Literary doubt. Scepticism and the dilemma of establishing the truth in Middle High German epics (12th to 14th centuries)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Christiane Witthöft
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 419298316

The project’s purpose is to illuminate the specific uses of doubt as a productive method of ascertaining truth in Middle High German epics of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. In intra-literary conflicts around the correct interpretation of alternative claims to truth and opposing points of view, the cognitive or emotional effect of doubt acts particularly strongly to evoke resonant metaphors, images and rhetorical figures. Additionally, it inspires poetic (narrative) techniques, motifs and character types which the research has failed to recognise as interconnected. The project will therefore seek to generate a heuristic perspective to bring to bear on the analysis of literary scepticism, and in so doing to provide the first systematic illumination of the epistemes at play in the secular epic narrative traditions of Middle High German literature from the twelfth century onward. The approach of the project, drawing on the history of ideas, is founded on the premise that Middle High German literature is an authentic part of a culture of knowledge in which a ‘sceptical spirit’ of a ‘mental activity of weighing’ (JOLLES) is evident, as concealed cultural knowledge, markedly in advance of the secularisation characterising the early modern age. The project’s principal interest will thus be in literary scenes preceding the arrival at a judgement, which critically question the search for the unambiguous and attempts to generate truth; which discuss, via characters or the narratorial voice, what is ‘true’ as a relational quantity; and which point to alternatives and ideals of equal validity and weigh them against one another in poetic and rhetorical devices. The specific question driving this exploration seeks to establish the ways in which a doubt which in the broadest sense is critical of knowledge creates spaces to unfold its argumentation within classical, adventure and minne romances, classic courtly romances and heroic epics, as well as in (courtly) legends and ‘novellas’. In advance of the research, we identify two thematic core areas among the possibilities for literary reflection of the expression of doubt. The first consists in the aesthetic forms of expression of a manner of judging which proceeds by weighing-up in words and deeds and which demonstrates a balance of arguments or ‘facts’ to the end of revealing the relational nature of perceptual accesses to what is ‘true’ (ataraxia, epoché). The second thematic core area revolves around scenes and narrative techniques which illuminate oppositions, and in so doing lead to well-founded certainties. The project thus concerns itself directly with unearthing the roots, planted in literary history, of a courtly scepticism in secular traditions of literature. Its contribution to research is to fill a current lacuna by providing a systematic view on potential reciprocal effects at work between discourses around doubt stemming from cultural history and the German-language medieval epic.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants