Locating Feeling: Emotion, Space, and Place in Middle High German Courtly Literature Around 1200

Locating Feeling: Emotion, Space, and Place in Middle High German Courtly Literature Around 1200 Public Deposited

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Creator

Ostrau, Nicolay
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures

Abstract

The dissertation entitled Locating Feeling: Spatial Practices of Emotion in German Romance Narratives around 1200 explores the interdependence of emotional expression (courtly love, grief, anger, and shame) and physical space in Middle High German epic narratives, including Parzival, Tristan, Iwein, Erec, Die Klage. Until now, scholarship has examined the medieval body as the primary site of emotional expression. This project proposes a new reading that reveals the interconnectedness between the feelings of the literary characters and the narrative topography through which they move. The focus is on three central places in medieval literature--the castle, the wilderness, and the public/private space of Christian lordship--that provide narrative opportunities for poets to explore internal versus communal feeling and experiment with affective response. Spaces and places open a window into the itinerant hero or heroine's inner world. The dissertation is informed both by medieval and modern theory, including studies on emotion, space, gender, and subjectivity.

Date of publication