The Codex Manesse: Collection Structure and Contextualization of the Author Corpora

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Hammer
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446440297

This project occupies the interface of multiple research fields: a) text philology and manuscript studies (textual and transmission history, source research, codicology and palaeography); b) literary studies and history (Middle High German poetics, intertextuality, reception history). Named to the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage list in 2019, the Codex Manesse is a manuscript created around 1300 that, with 140 author corpora and 137 miniatures, represents the most extensive collection of Middle High German poetry. The aim of this project is to investigate the organizational structure of the manuscript. The ordering of the author corpora will be examined from the standpoint of transmission history in order to deduce the principles of collection and organization that underlay the manuscript as well as its literary historical significance. Previous codicological and historical investigations into the genesis of the Codex have focused on specific authors apart from the context of the collection, while largely ignoring both the transmission history and the palaeographic and codicological aspects. This project aims to address these desiderata by bringing together the aforementioned disciplines. The starting point for this project is the recent codicological finding that social status is not the sole organizing principle of the collection. In the course of the production of the book, the parchment layers were rearranged, partly disassembled and reassembled; a number of double leaves were cut and sewn together again in a different arrangement. This reveals a creative will that has yet to be explored substantively. In the planned project, individual manuscript segments will be singled out and questions regarding the groupings will be asked. For this purpose, different perspectives of interpretation will be used to examine the author corpora with regard to its transmission and reception history as well as its historical and poetological relations.This contextualization will produce fundamental insights into the organizational patterns of the Codex Manesse as well as the literary history it reflects, representing a significant contribution to the origin history of the codex.The findings will be encoded in the TEI-XML file format, laying the foundation for a complete digital commentary of the Codex. They will also be published in a monograph written by the applicants and the project staff, which will encompass a philological and literary examination of the selected manuscript segments with regard to the organizational structure of the collection.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Anna Kathrin Bleuler