|
COPYRIGHT 1995 University of Illinois Press
As Westphal states in her introduction, "medieval literature is no 'arbitrary sum of its parts"' (pp. 7-8). The fifty odd manuscripts considered in this book bear witness to a medieval sense of order, according to Westphal, to the textual poetics of manuscripts. She writes of these manuscripts: "they were as deliberate in their selection and juxtaposition of texts as in their choice of writing materials, script, and binding" (p. 218). In her study, Westphal explains and illustrates her theory of manuscript poetics.
The book is valuable for a number of reasons. Westphal provides extensive examinations of the ordering principles in several manuscripts containing German Reimpaargedichte, or couplet poems, as well as a study of a text cluster-type she calls the Minne constellation. Because her study spans two centuries, Westphal draws conclusions and makes inferences about the development and possible dissolution of codicological practices in collected manuscripts of German couplet poems.
In the introductory chapter and then at various other points throughout her study, Westphal takes issue with the role of genre as the main category of analysis for medieval literary texts. Although she recognizes the importance of genre-based analysis, she rightly concludes that there are other "conceptual frameworks" (p. 8) through which to examine medieval literature, cautioning that the "vast majority of manuscripts have a miscellaneous character that defies the concept of...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
