Analyzing the Manuscript Contexts of the Medieval German Verse Novella Die Königin von Frankreich (The Queen of France)

Abstract

The expectation that a purchased or borrowed book will be essentially identical across all copies worldwide is a modern notion. Every textual witness, meaning every manuscript (handwritten book) of the Middle Ages has its own value, with unique, specific linguistic, cultural, and temporal conditions reflecting its origin and representing a time-bound cultural knowledge. Each medieval manuscript constitutes an invaluable cultural artifact that provides a window into a literary heritage markedly distinct from our own. The transmission of texts together with other texts compiled in one multi-text manuscript are essential characteristics of medieval textuality. My dissertation contributes to our knowledge of fifteenth-century German language multi-text manuscripts, which are an essential element of pre-modern literary culture. I examine the multi-text manuscripts containing the Middle High German verse novella Die Königin von Frankreich (1400/1402), illuminating the insights they offer into the medieval German audiences’ perceptions of their literary heritage. I study manuscripts containing Die Königin von Frankreich and other texts, treating each manuscript as a unified entity created for a specific purpose. My goal is to demonstrate that medieval manuscripts and their collections of texts can be a valuable resource for literary studies. By examining the selection and arrangement of texts in multi-text manuscripts, even works like Die Königin von Frankreich, which were previously considered artistically inferior, can be appreciated in a new way. One key argument is that the interpretation of individual texts, such as Die Königin von Frankreich, is inherently context-dependent, with these works assuming different shades of meaning when surrounded by specific co-texts. Based on the content of the various other texts I establish connections between the collected texts within the respective multi-text manuscript. This examination illustrates that multi-text manuscripts, which might appear disparate to modern eyes, may have exhibited coherence or unproblematic organization to their original medieval audience.