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THE QUALITY OF ISLANDS IN MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN LITERATURE Gerhard Jaritz Medieval literature can open up insights into any constructed values and qualities shared by a society or by specific groups in a society. One must be aware of the fact that all these values have to be seen as representations or reflections of positive or negative connotations that cannot, however, be taken as ‘realities’ of life. This must, in particular, be considered for those aspects of texts and contexts that might be seen as parts of the authors’ and the recipients’ quotidianity, where the contents of the texts sound especially ‘realistic,’ as having been taken from the author’s and his audience’s life. This is rather different for the situations and objects dealt with by authors which they and also their audience clearly did not know from their own experience. Here it is much clearer that writers created or constructed objects and activities that they had become acquainted with in stories which they had read or heard, copied or translated, in products of their own fantasy but based on such stories, and certainly not by anything that they had experienced themselves. This can often be seen as the actual background and pre-condition for the situation when authors used islands in their literary product, in particular when they, and also most of their recipients, lived in an area where no islands existed, particularly no islands in the sea. This is true for many Middle High German texts. The authors did not have any personal experience, but offered something which was their own creation or a copy of a construction by someone else from whom they had taken it over or translated it. The aim of this analysis, therefore, cannot be an effort to reconstruct the ‘reality of islands’ in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, but will be an attempt to apply a comparative approach to Middle High German ‘literary islands,’ their value and qualities and the recurring patterns of the latter’s constructions.1 1 Of particular help and relevance for this contribution was the ‘Middle High German Conceptual Database ’ (http://mhdbdb.sbg.ac.at:8000/index.en.html), developed since 1992, originally at Bowling Green State University and the University of Kiel (Germany), and since 2002 located and attended at the University of Salzburg in Austria. GERHARD JARITZ 112 Generally, it has to be emphasized that islands in literature are only seldom ‘neutral.’ “The languages they speak, evoke or suggest, are mysterious, baffling, elusive, deceitful, characterized by uncanny, disturbing sounds and signs, …”2 Often, it is not just an island that is dealt with, but an island characterized by specific attributes or qualities. This means that the creation or construction of ‘literary islands’ was connected and happened in the context of the construction of their quality or value, which strengthened the connotation of the textual environment. One was confronted with a specific, unknown object that was special or, better, was made special in the course of its textual representation, which reflected an appraisal and evaluation of it.3 A number of different specific attributes and qualities were connected and put into context with islands and the beings living on them. The unknown had to be made known or even familiar and was supposed to become subject to a validation which followed the expectations of the audience and the generally developed patterns of judging and recognizing ‘other,’ that is, unknown, objects. Many of these ‘literary islands’ are isolated, distant in the sea, and alien, either evaluated as such generally without further description or explained more accurately and in detail. 4 In some of these more detailed contexts one can clearly recognize a geographical background or the author’s knowledge, a mixture of reality and myth, often going back to ancient times. This can, for instance, be traced for Thule.5 In the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, written after 1192, one finds such a description of it. The broad island is full of wonders. In the week before Christmas the days are so short that a messenger is almost unable to run for half a mile before night falls. In the summer the 2 Sergio Perosa, From Islands to Portraits. Four Literary Variations (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2000). For a stillvaluable study on the representation of islands in the Middle Ages see also William H. Babcock, Legendary Islands of the Atlantic. A Study in Medieval Geography (New York: American Geographical Society, 1922, repr. Freeport: Books for Libraries...

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