Dimensions of bilde. Approaches to an Iconic Narrative in Late Courtly Novels

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Ulrich Hoffmann
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature) ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522661409

The study is dedicated to the poetics of late courtly novels against the background of current research on intermediality by investigating the status and potential of image and imagery in narrative. The focus is on narrated images that stand in intermedial relation to the narrative and generate plot and meaning through it. The study thus takes up a subject that is still inadequately researched in both systematic and historical respects, with an approach oriented toward visual studies that conveys methods of art history as well as literary studies. By distinguishing theoretically as well as by referring to historical objects different dimensions of image, of Abbild, Fernbild and Fluchtbild, each of which is connected to different anthropological experiences in the perception of mirror, trace and gaze, the possibility is opened to grasp images in the context of meaning generation and effect in their own logic as well as in their mediated representation in narration. A narrative that recurs to the logic of an image, unfolding its meaning and effect and generating meaning and plot through it, can be defined as an iconic narrative, whose yield is uncovered for the poetic of late courtly novels of the 13th century. Based on close readings – especially of Konrad Fleck’s Flore und Blanscheflur, Stricker’s Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal and Konrad von Würzburg’s Partonopier und Meliur – it is shown how iconic narrative draws on images as resources: With regard to the dimension of the Abbild, it is shown that an experience of alterity is opened up in the narrative via an exhibition of similarity, which aims at a qualitative change on the level of narrated action and draws an interpretive horizon into the narration. With regard to the dimension of the Fernbild, it then becomes clear how the experience of absence inherent in the phenomenon of the trace provokes a desire that aims at a confirmation of the past as well as at a fulfillment of the future and thus motivates action over an entire narrative sequence. Finally, for the dimension of the Fluchtbild, an ambivalence emerges in a comprehensive visual event in the narrated view of an image experienced as artificial and at the same time alive, which produces an effect in the story and gives rise to an examination of the conditions of perception and interpretation in narration as well as in the reception of the text. With iconic narrative, the study is able to demonstrate a multiply productive procedure for the formation of the large form of narrative in the 13th century. The work thus makes a contribution not only to historical narrative research, but also significantly to research on the visual culture of the Middle Ages within the framework of transdisciplinary visual studies.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants