Nr. 38, Fall/Winter 2014/15

Dear Colleagues,

Again we are delighted that The Society for Medieval German Studies is sponsoring five sessions at the 42nd Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. We wish to thank our new SMGS Organizer, Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University), who has put together an exciting program for us. We are also pleased that the second recipient of the Sidney M. Johnson Award, April Henry (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will be presenting at one of our SMGS sessions. At the New Books Round Table this year, SMGS features the recent book by Kathryn Starkey (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). To all our colleagues and friends we wish a pleasant spring and a relaxing and productive summer.

Table of Contents

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2007

New Books Roundtable

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2007

New Books Received for SMGS Review

SMGS Review

News from Colleagues

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2007

Session I (172)

Valley 1 100

Thursday, 10 May, 7:30 p.m.

Myths of the Feminine in Middle High German Literature

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Presider: Sarah Westphal-Wihl (Rice University)

“Gender models and their subversion: The Amazon-myth in MHG Literature”

Cordula Politis (Trinity College Dublin)

“Tempus Muliebre in Thirteenth-Century Courtly Literature?”

Karina Marie Ash (University of California, Los Angeles)

“Gender and Spiritual Victory in Eupolemius’ Messiad”

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

Session II (231)

Schneider 1160

Friday, 11 May, 10:00 a.m.

Tradition and Innovation: Reconsidering Medieval German Conduct Literature

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Creating Conduct Literature through Mise-en-Page: Der Welsche Gast in Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, cpg 389 (1270) and Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek,

Memb I 120 (1340).

Kathryn Starkey (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

“Ditz buoch sæt nu von der frawen werdikeit”: The Construction of Virtue in Die Winsbeckin in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz, mgf 474.

Olga V. Trokhimenko (University of North Carolina at Wilmington)

“Free Spirits” in the Middle Ages? The Problem of Translating Vrî in Der Winsbecke and Die Winsbeckin.

Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University)

Session III (289)

Schneider 1160

Friday, 11 May, 1:30 p.m.

Nibelungen Matters I

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

“Does the Nibelungenlied have a Message?”

Winder McConnell (University of California at Davis

“Dragons in Medieval German Heldenepik”

Edward R. Haymes (Cleveland State University)

“Neues zur Nibelungensage – und die Folgen”

Max Siller (Universität Innsbruck)

Session IV (347)

Schneider 1145

Friday, 11 May, 3:30 p.m.

Nibelungen Matters II

Organizer: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

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

“Restoring the Female Lament in diu Clage”

April Henry (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

“Die Nibelungen: ‘Fluch des Drachens’ (2004) and its Treatment of Source Materials”

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University)

“Bad News: Wild Women in Medieval German Epic Romance“

Sarah Westphal-Wihl (Rice University)

ew Books Roundtable

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

Kathryn Starkey (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will be presenting her recent contribution to our field:

Reading the Medieval Book: Word, Image, and Performance in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm, University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. ISBN: 0-268-04108-3.

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo, Friday evening, 11 May, Bernhard 157, 8:00 p.m.

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2007

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 2007 will be April Henry (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) for her submission “Restoring the Female Lament in diu Chlage.” We are looking forward to hearing her presentation in SMGS Session IV at Kalamazoo, 2007.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

HerwigWolfram, Conrad II 990-1039

Emperor of Three Kingdoms, translation by Denise A. Kaiser, Penn State Press, 2006,

ISBN: 0-271-02738-X.

German Literature of the High Middle Ages, edited by Will Hasty, Camden House History of German Literature, Vol. 3. 2006. ISBN: 1-57113-173-6.

SMGS Reviews

Katyryn Starkey, Reading the Medieval Book: Word, Image, and Performance in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm, University of Notre Dame, 2004.

Starkey divides her book into two sections. Part 1 (Orality, Visuality, and the Poetic Medium) deals with the text and explores a variety of performance and narrative strategies revealed in Wolfram’s poem. Part 2 (Word as Image, Image as Word) turns to the unique visual program found in the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript of Willehalm. Although Willehalm was one of the most popular texts in the 13^th century, it has not retained a primary focus in the modern medieval corpus in German (over-shadowed by its contemporaries Parzival and the Nibelungenlied). Starkey thus begins her discussion of Willehalm in chapter 1 with an examination of the poem’s main themes (language, multi-lingualism, cultural performance) to recover the poem for twenty-first century readers.

After establishing Wolfram’s general emphasis on language and voice in the text, Starkey goes on to explore in detail the nature and the nuances of language and performance in the text (chapters 2 and 3) in the major environments of the narrative’s setting (on the battlefield and at court). Chapter 4 deals with the language and performance of narrator, who “enables the author to manipulate the audience’s identification and sympathy with the characters and events.” Thus the narrator functions to encourage the participation of the audience. The figure and function of the narrator, Wolfram’s obvious emphasis on language and performance, and the fact that Willehalm was “the most widely illustrated secular text of the German Middle Ages,” (97) lead Starkey to part 2 of the book (Word as Image, Image as Word).

Part 2 explores the implications of the narrator and the narrative strategies for the text’s reception using the example of the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript. After a detailed examination of the manuscript’s images in chapter 5, Starkey turns to a more thorough analysis of the narrator’s portrayal in the manuscript images in chapters 6. The addition of the narrator to the images provides another layer in a complex and well-crafted visual narrative that can address an “visually and aurally literate” audience that may familiar with understanding performance cues but may not be familiar with deciphering a written text. Thus the text and its images form a sophisticated hybrid “reading” medium: “By visualizing the structure and narrative nuances of the text, the artists have also made voicing, perspective, and poetic medium a thematic concern in the visual program.” (142) And this concern, Starkey argues, could be seen as one not unique only to Willehalm; other contemporary manuscripts share a similar (visual) narrative program, notably of Der Welsche Gast and the Sachsenspiegel.

If Reading the Medieval Book is any indication, these visual narrative programs are beginning to receive the recognition they deserve. Thirteenth-century poets and artists were obviously concerned with issues of visuality and aurality, of literacy and orality, performance and self-reflexive understanding. Reading the Medieval Book takes the modern reader through the multi-layered process of “reading” the medieval Willehalm through the Munich-Muremberg manuscript. Thus, Kathryn Starkey offers us a finely nuanced understanding of medieval “reading” and a new appreciation of the complexity of medieval narrative strategies in word and image.

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Appalachian State University)

“While flatterers endeavor to please the prince, the truths are silent, and the flatteries promulgated, and they abandon the whole principality or kingdom to danger.” These words from the De regimine principum (ca. 1275) of the Doctor Fundatissimus, Aegidius Romanus, find such overwhelming substantiation in our contemporary political situation, that one could hardly exaggerate the importance of studying the history of counsel and its literary representation. Particularly in the case of Arthurian Romance, more often than not, an episode involving counsel, either public or private, initiates the adventure and constitutes one of the main elements driving the narrative. Since the lesser nobility commissioned these texts, one might expect to find an emphasis placed on the importance of their own political function. It is, however, quite surprising to discover that very little work had been done specifically on this material in the genre of Middle High German Arthurian Romance up to the appearance of Joseph Sullivan’s book in 2001. This work represents a revised version of the author’s doctoral dissertation completed under the supervision of Hubert P. Heinen at the University of Texas in 1999 and still stands as the most complete treatment of this topic in Middle High German Arthurian Literature.

