Fables Sermonettes And Parables By The Stricker 13th Century German Poet In English Translation

The thirteenth-century poet who used the pseudonym Der Stricker ("The Knitter) is the earliest known composer of fables, sermonettes, and parables - examples of Kleindichtung -in the German language. Some of the Stricker's fables and parables are, as far as is known, original with him, others are new variants of works that had appeared in other lands and languages. The sermonettes are typical examples of what might be called the folk-theology of the day, drawing on oral tradition rather than directly on the Scriptures. In his verse-tales, the author proves to be a keen, often harsh social critic providing a realistic, often cynical, picture of medieval society that stands in sharp contrast to the romanticism of nearly all German literature of his century. This is the first collection of The Stricker's short narratives in English translation.

After an extensive introduction that takes stock of the relevant research literature on Old Age in the Middle Ages and the early modern age, the contributors discuss the phenomenon of old age in many different fields of late antique, medieval, and early modern literature, history, and art history. Both Beowulf and the Hildebrandslied, both Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Titurel, both the figure of Merlin and the trans-European tradition of Perceval/Peredur/Parzival, then the figure of the vetula in a variety of medieval French, English, and Spanish texts, and of the Old Man in The Stricker's Daniel, both the treatment of old age in Langland's Piers the Plowman and in Jean Gerson's sermons are dealt with. Other aspects involve late-antique epistolary literature, early modern French farce in light of Disability Studies, the social role of old, impotent men in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish paintings, and the scientific discourse of old age and health since the 1500s. The discourse of Old Age proves to have been of central importance throughout the ages, so the critical examination of the issues involved sheds intriguing light on the cultural history from late antiquity to the seventeenth century.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Jacob Grimm published a collection of late medieval records of local law—called Weistümer—that was scarcely less comprehensive than his famous collection of fairy tales. As with the fairy tales, Grimm assumed that before their transcription, people had handed these down orally from time immemorial. His interest in these customary laws arose from their seemingly folkloristic notions of custom and from their poetic narratives about ritualized encounters between lords and peasants, capturing an oral tradition from an unsophisticated time. Grimm's readings are still used today as a basis for theories about oral societies in the premodern West and contemporary non-Western societies and the modernizing effects of writing. As Simon Teuscher contends, however, those aspects of legal texts that have been considered since Grimm to be vestiges of a traditional preliterate popular culture were eventually rooted in relatively advanced and learned techniques of writing, jurisprudence, and administration. Lords' Rights and Peasant Stories uses examples from German- and French-speaking Switzerland to investigate what legal order meant to individuals and to a society at the eve of the early modern period. Teuscher deals with legal documents not only as texts, but also as objects. The book takes the materiality of documents seriously and reconstructs cultural techniques of their production and social practices of their use. Lords' Rights and Peasant Stories suggests the need to rethink master narratives about transitions from oral to literate societies. It explores the local dimensions of processes of state-formation and the emergence of modern notions of law in western Europe. Students of rural society and village organization will find here a discussion of local power distribution that is inspired by social anthropology, that looks beyond simple antagonisms between lords and peasants, and that insists on the role of state servants and the unconscious effects of their writing practices.

This volume is a guide to medieval German literature from its beginnings in the eighth century to the fourteenth century. It will escort the motivated student and colleague with interest in the European Middle Ages but no expertise in older German languages. The chapter authors, all internationally-known scholars, were given the freedom to arrange their chapters as they felt most appropriate, including the question of the terminus ad quem. Chapters deal either with a chronological period, e.g. 13th century, or with specific genres, eg. drama. In addition, chapters both on the historical epoch and on the development of the German language in the medieval period have been included. In general, historical and cultural topics play an important role in each chapter.

Although it concentrates on a particular historical period, and although it examines a variety of individual works, many of them acknowledged Novellen, this study is neither an historical survey nor a collection of interpretations. Its distinctive approach is taxonomical and comparative. Taking as its starting point the surge of interest in the human mind as the nineteenth century drew to a close, it examines the kinds of (shorter) narrative that were generated by that interest. On the other hand therefore it investigates how, by focusing on particular aspects of the mind, writers were led to adopt certain narrative patterns or structures; and on the other hand, building on the work of Dorrit Cohn, but extending her range considerably, it explores and evaluates the different modes of presentation which writers exploited as they sought to give life to the inner workings of their characters. According to some, psychology and the Novelle are incompatible.Although the investigation concludes that there is no inherent incompatibility between psychological interest and the aims of the Novelle, it also demonstrates that psychological interest in shorter narratives does not always lead to Novellen; it explores other narrative structures that may arise when particular models of the mind form their basis.

Christa Wolf has been celebrated as one of the most innovative German-speaking postwar writers and is the recipient of many international awards and prizes. Her fiction has also earned her censorship and international criticism. Her prose brilliantly depicts East and West Germany's path to coming to terms with the influence of the Hitler regime. This study examines her fiction, speeches, and essays, illustrating how the trinity of identity, socialization and artistic creativity evolves and manifests itself in her writing.