In this thesis, a literary historic path on the development of the lyric expression of courtly love will be created. The path will take us from the Provence through Germany and Sicily, and up to the Tuscany of the thirteen's century. The poetic characteristics of the hohe Minne and dolce stil novo will be particularly highlighted in order to facilitate the comprehension of their similarities and differences. It is understood that it will not be possible to offer a complete interpretation of the two lyric expressions. Rather, this thesis wishes to offer a basis for the development of further comparative studies between the German and Italian lyric expressions that were inspired by the Provencal courtly love. As representatives of the evolution of the poetry of love in Germany and Italy, Walther von der Vogelweide and Guido Cavalcanti were chosen for the innovative character of their poetry and the artistic quality of the results they achieved.

Zugl.: Regensburg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2006.

Issued also as thesis, Hamburg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-184).

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Das Volk bilden: The Pursuit of Volkstümlichkeit by Berthold Auerbach, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gottfried Herder examines the theorization of the concept of the Volk and Volkstümlichkeit by three authors from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Berthold Auerbach, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gottfried Herder. The term “volkstümlich” has no exact equivalent in English, although it has been rendered as “popular” “folkish” or even the slightly pejorative “folksy.” In German, it expresses both the quality of something proper to a given people or Volk, and the notion of popularity or commonness at which the English terms gesture. I analyze how these authors aim to expand the contemporaneous reading public by shaping the reading practices of audiences otherwise ignored by traditional belletristic literature. It also interrogates how they conceive of the Volk as a co-producer of literature and culture. Each author uses the terms “Volk” and “Volkstümlichkeit” in programmatic texts to refer to shared characteristics among a given people and as a distinction between high and low culture. All three also pursue the goal of creating a widespread reading public through their own literary practices: Herder in his collections of song and poetry, Heine in his poetry, criticism and journalism, and Auerbach through a thematic focus on the village in his fiction and the serial form of the Volkskalender in his role as editor. Each of them pursues a program that is both national and cosmopolitan, writing as they did during a period when invocation of the Volk was not yet primarily the province of conservative nationalists. Chapter one shows how Berthold Auerbach used his dual role as author of the immensely popular Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten and as editor of and contributor to various Volkskalender to elevate the way of life he portrays. In doing so, he aimed at uniting the disparate audiences of the common people and the educated, as well as urban and rural populations into a single Volk. Chapter two focuses on several key texts of Heinrich Heine’s to show that he conceived of the Volk as an ideal addressee capable of resolving the contradictions that plague civilization. Contrary to much of the scholarship that sees a pessimistic turn in Heine’s later work, I use his many remarks on the common people throughout his work to draw out a utopian, trans-historical element in his thinking. Two early texts by Johann Gottfried Herder, Über die neuere deutsche Literatur: Fragmente and the Volkslieder project, make up the focus of the third chapter. By importing genres associated with oral traditions and performance into his collections, together with texts by Shakespeare, Herder effaces existing distinctions between popular forms and high literature. The chapter shows that Herder conceives of the Volk not just as a public, but as active participants in literary world-making. My dissertation intervenes in existing scholarship on the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by centering Volk as one of the defining concepts of the era and demonstrating how different literary media has been used to imagine and establish relations to it.