The volume presents a collection of papers by noted German and British medievalists, who join the discussion on the concept of text in German Medieval Studies. This topic has been intensively discussed in recent years, as new insights from editorial philology, narratology, and media theory have led to 'medieval text' becoming an open and methodologically elusive concept. The contributors weigh the theoretical arguments and apply the methodological outcome to text exemplars from the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.

This compendium is the first work to provide a complete and methodologically reflected documentation of the maxims and sayings in medieval German Arthurian, Grail and Tristan romances. A differentiated listing collects the maxims in 21 romances from a span of some 100 years (approx. 1170a '1300), reflects their narrative context, gives a semantic explanation via a paraphrase, locates them in the aphoristic network of the relevant text by pointing to parallel passages, and using citations from the Bible and medieval literature in Latin and the vernacular(s) locates them in the relevant tradition of their usage.

Thisvolume is devoted to an historical lexical and conceptual analysis of poetological expressions in German medieval literature, expressions such as schrift (a >scripta (TM), a >writinga (TM)), rede (a >speecha (TM)), buoch (a >booka (TM)), tihtaere (a >poeta (TM)), vindaere (a >purveyora (TM) [a >of wild talesa (TM)]), hA"ren (a >heara (TM)), lesen (a >reada (TM)), erniuwen (a >renewa (TM)), voltihten (a >composea (TM)), etc. Despite individual studies, these terms, which are of central importance in medieval texts, yet are only vaguely defined in them, have largely been neglected by researchers and have hardly ever been presented as a connected system. However, these terms do open the way to an understanding of central aspects of medieval views of literature and of the historical conception of works and authors. The volume presents a collection of papers by renowned medievalists on key terms and items in medieval poetics and historical semantics.