Sullivan begins with an overview of counsel in the Middle Ages, which, given importance of counselors within medieval political structures, constitutes a sub-genre of medieval Latin literature. Prior to this work, which concentrates on Arthurian works produced in the German vernacular from 1185 – 1290, the few works that focused on this theme in Middle High German literature were limited to treatments of heroic epic and, within that genre, primarily to the narrative function of counsel. Sullivan departs from this critical approach by uncovering the historical basis for these episodes and concentrating on the “didactic, legal, political, and religious writings treating counsel, both written in Latin and in the medieval European vernaculars.”(6) Therefore, the introduction provides an overview of historical scholarship on counsel, distinguishing between public and private counsel, as well as touching on specialized scenarios and semantic differences in various linguistic traditions, specifically Latin and Middle High German. Sullivan points to the work of historians like Gerd Althoff and several others to highlight areas of intersection and to insert the examination into the wider literary and historical discussion on political forms and practice in the Middle Ages.

The three main chapters constitute case studies of counsel in three bodies of work, The Prose Lancelot, the Yvain of Chrétien de Troyes, Iwein from Hartmann von Aue, and Hartman’s Erec. Sullivan situates these narratives in the broader frame of twelfth and thirteenth century continental literature, and generates a definition of medieval counsel that is both specific to these individual works as well as applicable to the literature contemporary to them. In chapter two, “The Lancelot Proper of the Middle High German Prose Lancelot as a Manual of Counsel,” the author demonstrates a familiarity with the French and Latin sources and employs the episode of Phariens and Lambegus to introduce the recurring them of age and counsel. He treats the episode of the False Guenevere to explore false counsel and concludes with a treatment of Arquois and King Claudas to examine issues of feudal obligations on the part of the lord to heed the counsel his vassals, drawing, in each case, upon corresponding Latin and vernacular literature to provide the reader with a cultural context to interpret these works on their own terms. Sullivan unfolds major aspects of medieval counsel, pointing to actual historical precedents and demonstrates that the Lancelot Proper exceeds the bounds of traditional medieval counsel by emphasizing the importance of the lesser nobility in the governance of the state, a role that finds it main expression in advice given to the prince or king. The chapter also treats major tropes of the representation of counsel, upon which the author builds as each chapter treats issues of counsel in greater detail.

In chapter three, “Lunete: Literary Conventions of Counsel and the Criticism of Counsel in Chrétien de Troye’s Yvain and Hartman von Aue’s Iwein,” issues of private counsel and literary critical stances towards the practice of counsel comprise the main part of the discussion. In the comparison of the leading female figures in these two works, Laudine and Lunete, Sullivan shows that in both works the roles played by each in giving and receiving counsel create a gendered dichotomy in which Lunete can be seen as playing the masculine role. The representations of counsel in these works also support established scholarship which hold that Hartmann’s presentation to be far less nuanced and more straightforward than that of the French original. I still tend to think that this perception has far more to do with Germanists being far less willing to accept double entendre than Romanists. Nonetheless, as Sullivan demonstrates, Hartmann abridges the representations of counsel found in Chrétien’s work and thereby eliminates a good deal of the complexity. This chapter also treats the role of the counselor as intermediary and the specific obligations associated with this duty, again relying on corresponding material from Latin and other vernacular traditions to produce an historically grounded analysis.

Chapter four, “Rejecting Counsel of the Host in Hartmann’s Erec and the Middle High German Arthurian Verse Romance,” Sullivan covers an aspect of counsel which he demonstrates to be largely literary, standing in opposition to the body of didactic literature which informed the aspects of counsel treated up to this point. “It is safe to conclude then that the motif of the rejection of the host’s advice is largely a literary and fictitious construct. Its tenuous connection to historical reality resides alone in a medieval understanding of counsel that sanctioned the rejection of advice, but in situations very much unlike those in which one encounters the motif.” (102) Sullivan examines three episodes in Hartmann’s Erec, in which the titular hero rejects the advice of his hosts (Imain, Guivreiz and Ivrein). Particularly with regards to the rejection of Ivrein’s advice, traditional critical formulations which hold Hartmann to be more “spiritual” than Chrétien are substantiated. As is in the previous chapter comparing Iwein and Ywain, this examination demonstrates variance between the representation of courtly form in Chrétien’s work and Hartmann’s tendency to reshape the material to serve a moral didactic intent.

Sullivan concludes by noting the homogeneity of the representation of counsel in Middle High German romance, which this study evidences through the consideration of a much wider range of texts than could be mentioned in this brief review. Sullivan also provides an excellent frame work for distinguishing between “historical realism” in the medieval texts and literary manipulations of or deviations from the historical reality. Sullivan’s work provides not only a fine introduction to the ubiquitous theme of counsel but also detailed studies of major works well-grounded in the broader literary historical context. Therefore, I highly recommend this work as a valuable resource for both literary scholars and historians of the medieval period.

Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona, Tucson) has organized an International Symposium on the History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance at the University of Arizona, Tucson, May 3-6, 2007.

Maria Dobozy (University of Utah) wishes to announce a Call for Papers for the International Conference: Early Modern Medievalisms: the Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production (Leiden University, August 2008). SMGS regrets that the News & Reviews was unable to appear until shortly after the deadline for submission, 1 May, 2007. Should you still be interested in submitting, please contact Alicia C. Montoya (Department of French, University of Leiden) without delay: A.C.Montoya@Let.Leidenuniv.nl

Francis G. Gentry (The Pennsylvania State University), editor in chief, is pleased to announce an exciting new series: Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts from Brill Leiden. For more information, contact Professor Francis G. Gentry, fgg1@psu.edu or Julian Deahl, deahl@brill.nl

Matthew Heintzelman (Hill Museum & Manuscript Library) announces a new research stipend opportunity for graduate students or those who are within three years of completing a terminal master’s or doctoral degree: Heckman Research Stipends.

Deadline extended to May 15, 2007. Direct all inquiries and materials to The Committee on Research, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Box 7300. Saint John’s University, Collegeville, MN 56321-7300 or directed to hmml@csbsju.edu or fax (320) 363-3222.

Karl Heinz (Institute for the Research on Ecclesiastical Sources IEEkQ) has recently expanded the website for the Virtual Archive of Historical Documents in Central Europe. The archives of Central European monasteries and dioceses house important documents of great cultural value. However, these valuable documents are located in hundreds of archives and therefore difficult to access. The website www.monasterium.net provides unlimited access to all these original historical sources dating from the Early Middle Ages up to the present time. So everyone can gain a better understanding of historical events and a thousand years of history. The MOM archive is truly unique worldwide.

You may contact Karl Heinz at karl.heinz@monasterium.net for additional information. SMGS wishes to congratulate him for this necessary and important work.

William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis) has announced an exciting, new website for YMAGINA: http://www.ymagina.org “to further our academic mission and facilitate contacts and networking amongst scholars in Medieval German Studies.”

Great thanks from SMGS on establishing a website that is certain to make a valuable contribution to our medievalist community.

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

Eulenspiegel trifft Melusine

Der Frühneuhochdeutsche Prosaroman im Licht neuerer Methodenparadigmen.

Eine Tagung der Section d’allemand der Universität Lausanne in Zusammenarbeit mit der Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft vom 1.10 bis 5.10. 2008.

You may contact:

Alexander Schwarz alexander.schwarz@unil.ch

Catherine Drittenbass Catherine.drittenbass@unil.ch

André Schnyder andre.schnyder@unil.ch

Marc Pierce (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) has organized a session for Kalamazoo 2007 entitled: The Old Saxon Heliand, sponsored by The West Virginia University Press. The presentations and presenters include:

(1) “V2 in Old Saxon” Tonya Kim Dewey (University of California, Berkeley)

(2) “The Emergence of Old Saxon Studies in Germany, 1830-1921”

Marc Pierce (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor)

(3) “Toward a Model of Hypermetric Verses in the Old Saxon Heliand”

Douglas Simms (SIU-Edwardsville)

Session 312, Sangren 2212 Friday, 11 May, 1:30 pm.

Should you wish additional information: mpierc@umich.edu

Scott E. Pincikowski (Hood College) is newly tenured and will be on sabbatical for Fall 2007. Our congratulations!

