Bausteine zu einer Narratologie der Dinge: Der “Eneasroman” Heinrichs von Veldeke, der “Roman d’Eneas” und Vergils “Aeneis” im Vergleich by Valentin Christ (review)

Over the last decade, objects and their relation to space and characters as well as their function in texts and symbolic systems have garnered the interest of many scholars in the humanities. Research on objects – influenced by Marcel Mauss’s studies, Bruno Latour’s network theories, and other scientific work on sacred things or fetish – has contributed significantly to the material turn in medieval studies. This is especially applicable to German medieval studies, where the spectrum of research ranges from historical hermeneutics to courtly material culture and questions of visuality and ekphrasis.

Valentin Christ’s monograph focuses on three texts that are not strangers to research on object culture: Virgil’s Aeneid, the anonymous Old French Roman d’Eneas, and Heinrich von Veldeke’s Middle High German Eneasroman.In comparison to especially the work of Marion Oswald, who examines the process and discourse of gift exchanges inter alia in those texts, the main objective of Christ’s study is a more universal, yet specifically narratological one. The monograph is not interested only in objects that might inherit a certain destructive potential or in gifts that might be part of agonal structures. By taking a closer look at how exactly an object becomes effective, and thereby differentiating between histoire and discours, Christ establishes a new method of analyzing the status of objects in literary texts. Not only does this allow for a more detailed insight into the different ways objects function and manifest themselves (3), but it also facilitates an alternative interpretation that is not exclusively centred on characters (16).

The study is based on three fundamental premises: first, objects are not human (14); they thus, second, cannot act as a subject or act with intention (15); objects, however, can – and this is the third assumption – possess a certain agency and therefore can be regarded as actants. By viewing things as agents that fulfill particular roles, it is possible to deal with inconsistencies in the functionality of narrated objects and pay attention to interesting frictions and irritations (34). As Christ examines in a discussion (19–53) of current narratological models (Chatman, Greimas, Martinez/Scheffel, Schmid, Störmer-Caysa), most narratological approaches concentrate mainly on objects in relation to characters. Instead of ascribing primacy to the character, Christ argues for a complex interplay between objects, characters, and spaces (55). In viewing objects as a “systematische Analysekategorie” (56), Christ aims to explain patterns of contingencies and the changing functionality of objects in texts. Although this theoretical chapter provides a good oversight of recent trends in mostly modern narratology as well as the pros and cons of every approach, it touches on only one of Christ’s most intriguing points: the significance of paradigmatic structures in premodern texts and the role the recipient plays in generating causality.

When actually interpreting text passages, Christ draws intriguing and innovative conclusions, for example by focusing on differences in the manifestation of objects throughout the three texts. One such observation is how paying attention to the role that objects play helps elucidate the rules of the fictional world. While the analyses show that viewing objects as agents/actants allows for a better grasp of the narratological meaning and effect of objects in regard to both discours and histoire (161), such analyses are, as Christ himself states, expandable. The study stresses that the narrative usage of objects is rarely consistent throughout a text and is mainly functional. By avoiding the aforementioned primacy of characters and the resulting semiotization of objects, Christ’s findings are only minimally linked to questions of mediality and genealogy, minne, concepts of authorship, or premodern poetological implications. Christ clearly wants to submit an exclusively narratological study. However, a broader context might have highlighted the diverse narrative functionality...