Fragen zum tradierten Persönlichkeitsbild Wolframs von Eschenbach und seiner Wahrnehmung in Wagners "unvollendet" gebliebener Oper Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg

Richard Wagner regarded his opera Tannhäuser and the Singer's Contest on the Wartburg as unfinished: Shortly before his death in 1883 he declared that "he still owed the world the Tannhäuser". His irritating confession, which lacks an explanation why he considered Tannhäuser incomplete, provides the starting point for studying Wagner's understanding of the dramatic effects, the function of the protagonists, as well as the differences between Wagner's literary sources in addition to variant traditions. Especially the iridescent and multi-layered reception of the figure of Wolfram von Eschenbach, which began already in the Middle Ages, makes it difficult to arrive at clearly defined answers. However, particularly aspects of Wolfram's self-stylizations in his literary works, opinions of his contemporaries, and compositional procedures in Wagner's writings and opera suggest that some of Wagner's intended corrections would have concerned Wolfram's person, image and inner intentions.

Realisierte Tropen in Wolframs ›Parzival‹

This article negotiates the immense poetical potential inherent in the rhetorical operation of the ›epische Realisierung‹ of tropes, which is paradigmatically used by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his ›Parzival‹. This technique not only presents prevalent literary topoi of courtly culture in an innovative way, but also provides the possibility to unfold the text’s metaphors, which are habitually restricted to a specific moment, within the entire narrative framework. Furthermore, Wolfram applies this technique, arguably, to connect text passages, which otherwise diverge widely from the linear of the narrative, by the virtue of their corresponding metaphorical or visual logic. Through these established ana- and cataphoric intratextual references, even distant episodes are brought into a dialogue that discloses both analogies and differences as well as new levels of meaning.

Mediävistische Lingolitologie am Beispiel fremdsprachiger Ortsnamen bei Wolfram von Eschenbach

ZusammenfassungWolfram von Eschenbach greift für die Namenbildung auf verschiedene Quellen zurück und passt sie an das deutsche Phoneminventar an. Anhand dieses Beispiels wird nach den Bedingungen von Schnittstellen zwischen Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik gefragt. Obschon die Mediävistik sich stets mit Sprache und Literatur zugleich auseinandersetzt, bleibt die Beschäftigung meist institutionell, personell und thematisch vereinzelt. Für eine gegenseitige Wahrnehmung wäre es hilfreich, bei der Formulierung von Ergebnissen und Erkenntnisinteressen ein breiteres Fachpublikum im Auge zu behalten.

A busca pelo Graal nos escritos de Otto Rahn: do entusiasmo pseudo-historiográfico à ideologia nazista

O Graal e suas propriedades mágicas e a ideologia da raça: é no encontro desses dois espaços que está a obra de Otto Rahn. Para uns, dentro de um universo de idealizações, o Indiana Jones alemão, para outros, no campo da deslegitimação, o nazista lunático. Em realidade, um indivíduo de seu tempo. Esse artigo busca compreender as construções narrativas em torno do Graal e a ideologia nazista nas duas obras de Otto Rahn, a saber, Kreuzzug gegen den Gral: Die Geschichte der Albigenser (1933) (Cruzada contra o Graal. Grandeza e queda dos Albingenses) e Luzifers Hofgesind: eine Reise zu den guten Geistern Europas (1937) (A corte de Lúcifer: Viagem ao coração da mais alta espiritualidade europeia), tendo como ponto de contato a circulação de imagens acerca do Graal (via Parzival, de Wolfram von Eschenbach e Parsifal, de Richard Wagner) durante a década de 1930 na Alemanha. Analisar-se-á, portanto, a instrumentalização do Graal nas obras de Rahn.

Stabreimende Wortpaare im Minnesang (neben Hartmann, Walther und Wolfram)

Building on studies on alliterating word-pairs in Old and Early Middle High German (including early Minnesang poets, Gotfried von Straßburg, Hartmann von Aue, Walther von der Vogelweide und Wolfram von Eschenbach), this study collects and analyses the remaining Minnesang poets of the Classic Period (Des Minnesangs Frühling), tracing the use of extant and the emergence of new alliterating word-pairs while establishing their literary rhetorical context. Thus, the early history of the German alliterating word-pairs is extended within the Middle High German era.

‘He ne wiste nother of evyll ne gude’: A Prelapsarian Perceval

Departing from the observation that the Middle English romance of Sir Perceval of Galles quotes from Genesis at two crucial moments, this study provides a coherent reading of the text, explaining some of its idiosyncrasies and triangulating it with the versions of Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. What distinguishes the Middle English version from the continental texts are its purposeful absences, i. e. that which the author chooses to abbreviate or leave out altogether. The result is the story of a prelapsarian creature who stumbles through an Edenic landscape where time and mortality have been suspended and individual culpability does not exist. Sir Perceval’s non-existent biblical knowledge, blocked by his mother and ultimately brought to its end by a literal fall from his horse, leaves him invincible, ungendered and immortal. It also serves to explain his unapologetic violence as well as his complete lack of sexual desire. This bold experiment cannot last – Sir Perceval does eventually discover knighthood, masculinity and mortality. Unfortunately, these three are inseparably linked: being a knight, being a man and being dead are one and the same thing in Sir Perceval’s universe.