Christoph J. Steppich (Texas A&M University) has organized another in his series of sessions: Wolfram von Eschenbach. Presider: Rosmarie Thee Morewedge (Binghamton University). The presentations and presenters are:

(1) “The Song Remains the Same: Bumke and the Blutstropfenepisode”

Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

(2) “Die Frauen Gottes: Parzivals unselige Liebe”

Katharina Pektor (Universität Salzburg)

(3) “Boy Meets Grail: The Secularization of Spiritual Redemption in Wagner’s Parsifal”

Lowell Duckert (Arizona State University)

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. All errors and oversights are attributable solely to me as editor.

The SMGS readership still continues to grow steadily as does 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 October 2007.

On behalf of Stephen Mark Carey and Ernst Ralf Hintz,

All good wishes from SMGS!

Dear Colleagues,

We are again pleased that The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is sponsoring five sessions at the 45th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in May 2010. We wish to thank Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University) for his considerable contribution to promoting Medieval Studies by organizing our SMGS sessions over these past years and we look forward to seeing him for years to come at Kalamazoo. We are also pleased to welcome our new SMGS Organizers, Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) and Alexander Sager (University of Georgia, Athens), who have put together an exciting program for us this year at Kalamazoo.

Table of Contents

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2010

New Books Roundtable

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2010

New Books Received for SMGS Review

SMGS Review

News from Colleagues

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2010

Session I

Thursday, May 13, 2010, 3:30-5:00 p.m. Bernard 213

Minnesang und Maeren:

Presider: Stephen Mark Carey (Georgia State University)

“‘Daz aber dû verswîgen solt’: Self-Muting of the Female Lyric Voice in Reimar”

Kathryn Malczyk (University of Pennsylvania)

“Urrâ burrâ”: Punchline and Performance in Neidhart’s “Ich erwinde niemer”

William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis)

“All you need is love… The Influence of Ovid and Andreas Capellanus on Frauenlobs Leichs”

Michaela Wiesinger (Universität Wien)

Session II

Friday, May 14, 2010, 1:30-3:00 p.m., Bernard 210

New Research on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival

Presider: Arthur Groos (Cornell University)

“Intertextual Toponymy in Wolfram’s Parzival”

Christoph Steppich (Texas A&M University)

“Arthur’s Court as Informational Medium: Maere and Meta-Maere in Wolfram’s Parzival”

Carl Gelderloos (Cornell University)

“Discrepancies and Commonalities in the Visual & Textual Telling of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival in CGM 19 (München) & CPG 339 (Heidelberg)”

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University)

“Iterity: Trevîzent and Parzival”

James Marchand (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Session III

Thursday May 13, 2010, 7:30-9:00 p.m., Bernard 204

Space, Place and Movement in Medieval German Literature

Presider: Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University)

“Raum erzählen – Raum konstruieren. Raumbeschreibungen in der Hisoriographie und Literatur des 12. Jahrhunderts”

Martin Clauss (Universität Regensburg)

“Der ‘eingebildete’ Raum? Überlegungen zur Konstruktion von Raum im deutschsprachigen Prosaroman des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts”

Gabriele Klug (Universität Graz)

“Das Jenseits als Bewegungsraum. Die Formierung christlicher Läuterungsräume in Jenseitsreisen der Antike und des Mittelalters (Visio Pauli, Visio Tnugdali)”

Maximilian Benz & Julia Weitbrecht (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Session IV

Saturday, May 15, 2010, 10:00-11:30 a.m., Schneider 1235

Translating Into and From Medieval German

Presider: Edward R. Haymes (Cleveland State University)

“Keie in Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein and Felicitas Hoppe’s Iwein Löwenritter. A Comparison“

Judith Benz (Juniata College)

“Mittelalterliche Reimdichtung in neuem Gewande: Prosaübersetzung oder Nachdichtung?”

Max Siller (Universität Innsbruck)

Presider: Alexander Sager (University of Georgia, Athens)

Elke Koch (Universität Göttingen) presents her significant contribution to our field:

Trauer und Identität. Inszenierung von Emotionen in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, Gruyter, 2006.

SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo in 2010. Friday, May 14, 2010, 8:00-10:00 p.m., Bernard 204

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2010

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. The recipient for 2010 will be Gabriele Klug (Universität Graz) for her submission “Der ‘eingebildete’ Raum? Überlegungen zur Konstruktion von Raum im deutschsprachigen Prosaroman des 15. Und 16. Jahrhunderts.” We are looking forward to hearing her presentation in SMGS Session III at Kalamazoo, 2010.

New Books Received for SMGS Review

Sigrid Rachoinig, Wir tun kund und lassen dich wissen – Briefe, Urkunden und Akten als spätmittelalterliche Grundformen schriftlicher Kommunication, dargestellt anhand der Lebenszeugnisse Oswalds von Wolkenstein, In: Mediävistik zwischen Forschung, Lehre und Öffentlichkeit, ed. Wernfried Hofmeister, Vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009. 319, pp. ISBN: 978-3-631-58468-2.

SMGS Reviews

Jakob Ruf. Leben, Werk und Studien, 5 vols., ed. Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, together with Linus Hunkeler, Andrea Kauer, et al. 2nd rev. and expanded ed. Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2008. Ill.

Admittedly, Hans Rupprich mentioned Jakob Ruf in his literary history from 1973 (373-74), simply listing his major plays, but most other reference works do not even know his name. Nevertheless, as the new edition of all of his works prepared under the leadership of Hildegard Elisabeth Keller clearly indicates, Ruf was a major figure in sixteenth-century Zürich, and this not only in his role as city surgeon and medical writer, but also as a significant composer of plays. These and all other texts by Ruf are now finally made available by Keller and a whole team of collaborators in this five-volume edition. This writer and physician quickly strikes us as a remarkable personality who obviously enjoyed great respect far and wide both for his medical, surgical skills and his accomplishments as a playwright. Born around 1505 or 1506, he joined the Premonstratensian monastery in Chur as a young man, but this existence did not satisfy him in the long run, so in 1525 he left again in order to conduct his life based on the result of his own hands’ labor, as he formulated it himself when he returned home to Constance. Moreover, he had learned of the Protestant Reformation and soon abandoned Catholicism altogether. Ruf then moved to Zürich, where he quickly gained a good foothold and developed a highly respectable career as the city surgeon.

For the reader it is not easy to figure out the specific dates and developments because the various contributors to the first volume tend to discuss rather the generic historical context both within Zürich and in Switzerland at large, without giving us concrete data, as far as they could fathom from the many biographical documents available still today. For instance, Hubert Steinke summarily examines Ruf’s rise from apprentice to surgeon in the city’s employ, but he really only discusses in general terms the larger context pertaining to the living and working conditions of such an apprentice, the promotion to journeyman, and then to master. Then we are given extensive reports about surgeons at large during the sixteenth century, whereas Ruf himself seems to be lost out of the author’s sight.

Stefan Schöbi studies the existence of journeymen, offering helpful insights on a broad level, but his account, like in the case of most other contributions to the first volume, remains unspecific and lacks in scholarly depth. He then refers to the death of the city surgeon Jakob Sprenger in 1531 during the “Kappel” War, which proved to be the ideal chance for Ruf to assume that vacant position. But can we hence assume that this happened in 1531? I am not so sure, and the text does not offer the expected help. Unfortunately, this central problem continues to occur in most of these shorter articles which are pleasant to read, but really too brief in biographical terms and leave the reader guessing as to the specifics. We can be certain that Ruf enjoyed a great reputation for his outstanding skills as a surgeon, and he also endeavored to study on his own the entire history of medicine since antiquity, as documented by his various treatises, such as his Ärzte- und Astrologenverzeichnis (again, no date given). His astrological tracts and his book of consolation for midwives assisting pregnant women in delivery deserve the great attention which they receive here. Hubert Steinke emphasizes that Ruf’s Trostbüchlein was published in Latin in the same year when the original German version had appeared, hence 1554, but why is this date not given much earlier for the latter, the prime object here?

