Wolfram's "Willehalm"

Wolfram's Author: Martin H. Jones
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571132116
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm (c. 1210-20) is one of the great epic creations of the Middle Ages. Its account of conflict between Christian and Muslim cultures, centering on the warrior-saint Willehalm and his wife Gyburc, a convert from Islam, challenges the ideology of the Crusades. It celebrates the heroism, faith, and family solidarity of the Christians, but also displays the suffering of both sides in the war and questions the justification of all killing. Gyburc, whose abandonment of her Muslim family and conversion to Christianity are the immediate cause of the war, bears a double burden of sorrow, and it is from her that springs a vision of humanity transcending religious differences that is truly remarkable for its time. In Gyburc's heathen brother Rennewart and his love for the French king's daughter, Wolfram also develops a richly comic strand in the narrative, with the outcome left tantalizingly open by the work's probably unfinished conclusion. Long overshadowed by his earlier Parzival, Wolfram's Willehalm is increasingly receiving the recognition it deserves. The fifteen essays in this volume present new interpretations of a wide range of aspects of Willehalm. They place the work in its historical and literary context, promote understanding of its leading figures and themes, and highlight Wolfram's supreme qualities as a story-teller. Martin H. Jones is Senior Lecturer in German at King's College, London. Timothy McFarland is retired as Senior Lecturer in German at University College London.

Wolfram's "Willehalm"

Wolfram's Author: Martin H. Jones
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571132116
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm (c. 1210-20) is one of the great epic creations of the Middle Ages. Its account of conflict between Christian and Muslim cultures, centering on the warrior-saint Willehalm and his wife Gyburc, a convert from Islam, challenges the ideology of the Crusades. It celebrates the heroism, faith, and family solidarity of the Christians, but also displays the suffering of both sides in the war and questions the justification of all killing. Gyburc, whose abandonment of her Muslim family and conversion to Christianity are the immediate cause of the war, bears a double burden of sorrow, and it is from her that springs a vision of humanity transcending religious differences that is truly remarkable for its time. In Gyburc's heathen brother Rennewart and his love for the French king's daughter, Wolfram also develops a richly comic strand in the narrative, with the outcome left tantalizingly open by the work's probably unfinished conclusion. Long overshadowed by his earlier Parzival, Wolfram's Willehalm is increasingly receiving the recognition it deserves. The fifteen essays in this volume present new interpretations of a wide range of aspects of Willehalm. They place the work in its historical and literary context, promote understanding of its leading figures and themes, and highlight Wolfram's supreme qualities as a story-teller. Martin H. Jones is Senior Lecturer in German at King's College, London. Timothy McFarland is retired as Senior Lecturer in German at University College London.

Latin Literatures of Medieval and Early Modern Times in Europe and Beyond

Latin Literatures of Medieval and Early Modern Times in Europe and Beyond PDF Author: Francesco Stella
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027247293
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 726

Get Book Here

Book Description
The textual heritage of Medieval Latin is one of the greatest reservoirs of human culture. Repertories list more than 16,000 authors from about 20 modern countries. Until now, there has been no introduction to this world in its full geographical extension. Forty contributors fill this gap by adopting a new perspective, making available to specialists (but also to the interested public) new materials and insights. The project presents an overview of Medieval (and post-medieval) Latin Literatures as a global phenomenon including both Europe and extra-European regions. It serves as an introduction to medieval Latin's complex and multi-layered culture, whose attraction has been underestimated until now. Traditional overviews mostly flatten specificities, yet in many countries medieval Latin literature is still studied with reference to the local history. Thus the first section presents 20 regional surveys, including chapters on authors and works of Latin Literature in Eastern, Central and Northern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. Subsequent chapters highlight shared patterns of circulation, adaptation, and exchange, and underline the appeal of medieval intermediality, as evidenced in manuscripts, maps, scientific treatises and iconotexts, and its performativity in narrations, theatre, sermons and music. The last section deals with literary “interfaces,” that is motifs or characters that exemplify the double-sided or the long-term transformations of medieval Latin mythologemes in vernacular culture, both early modern and modern, such as the legends about King Arthur, Faust, and Hamlet.

The Art of Narration in Wolfram's Parzival and Albrecht's Jüngerer Titurel

The Art of Narration in Wolfram's Parzival and Albrecht's Jüngerer Titurel PDF Author: Parshall Linda B.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521169202
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
This text studies the narrative techniques of Wolfram and Albrecht.

Rennewart in Wolfram's 'Willehalm'

Rennewart in Wolfram's 'Willehalm' PDF Author: Carl Lofmark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052108444X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm and the Old French chanson de geste, La Bataille d'Aliscans, on which it was based, recount the tale of how Guillaume de'Orange eventually defeated the Saracens at the battle of Aliscans. This 1972 book examines Wolfram's use of his source material, concentrating on the episodes in which Rennewart figures. He discusses the theories about the original source of Rainouart in the French chansons de geste, and suggests that the figure sprang from traditional fairy tales, and was incorporated into the courtly cycle, in which he assorts rather oddly with the other characters, threatening to take over centre stage from the primary hero, Guillaume. He indicates the ways in which Wolfram made his poem a more consistent narrative by relegating Rennewart to his proper place, and giving him some of the courtly virtues expected of a hero by his audience. Finally, he considers whether Willehalm is a fragment.

