Abstract
Time and time again the aesthetic simplicity of late medieval adaptations of earlier narrative forms has been emphasized. It is said that they presented an abundance of long-winded events while being concerned solely with the audiences' entertainment - be it suspense, exotic places, bloodthirsty battles, love or laughter. The perception of them as an inconsistent accumulation of individual episodes and a storyline impaired by continued changes of direction has also been applied to 15th and 16th century adaptations the of Chansons de geste. Therefore, based on the Chansons de geste-adaptations of Elisabeth of Nassau-Saarbrücken and other contemporary adaptations this study intends to turn this view into the starting point for a hermeneutic approach. Indeed, it is the very lack of originality and the story's repetitive serial character that demands individual texts and their synchronous links be put into context. Instead of establishing diachronic or synchronic accumulations of variations on either a thematic history or its potential representations, the aim is to look for the particular function of analogous narrative elements within the individual text.
Based on this method the first section of this study is concerned with medium-sized narrative units' relation to one another. They will be called themes (Themen), a term that is to date not common in German narrative theory. This will avoid the rather diverse term motif. The themes provide "communicative" examples: They offer categories of heroic behaviour and identity. Due to the texts' interdependencies these categories have a dynamic quality and can be re-grouped in varying constellations. The study's second section will show how, together with the themes, the most important subjects (Sujets) are developed. As meaningful relations between acts these subjects equate the characters and their dealings with terms of reference that can be understood as different degrees of social belonging. This includes different aspects of relationships, gender relations and feudalism. Thereby society's mechanisms of integration are shown while simultaneously the frictions individual heroes need to deal with, and the regular disturbances in new relationships, are identified. A cursory reading filters out structural elements and patterns of interpretations that the texts all share. In this way it should become obvious which significant elements can constitute Chanson de geste in German. |