Other contributors outline Ruf’s role on the Zürich book market, the social network in ?ürich, and the circumstances of the theater plays by Ruf performed in the city since 1539 with his play Weingarten (Schöbi). Keller then provides a chronological overview of all texts by Ruf from 1538 (Etter Heini) to his Fischsprüch (1555)-a kind of calender of prophecies. This is followed by a detailed discussion of all the relevant sources from which Ruf’s biography could be developed, whereas the biography itself is somehow missing. The volume concludes with an innovative collection of short articles on important aspects of life in sixteenth-century Zürich and of significance for Ruf, beginning with the fundamental reference to Adam and Eve, the role of an abbess (Katharina von Zimmern), ancestors, peasants, obsession (“Besessenheit” – here in the meaning not of ‘obsession,’ but of mental sickness), libraries, Swiss Confederation, liberty, birth, manuscripts, etc., all nicely illustrated. These articles are useful for the general reader, but even the expert will welcome some of the information here, though the entries represent an odd mix in trying to be both learned and popular. The extensive bibliography at the end indicates how much the contributors have endeavored to investigate all and everything relevant for their topics, though I still miss some depth and notice a lack of concern at times regarding details pertaining to Ruf himself.

But we need to keep the primary purpose of the first volume in mind because it was conceived as a companion volume to the Ruf exhibit in Zürich that took place from March 15 to May 16, 2006, as one can learn, however, only by searching online (not in this volume):

http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch. The present volume represents the second, revised edition, but it remains unclear what was changed or improved. Overall, it would have been really helpful if a factual biography had also been included. Instead, we must leaf back and forth, read chapter after chapter to figure out the major events and stages in Ruf’s life. http://www.uibk.ac.at/germanistik/reihe/reihe74.html

With the second volume we come to the most important contribution since this and the subsequent four other volumes contain Ruf’s complete works, edited by Keller in a critical fashion. The second volume begins with Etter Heini, Weingarten, then offers early broadsheets, and two plays that had been erroneously attributed to Ruf, the Zürcher Hiob and the Zürcher Joseph. The third volume contains Ruf’s Ärzte- und Astrologenverzeichnis, the Astrologentafel, the plays Wilhelm Tell and Passion, followed by his Augenheilkunde, another broadsheet, the “Konstanzerlied,” and the “Lied von Frau Schwätzerin.” The fourth volume offers the late play Adam und Eva, then Ruf’s famous Trostbüchlein both in Latin (here on the right side) and German (on the left side), and various texts for calendars, regularly of prognostic orientation.

The fifth and last volume returns to the critical examination of Ruf’s work, situating it in the wider social-historical and cultural context. Keller offers a “Literaturgeschichte der Ärzte,” which does not treat the motif of medical doctors in literature, but the history of those doctors as creators of literary texts, from Steinhöwel to Rabelais. Clemens Müller examines Ruf’s relationship to the Zürich humanists, his level of Latin education, and his humanistic ideals. Three subsequent articles discuss the specific characteristics of early-modern theater in light of Ruf’s contributions. The next section with two articles analyzes the history of midwifery, Ruf’s professional training, and the history of the Europe-wide reception of Ruf’s famous Trostbüchlein. Clemens Müller concludes with a study on pharmacotherapy and pharmaceutics as viewed and dealt with by Ruf. The volume is impressively rounded off with the black and white reproduction of all images in every work produced by Ruf.

The first volume is accompanied by an audio CD with tracks introducing individual works by Ruf. The last volume comes with a CD-ROM that offers color reproductions of the complete set of illustrations available in the printed material, and then both the edition and the copies of the original manuscripts and/or prints. The images of the Latin version of the Trostbüchlein (1554) are contained only on the CD-ROM.

Keller and her team have taken the greatest care to provide the full scholarly apparatus in order to make the edition to a critical one, introducing each text in literary- and cultural-historical terms, examining the structure and stage strategies pursued, and analyzing carefully the relevant text base, comparing the manuscripts and/or prints with each other. For the edition a number of decisions had to be taken, which are fully disclosed but do not need to be discussed in greater detail here. The situations change from text to text, but the critical apparatus always meets all the expectations of such a scholarly edition. Moreover, for every edited text there is an extensive commentary, offering a wealth of background information and explanations.

Altogether, Keller and her collaborators have done full justice to Jakob Ruf and demonstrated his extraordinary significance both within the context of sixteenth-century Zürich and Switzerland, and with regard to the history of early-modern medicine, surgery, midwifery, literature, political, didactic polemics, pharmacology, astrology, and prognostics.

To my great relief the fifth volume concludes with detailed registers for subject matters, historical names (persons), and the names of modern scholars. The time has come to open a new chapter in the history of sixteenth-century German literature and the history of science and medicine. Keller and her team have to be thanked for carrying out such a monumental task. And not to forget, these five volumes stand out as remarkably beautifully bound books with astonishingly sophisticated use of colored pages to separate chapters, and the use of colored script to highlight and distinguish key aspects or names. Ruf’s Kritische Gesamtausgabe demonstrates, amazingly, how much post-modern bibliophile production and solid philological research can go harmoniously hand in hand.

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

Alois, Wolf, Minne – aventiure – herzenjâmer

Begleitende und ergänzende Beobachtungen und Überlegungen zur Literaturgeschichte des volkssprachlichen Mittelalters, In: Rombach Wissenschaften. Reihe Litterae, eds. Gerhard Neumann and Günter Schnitzler, Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach Verlag, 2007. 352 pp. ISBN: 978-3-7930-9496-8.

At least four generations of medievalists interested in the interplay of medieval German and French literature have been enriched by the work of Alois Wolf. Arguably, this recent book may surpass his earlier contributions by offering us a synthesis of a lifetime of philological knowledge and interpretative wisdom. Wolf refrains from engaging in the ongoing debate over periodicity with regard to the end of “late” antiquity and the beginning of the “medieval period.” Accordingly, he disregards contrived definitions and artificial borders in favor of an approach that acknowledges the fluidity of historical thought and literary tradition. The eight chapters of this book offer a contiguous panorama beginning with historical precedents leading to the “Vermittelalterlichung antiker Stoffe und überbietende Loslösung von der Antike,” the medieval reevaluation of eros and its subsequent expression in minne as “exaltation of joy and universal illuminatio,” further to the literary new orientation of knighthood in the matière de Bretagne, and finally to the realization of a new poetic reality in the vernacular and its influence on the emerging “literary public” as a contribution both to “Humanisierung und zur Bewältigung von Überlieferungen.” Moreover, as most works on German medieval studies neglect or pay only cursory attention to the literature of Scandinavia, the reader may well find the eighth chapter on Icelandic Skalden poetry and Sagas a useful complement to the main thrust of the study.