Narratives Crossing Boundaries

Narratives Crossing Boundaries PDF Author: Joachim Friedmann
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839464862
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
As the dominant narrative forms in the age of media convergence, films and games call for a transmedial perspective in narratology. Games allow a participatory reception of the story, bringing the transgression of the ontological boundary between the narrated world and the world of the recipient into focus. These diverse transgressions - medial and ontological - are the subject of this transdisciplinary compendium, which covers the subject in an interdisciplinary way from various perspectives: game studies and media studies, but also sociology and psychology, to take into account the great influence of storytelling on social discourses and human behavior.

The Kaiserchronik

The Kaiserchronik PDF Author: Alastair Matthews
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191631094
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents a narratological analysis of the Kaiserchronik, or chronicle of the emperors, the first verse chronicle to have been written in any European vernacular language, which provides an account of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors from the foundation of Rome to the eve of the Second Crusade. Previous research has concentrated on the structure and sources of the work and emphasized its role as a Christian narrative of history, but this study shows that the Kaiserchronik does not simply illustrate a didactic religious message: it also provides an example of how story-telling techniques in the vernacular were developed and explored in twelfth-century Germany. Four aspects of narrative are described (time and space, motivation, perspective, and narrative strands), each of which is examined with reference to the story of a particular emperor (Constantine the Great, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and Henry IV). Rather than imposing a single analytical framework on the Kaiserchronik, the book takes account of the fact that modern theory cannot always be applied directly to works from premodern periods: it draws critically on a variety of approaches, including those of Gérard Genette, Boris Uspensky, and Eberhard Lämmert. Throughout the book, the narrative techniques described are contextualized by means of comparisons with other texts in both Middle High German and Latin, making clear the place of the Kaiserchronik as a literary narrative in the twelfth century.

Handbook of Diachronic Narratology

Handbook of Diachronic Narratology PDF Author: Peter Hühn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311061748X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 914

Get Book Here

Book Description
This handbook brings together 42 contributions by leading narratologists devoted to the study of narrative devices in European literatures from antiquity to the present. Each entry examines the use of a specific narrative device in one or two national literatures across the ages, whether in successive or distant periods of time. Through the analysis of representative texts in a range of European languages, the authors compellingly trace the continuities and evolution of storytelling devices, as well as their culture-specific manifestations. In response to Monika Fludernik’s 2003 call for a "diachronization of narratology," this new handbook complements existing synchronic approaches that tend to be ahistorical in their outlook, and departs from postclassical narratologies that often prioritize thematic and ideological concerns. A new direction in narrative theory, diachronic narratology explores previously overlooked questions, from the evolution of free indirect speech from the Middle Ages to the present, to how changes in narrative sequence encoded the shift from a sacred to a secular worldview in early modern Romance literatures. An invaluable new resource for literary theorists, historians, comparatists, discourse analysts, and linguists.

Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time

Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110693666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 820

Get Book Here

Book Description
The notions of other peoples, cultures, and natural conditions have always been determined by the epistemology of imagination and fantasy, providing much freedom and creativity, and yet have also created much fear, anxiety, and horror. In this regard, the pre-modern world demonstrates striking parallels with our own insofar as the projections of alterity might be different by degrees, but they are fundamentally the same by content. Dreams, illusions, projections, concepts, hopes, utopias/dystopias, desires, and emotional attachments are as specific and impactful as the physical environment. This volume thus sheds important light on the various lenses used by people in the Middle Ages and the early modern age as to how they came to terms with their perceptions, images, and notions. Previous scholarship focused heavily on the history of mentality and history of emotions, whereas here the history of pre-modern imagination, and fantasy assumes center position. Imaginary things are taken seriously because medieval and early modern writers and artists clearly reveal their great significance in their works and their daily lives. This approach facilitates a new deep-structure analysis of pre-modern culture.

Medieval French Interlocutions

Medieval French Interlocutions PDF Author: Jane Gilbert
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1914049144
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
Specialists in other languages offer perspectives on the widespread use of French in a range of contexts, from German courtly narratives to biblical exegesis in Hebrew. French came into contact with many other languages in the Middle Ages: not just English, Italian and Latin, but also Arabic, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Occitan, Sicilian, Spanish and Welsh. Its movement was impelled by trade, pilgrimage, crusade, migration, colonisation and conquest, and its contact zones included Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, among others. Writers in these contact zones often expressed themselves and their worlds in French; but other languages and cultural settings could also challenge, reframe or even ignore French-users' prestige and self-understanding. The essays collected here offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on the use of French in the medieval world, moving away from canonical texts, well-known controversies and conventional framings. Whether considering theories of the vernacular in Outremer, Marco Polo and the global Middle Ages, or the literary patronage of aristocrats and urban patricians, their interlocutions throw new light on connected and contested literary cultures in Europe and beyond.

Willehalm

Willehalm PDF Author: Wolfram von Eschenbach
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140443998
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wolfram von Eschenbach (fl. c. 1195-1225), best known as the author of Parzival, based Willehalm, his epic poem of military prowess and courtly love, on the style and subject matter of an Old French chanson de geste. In it he tells of the love of Willehalm for Giburc, a Saracen woman converted to Christianity, and its consequences. Seeking revenge for the insult to their faith, her relatives initiate a religious war but are finally routed. Wolfram's description of the two battles of Alischanz, with their massive slaughter and loss of heroes, and of the exploits of Willehalm and the quasicomic Rennewart, well displays the violence and courtliness of the medieval knightly ideal. Wolfram flavors his brutal account, however, with tender scenes between the lovers, asides to his audience, sympathetic cameos of his characters—especially the women—and, most unusually for his time, a surprising tolerance for 'pagans'.