for free download as a podcast. The site is:

http://sagemaere.libsyn.com/

 

Siegrid Schmidt (Universität Salzburg) and Paola Schulze-Belli (University of Triest) have recently conducted a colloquium entitled “Krieg und Frieden im Mittelalter” (in Literatur, bildenden Kunst und Historie) in Triest, Italy.

James A. Schultz (University of California, Los Angeles) presented his recent book, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (University of Chicago Press 2006) at an exciting SMGS session in his honor this past Kalamazoo 2008.

Max Siller (Universität Innsbrück) presented at conferences in Sevilla, Amiens, Sterzing, Ravenna-Exkursion through out 2008. SMGS is delighted that he will be presenting for us again at Kalamazoo 2009.

Astrid M. Weigert (Georgetown University), book review editor for “The German Quarterly,” requests that SMGS colleagues interested in reviewing contact her at weigerta@georgetown.edu to insure that each volume of GQ has reviews from the medieval and early modern period. A major difficulty has been finding competent reviewers, especially when time and energy are in short supply. SMGS applauds everyone who contributes to our field in this capacity.

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, 2009

On behalf of Stephen Mark Carey and Ernst Ralf Hintz,

All good wishes from SMGS for the New Year 2009!

 

 

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,

We are delighted that SMGS is sponsoring five sessions at the 41st Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo this May. Our Session Organizer, Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College), merits our praise and gratitude for having assembled another attractive program. The New Books Round Table this year features a recent book by Susanne Hafner (University of Texas at Austin), who will be talking about her latest contribution to our field and entertaining questions from colleagues. SMGS is also pleased to honor Carola Dwyer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). She will be presenting her paper as our first recipient of the Sidney M. Johnson Award.

Following session IV, SMGS will have a very brief SMGS business meeting.

We look forward to seeing you at Kalamazoo!

Table of Contents

SMGS Review

New Books for Review

New Books

News from Colleagues

Four Sessions in New Research in Medieval German Literature

New Research in Medieval German Studies I

Session 145

Fetzer 1060

Thursday, 4 May, 3:30 P.M.

Organizer: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)

Presider: Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Appalachian State University)

Writing with Pain: Henry Suso’s Vita

Carola Dwyer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Sidney M. Johnson Award Recipient

Nehment hin und esset: dies is mein Leib: Konrad von Würzburgs Das Herzmäre

Mirjam Eisenzimmer (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

Marital Violence in the late Middle Ages

Katharina Altpeter-Jones (Lewis & Clark College)

New Research in Medieval German Studies II

Session 255

Bernhard 212

Friday, 5 May, 10:00 a.m.

Organizer: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)

Presider: Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University)

Der Priester Johannes des Ambraser Heldenbuches: Maximilians erfolgreiches alter ego

Klaus Amann (Universität Innsbruck)

Jans der Erikel’s Prologs as Guides to Textual Reception

Maria Dobozy (University of Utah)

Telling Tales of Clever Women: Meister Eckhart’s Daughter and her “Offspring

Sara S. Poor (Princeton University)

New Research in Medieval German Studies III

Session 299

Fetzer 2016

Friday, 5 May, 1:30 p.m.

Organizer: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)

Presider: Matthias Meyer (Universität Wien)

Transcendence and Flight: Falcon Imagery across the Genres of Middle High German

Rachael A. Salyer, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

“Ich bin nu iwer beder vogt”: Orgeluse and the Trial of Urjans in Wolfram’s Parzival

Sarah Westphal-Wihl (Rice University)

Owe Muoter: God in the Works of Wolfram von Eschenbach

Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

New Research in Medieval German Studies IV

Session 355

Fetzer 1060

Friday, 5 May, 3:30 p.m.

Organizer: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)

Presider: Kathleen J. Meyer (Bemidji State University)

“Sanc Ist âne vreude Kranc”: Reinmar’s Melancholy

Robert G. Sullivan, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Alter als Rolle – bei Walther und anderswo

Volker Mertens (Freie Universität Berlin)

Quellen und Hilfsmittel im Netz und ihre Nutzung in Forschung und Lehre

Andrea Rapp and Andreas Gniffke (Universität Trier)

Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2007

We invite graduate students in Medieval German Studies to submit an abstract for sessions on New Research to be sponsored by SMGS at Kalamazoo next year. SMGS offers the award in honor and memory of Sidney M. Johnson, Professor emeritus (Indiana University), to the graduate student who submits the best abstract. The award covers the cost of registration for the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies.

You may submit your abstract per attachment to ehintz@truman.edu by 21st August, 2006. Please note on your abstract that it is submitted for the Sidney M. Johnson Award.

New Books Roundtable

Fetzer 2016

Friday, 5 May, evening

Organizer: Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College)

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

SMGS is again pleased to announce our New Books Roundtable for 2006. This year, Susanne Hafner (University of Texas at Austin) will talk about her recent book, Maskulinität in der höfischen Erzählliteratur (Hamburger Beiträge zur Germanistik, 40. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main, 2004). After her presentation, the author will invite discussion and entertain questions. We welcome you to this annual celebration of scholarship in our field.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

The Life of Saint Servatius: A Dual-Language Edition of The Middle Dutch Legend of Saint Servatius by Heinrich von Veldeke and The Anonymous Upper German Life of Saint Servatius, translated, with Commentary and Introduction by Kim Vivian, Ludo Jongen and Richard H. Lawson, The Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, New York, 2006. ISBN 0-7734-6063-2.

German Literature of the High Middle Ages, edited by Will Hasty, In: Camden House History of German Literature, Vol. 3. Camden House, Rochester, NY. 2006.

ISBN: 1-57113-173-6.

SMGS News from Colleagues

Klaus Amann (Universität Trier) has become a member of SMGS and will be presenting at one of the SMGS sessions at Kalamazoo, May 2006.

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona) has a new contribution to our field entitled:

Der Liebes – und Ehediskurs vom hohen Mittelalter bis zum frühen 17. Jahrhundert. Volksliedstudien, 5, 2005. ISBN 3-8309-1378-8.

Peter Dinzelbacher (Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte der Universität Wien) has recently become a member of SMGS.

Graeme Dunphy (Universität Regensburg) is chief editor of the Encyclopedia of Chronicles, Brill, and welcomes expressions of interest from potential contributors: Graeme.dunphy@sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de

Arthur Groos (Cornell University) has recently become Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities. He is also co-editor together with Hans-Jochen Schiewer of Volume 2, Topographies of the Early Modern City, (forthcoming 2006) of the new monograph series: Transatlantische Studien zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit/Transatlantic Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture, edited by Hans-Jochen Schwierer, Arthur Groos, Volker Mertens and Ann Marie Rasmussen, published by Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht Unipress.

Evelyn Meyer (Minnesota State University) has accepted a new position at St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri.

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz, ehintz@truman.edu (Truman State University). We wish to thank Steven Chau again for his technical 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 is steadily growing as is the interest in receiving the SMGS News & Reviews online. If you would like to contribute to the section on News from Colleagues or should you know of colleagues who would be interested in membership (there are no dues), please contact me by email or fax (660-785-7486), or write to the following address:

Ernst Ralf Hintz, German and Medieval Studies, Truman State University, Division of Language & Literature, McClain Hall 310, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221 (U.S.A.).

The next issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in October, 2006.

On behalf of Scott E. Pincikowski and Ernst Ralf Hintz,

All good wishes from SMGS!

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!