Source Genre: Poetry

Medieval poetry can be divided essentially into lyric, epic and dramatic genres. These subgenres contain in the German-speaking world alone a huge variety of forms and types (e.g., courtly love poetry (Minnesang), Crusade songs, Spruchdichtung (sung religious/devotional/Biblical didactic lyrics) Biblical epic, Arthurian romance, rhymed romances, drama, fairly tales, etc.). There is an entire discipline dedicated to these texts, older German Literature Studies (medieval German Studies). Most of these texts share their origins in the rather charged transitional period between oral and written culture, which made a strong impression on the form these texts took.
The performance of the piece had to be borne in mind by its writer, which is why poetry so often displays characteristics of orality. Although such poetry was mainly performed in song, the great song manuscripts, such as the Codex Manesse, hardly contain any tunes at all. The reasons for this are the subject of a scholarly debate (see Holznagel, Franz-Josef, Wege in die Schriftlichkeit (Bibliotheka Germanica 32), Basel 1995.

An excerpt from the Codex Manesse has been chosen as an example. This deluxe manuscript was owned, over the centuries, by a number of important people (e.g., the Electors-Palatine at Heidelberg, King Louis XIV of France) before it ended up in the Heidelberg University Library, where it has been digitalised and is catalogued under the signature Codex Palatinus Germanicus 848 (Volldigitalisat) The codex contains 426 sheets of parchment and more than 6,000 strophes of middle High German poetry from the period between 1160 and 1330, including works of Walther von der Vogelweide. The manuscript is richly decorated with miniatures that reflect the imaginative world of high courtly culture. The text was written down by six different scribes in Gothic minuscule.

The second chapter will demonstrate, on the basis of the text passage reproduced here, that poetry can be of use as a source for the research questions posed by medieval history and that interdisciplinary collaboration is worthwhile.