In focusing on the genesis of the emerging vernacular literary world in Frankish lands and its later differentiation into German and French offshoots, Wolf first traces the process from discernable precedents in the fourth century, which he insightfully views as the “zweite Gründerzeit des Christentums.” In doing so, he convincingly reveals what would constitute nascent “medieval thought” as it appeared in Christian literature and exegetical works. Of special note is Wolf’s use of a concept adopted from art history, Diaphanie: “Auf ein weiteres faszinierendes Merkmal der volkssprachlichen Literatur des Mittelalters sei hingewiesen auf die Fähigkeit und Bereitschaft zu diaphanem Darstellen und Gestalten. Das Wort im einzelnen wie die Komposition einer größeren Einheit vermag sich zu öffnen für Dahinterliegendes, wodurch die Aussage erst ihre volle Gültigkeit erhält. Mit der Wahl … des Begriffs Diaphanie soll zum Ausdruck gebracht werden, daß die Literatur des Mittelalters potentiell an dem umfassenden Phänomendes Verlangens nach höherer und universeller Sinngebung Anteil hat. Diaphanie hat mit Auge und Schauen zu tun: dabei kommt es auf das eigentümlich Mittelalterliche und Unantikishe dieses Schauens an, das im Biblischen begründet ist. So ist ja schon laut Genesis, das Schöpfungswerk mit dem Schauen verbunden, wenn es nach jedem Akt heißt et vidit dues quod esset bonum. Und am Ende der Zeiten steht als Verheißung die visio pacis im Himmlischen Jerusalem, wovon bereits das Irdische videre per speculum eine Vorahnung vermitteln konnte. … Die Unvollkommenheit des Schauens mit dem leiblichen Auge wird überwunden durch das Sehen mit den oculi cordis und oculi animae.” (44-45) Diaphanic tradition, then, becomes readily apparent in Augustine’s Confessiones. To Wolf’s credit, he takes care to examine antique Latin literary traditions with the necessary discernment required to pay biblical tradition its due.

Overall, Wolf’s methodological point of departure constitutes a cogent re-envisioning of the origins of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century vernacular literature. Because he is able to identify traditions, their sources and subsequent derivations with precision, he aptly avoids the temptations and trap of reductionism. The development of literary thought in Frankish lands such as the Aachener Karlsepos from circa 800 with its unmistakable echo of Virgil’s own imperial epos, the Aeneis, highlights obserable lines of dissemination. The reader interested in religious literature is sure to find chapter two on the Frankish national-religious “impuls” especially useful in situating early medieval literature contextually vis-à-vis Latin tradition Of major significance is “die römische Imperialisierung des Christentums,” which would manifest itself thematically in the notion of La douce France as in works such as the Rolandslied, the old Wilhelmslied, Aliscanzepos, not to mention Chansons de geste and even the Nibelungenepos. Wolf aptly notes at the outset of this study: “Mögen die neuen christlichen Inhalte noch so sehr ins Transzendente weisen, heidnisch imperiale Denkmodelle lauerten nichtsdestoweniger im Hintergrund und konnten den christlichen Gegenentwurf konterkarieren. In den Kreuzzügen mit ihrer Verquickung von echt religiösem Impuls und plattem irdischem Machtstreben sollte das bedrängende Realität werden.” (11) This insight proves especially applicable to medieval epic literature in subsequent chapters.

In sum, Wolf has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the reception and influence of Latin literature and traditions, secular and religious, on works of the early and high medieval period-both those still regarded by many scholars as canonical and those that have been all but ignored.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

SMGS News from Colleagues

Klaus Amann(Universität Innsbruck) has edited, with commentary, a recently discovered fragment of the Pfäferser Passionsspiel from ca. 1230-after the Benediktbeurer Passionsspiel, the second oldest passion play.

In: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft – Germanistische Reihe Band 74

You may order with the subscription price of EUR 27,00 until May 31, 2010.

Das Pfäferser Passionsspielfragment. Untersuchung -Edition- Kommentar. 2010.

254. EUR 36, 00 ISBN 978-3-901064-37-1

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona-Tucson) has a number of recent contributions.

Deutsche Schwankliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts: Studien zu Martin Montanus, Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof und Michael Lindener. Koblenz-Landauer Studien zu Geistes-, Kultur-und Bildungswissenschaften, 4 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009. X, 200.

Urban Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 4 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Vii. 757, 70 ill.

“Farting and the Power of Human Language with a Focus on Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof’s Sixteenth-Century Schwänke,” In: Medievalia et Humanistica 35 (2009): 57-76.

“Liederhandschriften und gedruckte Liederbücher als Textallianzen um 1500. Ein Textcorpus an der Schwelle des großen Epochenwechels,” Literarische und religiöse Textsorten und Textallianzen um 1500, eds. Alexander Schwarz, Franz Simmler, and Claudia Wich-Reif. Handbuch, 1. Berliner Sprachwissenschaftliche Studien, 20 (Berlin: Weidler, 2009), 75-88.

“Schwellenphänomen, Paradigmenwechsel, Popularitätserfolg: Hybridisierung und Konkretisierung des spätmittelalterlichen Liebeslieds als Erfolgsrezept beim Mönch von Salzburg,” Studia Neophilologica 81 (2009): 69-86.

“Disguises, Gender-Bending, and Clothing Symbolism in Dietrich von der Gletze’s

Der Borte,” Seminar XLV, 2 (2009): 95-110.

Ernst S. Dick (University of Kansas, emeritus) has received a second Festschrift in his honor: “Er ist ein wol gevriunder man” Essays in Honor of Ernst S. Dick on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, edited by Karen McConnell and Winder McConnel, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2009. 395. ISBN: 978-3-487-13925-8.

Peter Dinzelbacher (Universität Wien) has two new publications.

Unglaube im ‘Zeitalter des Glaubens’ – Atheismus und Skeptizismus im Mittelalter, Badenweiler: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Dr. Michael P. Bachmann, 160. EUR 23,95.

www.bachmann-verlag.de

Peter Dinzelbacher (Universität Augsburg) and Ralph Frenken (Frankfurt/Main),

Der steinerne Blick – Symbolköpfe der Romanik, DWV, ISBN: 978-3-86888-003-8.

William Layher (Washington University in St. Louis) has been elected to the MLA Executive Committee of the Division on German Literature to 1700.

Matthias Meyer (Universität Wien) together with Constanza Cordoni (Universitat Wien) have organized the following event: Barlaam und Josaphat in der Literatur des Mittelalters – Internationales Symposium, April 15-18, 2010. Matthias.meyer@univie.ac.at

Winder McConnell (University of California-Davis) and Marion Gibbs have translated Der Welsche Gast (The Italian Guest), Thomasin von Zirclaria, with Introduction and Notes. In: Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions IV. Ed. Michael Curschmann. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2009. VIII + 248.

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) has published “Undercutting the Fabric of Courtly Love with ‘Tokens of Love’ in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival” accepted for publication in the inaugural issue of the Yearbook of the Society for Medieval German Studies, I (2009): 8-33.

“Reading Parzival’s Quest for the Holy Grail as a Unique Exile Experience.” In: Weltanschauliche Orientierungsversuche im Exil / Changes of World View in Exile. Edited by Reinhard Andress, co-edited by Greg Divers & Evelyn Meyer, Amsterdam: Rodopi, (in press) forthcoming 2010.

Olga Trokhimenko (University of North Carolina-Wilmington) and Marcus Stock (University of Toronto) have organized three sessions: (1) Aesthetics and Style in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, (2) Art in Literature – Literature in Art in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, and (3) Suffering in Medieval and Early Modern Culture for YMAGINA (Young Medievalist Germanists in North America) for the Thirty-Fourth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association in Oakland, CA. October 7-10, 2010.

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 2010.

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

All good wishes from SMGS!

Dear Colleagues,
The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is sponsoring four sessions at the 50th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo May 9-12, 2015. We wish to thank our SMGS Organizers, Marian Elisabeth Polhill (University of Puerto Rico) and Jeffry 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 2015
New Books Roundtable
The Sidney M. Johnson/Ulrich Müller Award for 2015
SMGS Review

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

(Saturday, May 16 10:00 a.m. Session 393 Bernard 213)

Presider: Marian Elizabeth Polhill (University of Puerto Rico-Recinto de Río Piedras)

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

(Saturday, May 16 1:30 p.m. Session 451 Bernard 212)
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
(Saturday, May 16 p.m. Session 510
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

(Friday evening at 8:00 in Bernard 211)
Moderator: Jeffry Turco (Purdue University)
Olga V. Trokhimenko 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.

SMGS Reviews

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.

(Abridged Review – the complete version appears in our next issue together with subsequent reviews.)

As with all good research in medieval studies, Professor Trokhimenko’s book offers us an innovative way of apprehending courtly culture in its literary and visual representations of women’s laughter and smiling from around 1150 to 1300, i.e., from courtly epic to conduct- and religious educational texts, and visually in the depiction of the wise and foolish virgins from the cathedral portals of Strassburg and Magdeburg. The success of her work derives from a well-researched, well-grounded study of societal behaviors that might easily be rendered by a casual 21^st-century observer as banal or trivial, but take on major significance as defining agents of “femininity” when analyzed comprehensively through a medieval lens. She aptly notes: “The treatment of women’s laughter in medieval literature raises a number of compelling questions about the social and cultural context out of which it arose, and about the relation between reality and fiction, ideology and misogyny.” (15) Trokhimenko presents convincing arguments in the five chapters of her book together with an insightful epilogue that calls attention to aspects of medieval tradition in our current society. She begins by discussing the social implications of the “Two ‘mouths’ of a medieval woman” in Heinrich der Teichner’s poem “Von roten muenden” as a lecture on the good manners of (zucht), (scham) and (staeten muet). The exposition on “womanly” virtues includes the admonition that “aristocratic women must learn to recognize their persistent sexualization in love discourse, for men’s words are not always what they appear to be on the surface.” (29) Medievalists will readily appreciate the value of these insights for textual analysis. In the authors words: “The mouth symbolism offers a new dimension for interpreting the connection between laughter and sexual availability; it allows the modern reader to make a mental leap from the former to the latter and discover an additional level of meaning in these old poems, which might otherwise remain unrecognized.” Trokhimenko develops her approach by examining laughter in a variety of medieval contexts such as ecclesiastical discourse, medical perspectives, conduct literature for women, “men’s fantasies and women’s laughter in love lyric,” and “courtly smiling in the iconography of virtue and vice.” On pages (35) and (175) respectively, the author further contributes to our discipline by lending contour and additional precision to some aspects of the now seminal studies by James A. Schultz (Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality, Chicago, 2006) and C. Stephen Jaeger’s (Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950-1200, Philadelphia, 1985). Readers in our discipline will benefit from a solid integration of existing works such as those mentioned above, among others, into her study.

In sum, Olga V. Trokhimenko succeeds well in illuminating the multiple representations of femininity in the portrayal of women’s laughter. The result is clear; we as medievalists have gained a more refined insight into what we may well have overlooked. I am pleased to recommend this book.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

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 Fall/Winter issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in late 2015.

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

Dear Colleagues,

The Society for Medieval Germanic Studies is again pleased to sponsor five sessions at the 47th Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo this May 2012. We wish to thank Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) and Alexander Sager (University of Georgia, Athens), for organizing an exciting program for us this year at Kalamazoo. After the final SMGS session on Sunday morning, there will be a brief business meeting. If you have a theme for a SMGS session for next year, please let us know at that time.

Table of Contents

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2012

New Books Roundtable

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2012

New Books Received for SMGS Review

SMGS Review

SMGS Sessions at Kalamazoo 2012

Session I Thursday 7:30 p.m. Schneider 1280

“Around and About the German Grail”–_hôher êren pflegen_: A Session in Honor of Francis G. Gentry

Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

“Vindicating the Traitor: The Restoration of Gawain as Grail Hero in Heinrich von dem Türlin’s The Crown”

Lauren McConnell (Independent Scholar)

“wêmich: Oblique Subjects in Middle High German”

Stephen Mark Carey (Universitetet i Bergen)

Session II Saturday 1:30 p.m. Schneider 1145

“Outsiders and Others in German Arthurian Romance”

Presider: Rasma Lazda (The University of Alabama)

“Being Human: Monstrosity and Alterity in Text and Image in the 13th-Century Arthurian Romance Wigamur”

Jon Sherman (Northern Michigan University)

“Fluctuating Beauty: Sigune, Cundrie and Repanse in Text and Image in Wolfram’s Parzival”

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University)

“The young princess in her exile: Sigune’s cell in Albrecht’s Jüngerer Titurel.”

Alex Sager (University of Georgia, Athens)

Session III Sunday 8:30 a.m. Valley II 205

Love and Compulsion in Medieval German Literature

Presider: Scott E. Pincikowski  (Hood College)

“The Language of Rape in Carmina Burana 185”

Kathryn Malczyk (University of Pennsylvania)

“Law in the Battle of the Sexes: The Function of Legal Discourse in Der Stricker’s Mären Das heiße Eisen and Das erzwungene Gelübde”

Mary Marschall Campbell (University of New Hampshire/Princeton University)

“Ein fewr in der Welt fert”: Lovesickness in Mauritius von Craûn

Marian Polhill (University of Puerto Rico-Recinto de Río Piedras)

Session IV Sunday 10:30 a.m. Valley II 204

Narrative Strategies in Medieval German Literature

Presider: Marian Polhill (University of Puerto Rico-Recinto de Río)

“Johann Schiltberger’s Reisetagebuch: Narrating from Prisoner to Mercenary”

Rasma Lazda-Cazers (University of Alabama)

“No Passion for Affect? The Missing Crucifixion Scene in the Künzelsau Corpus Christi Play”

Glenn Ehrstine (University of Iowa)

New Books Roundtable

Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden (University of Minnesota) speaks about her forthcoming book: Tristan and Isolde: Medieval Illustrations of the Verse Romances. SMGS looks forward to seeing you at this well-received and enjoyable session at Kalamazoo in 2012.

The Sidney M. Johnson Award for 2012

SMGS is delighted to announce The Sidney M. Johnson Award for the best abstract submitted to SMGS from a graduate student. SMGS is presenting the award this year to two recipients, whose abstracts were judged to be of equal merit. SMGS congratulates Mary Marshall Campbell (University of New Hampshire/Princeton University) and Kathryn Malczyk (University of Pennsylvania). We are looking forward to hearing their presentations in SMGS Sessions

New Books Received for SMGS Review

C. Stephen Jaeger, Enchantment

On Charisma and the Sublime in the Arts of the West

University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978-0-8122-4329-1

SMGS Reviews

Sigrid Rachoinig, Wir tun kund und lassen dich wissen: Briefe, Urkunden und akten als spätmittelalterliche Grundformen schriftlicher Kommunikation, dargestellt anhand der Lebenszeugnisse Oswalds von Wolkenstein. Mediaevistik zwischen Forschung, Lehre und Öffentlichkeit, 2 (Frankfurt a. M.,Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 2009), 319 pp.

In her study, based on her Graz doctoral dissertation from 2007, Rachoinig plunges into the vast corpus of documents/records produced by or for Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/77-1445), who was one of the most important late-medieval German poets, living between many cultural worlds and languages, and who rose to considerable political and economic power in southern Tyrol during the end of his lifetime. As a consequence of his heavy involvement in politics, he produced a huge number of documents, many private, others public, which allow us to draw up a pretty precise biography of him (Anton Schwob, Oswald von Wolkenstein, 2nd ed. 1977). Rachoinig at first does that as well, but her purpose is a sociolinguistic one in that she wants to describe the vast number of different text types into which this Oswald corpus can be divided. In order to prepare herself for this task, she examines the theoretical implications of written communication, and illustrates those with specific references to Middle High German verbs used in the correspondence or exchange of records signaling individual strategies and intentions. I welcome her efforts to present to us once again the basic structural elements of a medieval letter (salutatio, exordium, narratio, petitio, and conclusio), which she discusses in detail, along with those other elements that were also essential for the composition of a letter.

