This book explores both the narrative design and fundamental thematic preoccupations of short comic tales that flourished in late medieval Germany and that provided bawdy entertainment for larger audiences of public recitals as well as for smaller numbers of individual readers.

This book sheds light on the complexity of medieval German literary culture as it evolved in the course of the thirteenth century (c. 1220-1290) by analysing the attitudes of narrative poets towards the issue of authorship. It describes the various ways in which vernacular writers could address the theme of their own authorship within their literary works, and explores the tensions that arose between such authorial strategies on the one hand and their subsequent manuscript transmission on the other. The first part of the book deals with the presentation of authorship in the works of two poets who stand at the heart of literary tradition (Rudolf von Ems; Konrad von Wurzburg), and involves discussion of such topics as authorial signature, acrostics, author portraits, and patronage; the second part deals with two genres (heroic epic; short story) that evince a rather more problematic relationship with the figure of the author.

This book investigates how German-language texts from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era helped to form collective and individual identities through their handling of social norms. Using case studies, the contributors analyze the shaping of norms for different text types, social groups, and genders. They also define the scope allowed by the literature for discussing, establishing, and questioning expectations regarding social action.

Die lange Reihe der Forschungen zu Text-Bild-Relationen in mittelalterlicher Dichtung wird in diesem Sammelband um starker thematisch und poetologisch ausgerichtete Aspekte erganzt: Zum einen wird Visuelles, wenn es als Gegenstand der Texte in den philologischen Blick gerat, in seiner sinnstiftenden Funktion fur Einzeltexte ausgedeutet; dabei lassen sich bestimmte literarische Visualisierungsoptionen profilieren. Zum anderen werden Vorschlage zu einer Poetik des Visuellen formuliert, die der mittelalterlichen Literatur in spezifischer Weise eingeschrieben ist. Die Beitrage untersuchen das Spannungsfeld von Visualisierung und Wahrnehmung sowohl an hofischen Dichtungen als auch an religiosen Texten und machen so ein breites Panorama mittelalterlicher Literatur in ihrem Potential, Sehen zu inszenieren, sichtbar. Der Band versammelt Vortrage, die im Rahmen des 21. Anglo-German Colloquiums in London im Jahre 2009 gehalten wurden."

In contrast to the vernacular literary traditions of France, Italy and England, comic tales in verse flourished in late medieval Germany, providing bawdy entertainment for larger audiences of public recitals as well as for smaller numbers of individual readers. In a sustained close analysis, Sebastian Coxon explores both the narrative design and fundamental thematic preoccupations of these short texts. A distinctively performative tradition of pre-modern narrative literature emerges which invites its recipients to think, learn and above all to laugh in a number of different ways.