Medieval Listening and Reading
The Primary Reception of German Literature 800–1300

This book examines the first five hundred years of German literature (800–1300) and how it was received by contemporaries.

Dennis Howard Green (Author)

9780521444934, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 August 1994

500 pages
23.4 x 15.2 x 3.6 cm, 0.784 kg

'Admirable … a very complex, well-researched and absorbing book … highly recommended.' Icarus

This new study brings recent scholarly debates on oral cultures and literate societies to bear on the earliest recorded literature in German (800–1300). It considers the criteria for assessing what works were destined for listeners, what examples anticipated readers, and how far both modes of reception could apply to one work. The opening chapters review previous scholarship, and the introduction of writing into preliterate Germany. The core of the book presents lexical and non-lexical evidence for the different modes of reception, taken from the whole spectrum of genres, from dance songs to liturgy, from drama and heroic literature to the court narrative and lyric poetry. The social contexts of reception and the physical process of reading books are also considered. Two concluding chapters explore the literary and historical implications of the slow interpenetration of orality and literacy.

Part I. Preliminary Problems: 1. Orality and writing
2. The historical background
Part II. Three Modes of Reception: 3. Criteria for reception by hearing
4. Survey of reception by hearing
5. Criteria for reception by reading
6. Survey of reception by reading
7. Criteria for the intermediate mode of reception
8. Survey of the intermediate mode of reception
Part III. Conclusions: 9. Literacy, history and fiction
10. Recital and reading in their historical context
Notes
Bibliographic index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]