The next section deals with official documents, or charters (Urkunden), which Rachoinig at first describes in generic terms, and then discusses with respect to those contained in the Oswald archive. The range of genres is astounding, which indicates once more how much this poet was involved in many different business dealings during his lifetime. The third section examines those documents that belong to official charters, but are neither letters nor documents in the narrow sense of the word. These Akten (records) comprise all kinds of written statements reporting of many different sorts of business transactions, but without having an official function or relevance, such as a protocol. The author provides a copy of one such a document, but does not have many examples available. At last, she analyzes the various styles used by Oswald and his scribes, and thus produces an excellent case study of late-medieval political communication, well documented and meticulously investigated.

The book concludes with an extensive bibliography, a list of all documents studied, a bibliography of additional studies in a more general sense, and tables for specific forms of address in the documents and for historical terms of concrete types of documents. Both historians and literary historians will profit from this careful analysis of a huge body of archival material pertaining to this important late-medieval German poet.

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

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.

Ladies, Whores, and Holy Women is, as stated in the second half of the title, primarily a sourcebook of late medieval German texts about women and the courtly, religious and urban cultures they lived in, which shaped their lives and which they in return shaped as well. This book contains seven texts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and presents these in side-by-side facing pages in the original and English translation. The texts range from fictional texts, to religious and legal ones, and a woman’s book inventory list. This is the first time these texts have been published together, though some of them were published previously. Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl introduce each individual text in its manuscript context along with information about how widely known the text was, and who may have read it. Furthermore, the authors provide historical context about themes raised by the text, as well as geographic matters pertinent to it, if such information is available, e.g. the social, political, religious and economic changes taking place in fifteenth-century German-speaking lands that serve as the background for all of these texts, as well as the large appeal and influence of each of these texts as evidenced in the many surviving manuscript copies of them. Furthermore, in the introduction the authors address the significance of learned women in the development of medieval Christian piety, mystical exercises, Meister Eckhart’s anti-hierarchical teachings and Beguines as key influences on the texts in Chapter 2 in which women serve as spiritual guides to clerics. In the final section of the book, the authors point out the distinctions made between free-lance and professional prostitutes and their different legal position, working and economic conditions, and how or why the city tolerated them. These introductory remarks both for the book in general and each text individually provide good context and necessary background information, as well as insights into what Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl think about how the perceptions of women in and through these texts contributed to late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’ discourses on gender, sexuality and class.

The primary focus of this sourcebook is to make these texts available to a larger academic audience and to “advance our understanding of gender, sexuality, and class in the late medieval world” (1). The book first presents three texts in chapters one and two that attest to the popularity of “convention of the learned spiritual woman” (2): Die Beichte einer Frau referenced in the manuscript as das puolschaft nit sünd sey! Ain hübsche peicht (Chapter 1); Schwester Katrei, referenced in the manuscript as Dis is von der bichte tochter, and Die Frau von ein-und-zwanzig Jahren (Version B) (Chapter 2). In Die Beichte einer Frau, the woman convinces her confessor that her love affair with a young man is not sinful, a conversation which is overheard by a male narrator, who unlike the confessor is not won over by the lady’s reasoning. In Schwester Katrei we encounter a pious woman who is seeking spiritual guidance and enlightenment from a holy man (assumed to be Meister Eckhardt) and in the end exceeds him in spiritual knowledge and experiences and guides him in his own conversion. Likewise, in Die Frau von ein-und-zwanzig Jahren (Version B) we encounter a young woman seeking spiritual guidance from a Doctor of Divinity, who initially deems her unworthy because she is a woman. However, after making inquiries into her devotional practices, he admits that despite dedicating his entire life to a spiritual one, he has not been able to attain such perfection of devotion as she has, she who primarily is a wife, mother and mistress of her household. Despite her busy secular life she achieves spiritual union with Christ in her devotional practices. By her example, she, like Sister Catherine, becomes his teacher.

Chapter 3 contains the Bücherverzeichnis der Elisabeth von Volkenstorff, a noblewoman who lived in Upper Austria in the first half of the fifteenth century, who herself made this book inventory (97) which contains forty-four separate entries, including many religious books, compendia presenting entire areas of knowledge, books with practical knowledge, and much literature, both the medieval classics and “modern” literature in German of her time such as Die Beichte einer Frau and Stiefmutter and Tochter both contained in this volume (for more, see 98-103). In that sense, Chapter 3 forms a bridge between the first part of the book which contains texts dealing with spiritual matters, and the final part of the book which deals with whoring. All of these texts were read by noble women, as is attested by Elisabeth von Volkenstorff’s book inventory.

Chapter 4 presents two redactions of the text Stiefmutter und Tochter referenced in the manuscript as Wie ain muoter ir dochter lernet puolen, the Augsburg and the Nuremberg redactions. In each version, the mother (or stepmother) instructs the adolescent daughter in the ways of attracting men and making the greatest financial benefit out of seducing and pleasuring them. Both women are single and represent the largest portion of society at the time, the urban and rural poor. As noted by Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl, in the Nuremberg redaction the narrative is streamlined, shortened, but a few obscene passages are added. It does not end with the eavesdropping narrator’s comment on loose women, as he does in the Augsburg redaction, but with a summarizing speech by the mother to her daughter, which she refers to as the daughter’s dowry (see 112).

While the text in Chapter 4 is fictional, that in Chapter 5, Ordnung der gemeinen Weiber in den Frauenhäusern, presents the Nuremberg city ordinance from around 1470 regulating brothels in the city. It accepts brothels as a “necessary evil” and in line withNuremberg’s status as an economically prosperous and free city state, it treats brothels as businesses and concerns itself with both the rights of brothel owners and the prostitutes working in them, and with maintaining peace and order in the city.

While Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl clearly selected these texts to present us with a wide variety of styles of texts and diverse topics from which to glean insights into the courtly, religious and urban cultures of late medieval Germany, nonetheless, I find myself asking how these particular texts were chosen and at the exclusion of which other texts. How many other texts of this kind exist from this time period? Granted, while no volume can include all possible texts, some commentary on how and why these seven texts were chosen would have been helpful along with some commentary of other texts dealing with similar subject matters that were not included. While the historical and manuscript contexts of these texts is very well established by Rasmussen and Westphal-Whil, their place in the larger literary production of the late German Middle Ages remains largely unaddressed.

I especially recommend Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl for not superimposing a standardized Middle High German onto the edited texts, as is still a very common practice in our field. They clearly state which editorial changes they made to the text, minimal though they are, primarily bringing consistency into the vocalic use of v as u, consonantal u as v, vocalic j as i, tremas over vowels as the appropriate vowel + e, and expanding abbreviations (see 5-6). Furthermore, they maintain the dialectal features of the original text, and with it the text’s linguistic authenticity, which will enable scholars to study theses texts not only for content, but linguistically as well.

I also applaud Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl for their translations, which are very readable and smooth, not at all stiff by attempting to follow the original text too closely, nor too free (as some Übertragungen can be) that they do not do the original justice. While the translations are very contemporary in their renditions of medieval idiomatic expressions, they do convey the meaning, humor and sense of the original well. This is not a stilted translation, and instead Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl strike the translation’s linguistic balance well between the medieval original and the modern text.

As I was reading through these primary texts, ideas for research projects formed constantly and immediately in my mind, ideas for comparative studies between the classical Middle High German canon and these less known and therefore less studied texts about and by women presented in this volume. I assume this will be quite similar for other scholars as well. These primary texts provide us with a wealth of new information about life in late medieval Germany, about perceptions of gender, class and sexuality, about theological matters, women’s influence on spiritual development and the development of Christian thought, the regulation of the female body, and this list could go on further, but it becomes clear that the scholarship that will come into existence because of these texts will be rich and diverse. Making these texts available in their original language with side-by-side English translations is a significant contribution not only to the field of medieval German(ic) Studies, but to medieval research on the discourse of the intersection of gender, sexuality and class more broadly. As stated by the authors themselves, this volume fills a gap in our discipline. “Adding these German witnesses to the burgeoning mass of material from England and France available to scholars and students will enrich, and perhaps even change, our understanding of the development of late medieval notions of gender and class in Europe. In this international context, the texts in this volume support the hypothesis that there is no single, European, monolithic narrative about gender and class in the late medieval world. Rather, what we see is a story of enormous regional diversity and variation, a story whose complexities are only now being studied, …” (5). It will be exciting to see what new scholarship is forthcoming that will address these complexities, both in their German and their larger medieval contexts, based on the edition and translations published in this volume. Making these texts available is a significant contribution to our discipline from which other scholars will benefit, as Rasmussen and Westphal-Wihl made available to us new source material to be used in future scholarly endeavors.

