Defining and Teaching the Canon in German Studies

The literary canon, firmly circumscribed and defined by numerous literary histories which establish the standards of our field, provides a most useful hermeneutic framework for everything we do in literary studies, hence in German Studies. Yes, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka have proven to be giants in our field. And so have Heinrich von Veldeke, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der Vogelweide, and many others. What can the current state of art in Medieval Studies tell us about the problematic issues concerning the canon (see the new Handbook of Medieval Studies, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010)? Both in research and in teaching there are always two stages in the critical treatment of the canon. Pedagogically it seems most advisable at first to present our students with the canon and to help them to digest it thoroughly, so that they can easily draw connections and move from one author/poet to the other, can explain historical, aesthetic, and social developments, and are informed enough to recognize genres, common motifs, the essential Stoff oi a text, and thus can comprehend how to differentiate among the various literary periods. However, although the canon proves productive for pragmatic purposes, it may also turn out to be stifling and blinding in the long run if we do not establish a healthy distance from it. Critical interpretations and meticulous analyses have regularly brought about so-called "cultural or literary turns"; they have helped us to recognize heretofore unknown poets and texts, and have forced us to reveal ideological biases, religious manipulations, and political agendas hidden in literary texts that make up our canon. Case in point: the rediscovery of Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/77-1445) in ca. 1959. Since then we have also begun to explore, invigorated by the insights which Oswald's poetry has provided us, the rather refreshing and impressive poetry by the so-called Monch von Salzburg, Hugo von Montfort, and Michel Beheim. Whereas traditional Germanistik conveyed the impression that the heyday of medieval German literature lay around 1200, today we have moved on considerably and learned to acknowledge the highly productive, often quite surprising and unexpected world from the 13th through the 15th centuries. Konrad von Wurzburg (fi. ca. 1270-1300) now certainly deserves our full acknowledgment as one of the masters of his time. But we are still on the tip of an iceberg, so to speak, considering the extensive number of late-medieval romances that have come into focus only recently, or are still awaiting their full rediscovery (Mai und Beaflor, ed. and trans. A. Classen, 2009; Reinfried von Braunschweig, 1871, rpt. 1997; Wilhelm von Osterreich, ed. 1906, rpt. 1970). Heinrich von dem Turlin's Diu Crane proves to be most challenging, posing countless questions that still cannot be fully answered (Markus Wennerhold, Spate mittelhochdeutsche Artusromane, 2005). But both the English translation by J. W Thomas (1989) and many scholarly monographs since then confirm how intriguing this text has proven to be. When and how well will we be able to teach such voluminous and complicated romances with the help of student-friendly and inexpensive editions/translations? The novels by Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrucken (1437) belong to the best works produced by a 15th-century female writer, but until today we do not have a satisfactory critical edition of any of those texts in our hands (see the contributions to Furstliche Frauentexte in Mittelalter und fruher Neuzeit, ed. Wolfgang Haubrichs et al., 2010) . There are a number of other significant German medieval women writers, apart from the famous mystics, such as Frau Ava, or anonymous 15th-century women's songs often to be found in larger songbook collections (mostly anonymous, however, though with clear gender orientation), which the canon has not completely ignored, but certainly left on the sideline. …