Ulrich von Liechtenstein is the composer and author of numerous minne songs, writings on the theory of courtly love and a fictitious autobiography (as a servant of women). He is best known for his Frauendienst [a žLadiesa (TM) Servicea oe]. The compendium on Ulrich von Liechtenstein documents our present-day knowledge of the life, times and work of this interesting and important medieval author, and at the same time with its innovative research chapters provides impulses for the continuation of the discourse.

The concept of the aesthetic is a modern one, not however the phenomenon of the aesthetic. Thus the collected papers in this volume set out to discover important dimensions of the aesthetic in medieval literature. In this endeavour they inquire into the relationship of aesthetics and religion as well as into that between aesthetics and rhetoric, and they search for relevant concepts and modes of presentation in the literary texts themselves. These various components combine to form an a ~aesthetics of alteritya (TM).