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University)

Ulrich Müller, Gesammelte Schriften. Eds. Margarete Springeth, Gertraud Mitterauer, Ruth Weichselbaumer, together with Annemarie Eder and Verena Vitzthum. Forword by Ingrid Bennewitz (Kümmerle Verlag 750 I-IV) Göppingen 2010. pp.1-692;1-636; 1-629, 1-580. ISBN 978-3-86758-005-2

Ulrich Müller, emeritus (Universität Salzburg) has his extensive contributions to our field available in a four-volume collection. The introduction by the editors and the Foreword by Ingrid Bennewitz place the enormous range of Müller’s scolastic activity into perspective and provide a useful orientation. The thematic organization of the volumes is well thought out and readily helps readers to access material. Volume One, Lyrik des Mittelalters 1, begins with general essays on Minnesang before focusing on Minnesangs Frühling and Walter von der Vogelweide. The reader will also enjoy the concise study of the Carmina Burana with regard to poetic technique and melodization. The section on political lyric of the late Middle Ages is insightful and useful for scholars interested in this area. Volume One fittingly concludes with extensive articles on Neidhart and Oswald von Wolkenstein. Volume Two, Lyrik II, Epik, Autobiographie des Mittelalters, offers a fascinating panorama of both depth and genre. After essays on Michel Beheim’s “Sangvers-Lyrik” and “Sangvers-Epik,” a brief study of Walter von der Vogelweide insightfully contextualizes political propaganda and agitation. The major section of the second volume examines “Heldenepik, Sangvers-Epik” with a characteristically international focus. The range of scholarly interest from the melodic significance of the Nibelungenlied to sung West African epics demonstrates the synergistic dimension of performance. The volume concludes with articles addressing “Autobiographie, autobiographische Bezüge, Geschichte,” a thematic complex that is often neglected, especially in medieval studies. Volume Three, Interkulturelle Germanistik, Neuere Deutsche Philologie, Mittelalter-Rezeption I, highlights Müller’s continuing interest in cultural interaction between the orient and occident. His eclectic purview is readily apparent in the sheer diversity of topics that he explores. In the final section of the volume, “Epik I, Der arme Heinrich, Tristan,” the reader will also be pleased to find mention made of one of the most practical tools for German medieval studies, namely, the “Mittelhochdeutsche Begriffsdatenbank” (MHDBDB: http://mhdbdb.sbg.ac.at). The fourth and final volume, Mittelalter-Rezeption II, provides us with an equally fascinating spectrum of scholarly works that are useful and supportive to scholars today.

Indeed, there can scarcely be a more gratifying complement for scholars than the recognition that their work is both useful and nurturing to their field of study. In this light, I was delighted to see that even earlier articles from Ulrich Müller are just as relevant today as they were decades ago. While writing a forthcoming review for JEGP (Claudia Lauer, Ästhetik der Identität – Sänger-Rollen in der Sangspruchdichtung des 13. Jahrhunderts, Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg), I was pleased to find that Müller’s work, in this case, his studies on political lyric from 1974 to 2002, were frequently cited as germane and significant. In my opinion, this assessment also hold true for contemporary medieval scholarship.

In sum, it is scarcely possible to pay adequate tribute to a life’s work that spans over four decades, yet this four-volume set of collected works clearly mirrors the esteem and affection that colleagues have for Ulrich Müller both as a scholar and a representative of the best attributes of humanity.

Ernst Ralf Hintz (Truman State University)

SMGS News from Colleagues

Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) has a recent article published: “Frömmigkeit und Herrschaft, Wonne und Weg – Landschaften in der Literatur des Mittelalters,” in: Das Mittelalter 16 (2011) 1, pp. 104-130. He also presented a paper: “Person und Landschaft in niederrheinischen Pilgerberichten des 15. Jahrhunderts,” at the Interdisziplinäres Symposium, Heimatverein der Erkelenzer Lande e.V., Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf.

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona-Tucson) has new contributions:

War and Peace, Volume 8 in the series: Fundaments of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, editors Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge (Westfield State College) De Gruyter, 2012.

Late-Medieval German Woman’s Poetry—Secular and Religious Songs, translated by Albrecht Classen, Boydell & Brewer, 2012.

He has also organized two sessions:

Session 177 Valley II 200

“The Outrageous Middle Ages: Transgression, Perpetration, and the Scandalous I”

Friday 10:00 a.m

And

Session 253 Fetzer 2040

“The Outrageous Middle Ages: Transgresion, Perpetration, and the Scandalous II”

Friday 1:30 p.m.

Evelyn Firchow (University of Minnesota) has reminded SMGS of an editorial oversight. Together with Francis G. Gentry emeritus (University of Wisconsin-Madison/The Pennsylvania State University-University Park) and Winder McConnell (University of California-Davis), she is only the third scholar in her generation in America to be honored by a Festschrift: De consolatione philologiae: Studies in Honor of Evelyn S. Firchow, edited by Anna Grotans, Heinrich Beck, and Anton Schwob.

 C. Stephen Jaeger emeritus (University of Illinois) has a new book published this year by The University of Pennsylvania Press, Enchantment — On Charisma and the Sublime in the Arts of the West.

Sibylle Jefferis (University of Pennsylvania) has edited a new collection. Medieval German Textrelations: Translations, Editions, and Studies (Kalamazoo Papers 2010-2011). GAG 765. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2012. The contributors are: Chiara Benati, Albrecht Classen, Anna Dalle Mule, Claudia Händl, Sibylle Jefferis, Francesco Sangriso, Jon Sherman. Her three articles included are: “Die mittelniederdeutschen Übertragungen aus dem Heiligenleben Hermanns von Fritzlar: Alexius und Von den Aposteln (mit Editionen),” “Die schlesische Prosabearbeitung Cronica von Schondochs Königin von Frankreich und der ungetreue Marschall (mit Neuedition),” “Legendenund Legendare: Bilanz der letzten 30 Jahre am Beispiel der Alexiuslegende A (mit Edition des Münchner Fragments aus Regensburg sowie Faksimiles, einem Stemma der Alexius A Hss und zwei Fresken aus Regensburg und Esslingen).”

She has also organized two sessions at Kalamazoo:

Session 147 Bernhard 211

Thursday 3:30 p.m.

“Low German Medieval Literature: Legends, Drama, Epics, Translations”

And

Session 486 Schneider 1145

Saturday 3:30 p.m.

“Lives, Chronicles, Legends, Chançons de Geste, Epics, Novellas, Meisterlieder, Drama,”

Sponsored by the Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft

Evelyn Meyer (Saint Louis University) has recently received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. She has also served SMGS with distinction as Co-organizer of our May 2012 sessions. Our thanks and congratulations!

Ulrich Müller (Universität Salzburg) has a four-volume collection of his work in the Kümmerle Verlag, summer 2010.  Editors are Margarete Springeth, Ruth Weichselhauer and Gertraud Mitterauer, together with Annemarie Eder and Verena Vitzthum.

He would also like to call 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. Göppinger: Kümmerle, 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.

The SMGS News & Reviews is edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz (TrumanStateUniversity).

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 next issue of the SMGS News & Reviews appears in fall 2012.

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 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!