First person - courtly love - allegory: a comparative analysis of first-person allegorical courtly love narratives in Middle High German and Old French

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Katharina Philipowski
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 318929283

The literature in the vernacular from the late Middle Ages includes a group of related texts from medium to long in length which share aspects whose interdependence has not been fully examined. They are a) first-person narratives which b) focus on the topic of worldly/courtly love and which c) fluctuate between narration and discourse. A further aspect is that they d) employ allegorical devices either occasionally or throughout the text. Here the reference is to texts such as the Old French Roman de la Rose or the Middle High German Minneburg. They belong to a group of related texts that seems to be interlingual in nature and occurs in a wide variety of forms throughout Europe (see the appendix for a corpus summary). This group of related texts will be placed in its historical context, that of the 13th and 14th centuries in an exemplary comparative analysis including selected, representative Middle High German and Old French texts. However, the primary aim is to describe the texts common features/aspects and various forms. Why do autodiegetic courtly love texts almost always consist of a mix of discursive and narrative forms, which is much less homogeneous in type than first-person narratives on other themes (such as travel narratives) or those from later periods in literary history (such as the picaresque novel)? It seems that the first-person narrative lends itself better to discussion than to storytelling. In textual linguistics, attention was called to this fact as early as the 1960s, as our general understanding of grammatical tenses was redefined (Harals Weinrich: Tempus). But narratology has not so far found a clear and defined term for the specific occurrence of the story told by a first-person narrator, a method of storytelling which closely resembles a discussion, which continually crosses the line into the discursive form, or which arises out of the discursive form; there is also no clear and defined term for texts in which discursive forms such as dialogues and monologues are framed by narration. And what role does allegory play in this context? Why does the description of a narrators own courtly love experience conventionally take place in allegorical form? Or is it the other way around - does allegory, as a type-defining element, lend itself to or even promote the presentation of the story in the first person (as observer and interlocutor)? In any case, one may certainly observe that narratives in which Amor, Venus or Cupid occur are rarely written in the third person.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants