Medieval German Literature: A Companion (review)

Reviews 225 distils m a n y years of research and careful compilation of bibliographic references and will repay generously any time and effort taken to plumb its depths. Julie Ann Smith School ofHistory, Philosophy and Politics Massey University Gibbs, Marion E., and Sidney M . Johnson, Medieval German Literature: A Companion, N e w York and London, Garland Publishing, 1997; cloth; pp. xiv, 457; R.R.P. US$88.00, £65.00. It is a commonplace of German literary history that the period about 1170 to about 1230—the Bliitezeit, the heyday or 'classical' period of Middle High German literature—is one of its finest, on a par with the age of Goethe and Schiller and equal in standing to anything the modern age can offer. Yet probably ever fewer students of German are introduced to it, and scholars of English have perhaps always tended to underestimate its importance by comparison with the more widely influential French tradition. This excellent handbook sets out to serve 'not only as a source of essential information about medieval German literature as a whole but also as a handy reference work for those in other areas or periods of Medieval Studies w h o need some knowledge of specific areas of early German literature' (p. xi). The focus is deliberately on the Bliitezeit, to which not much less than half the book is devoted; but earlier and later chapters increase the span to extend from the beginnings of Old High German writing (the so-called Abrogans, a Latin-German vocabulary list from the 8th century) to 1400, where it ends appropriately with the Ackermann aus Bbhmen of Johann von Saaz (or von Tepl), seen by some past 226 Reviews scholars respectively as thoroughly medieval (Hiibner) or thoroughly Humanist (Burdach). Gibbs and Johnson have provided a worthy successor to the 1962 volume by M . O'C. Walshe (Medieval German Literature: A Survey, Harvard). They set out to answer the following questions: 'What do people really have to know for the study of medieval German literature? What are the important works? What do they deal with? W h y are they significant? What is characteristic about them? A n d [ . . . ] h o w can one find out more about them?' (p. xi). These questions, clearly indicating a traditional survey that takes the works by and large at face value, are for the most part very satisfyingly answered. The sequence of sections is governed partly by chronology and partly by genre. Some such compromise was doubtless inevitable, given the uncertainty about dating in many cases and the obvious advantages of treating similar works together. Nevertheless some anomalies are a little awkward. Wolfram's small corpus of lyric poetry (mostly d a w n songs of remarkable intensity) is treated immediately after his narrative works (pp. 202-05), whereas Hartmann's lyrics are saved up for the chapter on lyric poetry. I t i s strange in a chapter entitled 'Post-"Classical" Literature', which begins with a historical survey of the period 1273-1400, to find that the whole first section deals with works of the early 13th century, including Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet, for which the proposed dates range from 1194 to 1210. Thefinalchapter too, 'Literature of the Late Middle Ages', covers various genres of non-fiction and also drama from about 1200 onwards; while it is true that these genres became much more important in the later period, the arrangement does tend to obscure the fact that they existed side by side with 'classical' M H G literature. The book begins with a three-page overview of German Reviews 227 linguistic history; it would have been useful here to squeeze in an illustration of the crucial vocalic differences between Middle and New High German (min niuwez hus for mein neues Haus, and a couple of other such key phrases). This is followed by a general bibliography, which—like the specific bibliographies attached to each section of the book—presents an excellent selection, from trailblazing studies and long-established standard works up to the 1990s, judiciously annotated and carefully including studies in English, as well as translations of the literary texts discussed. Most of the remaining...