Adele Cipolla

L’esilio di Tristano e Isotta nella selva interrompe le vicissitudini dell’adulterio consumato alla corte di re Marco in Cornovaglia e prelude alla definitiva separazione e alla morte degli amanti.
L’interpretazione che Gottfried von Straßburg dà della vicenda innesta nel plot romanzesco un intermezzo lirico: musica e poesia sottraggono temporaneamente gli amanti ai morsi delle privazioni e della colpa (e Tristano musico e maestro agli obblighi di Tristano cavaliere, cacciatore e trickster). Il passo ridefinisce il significato degli elementi narrativi di repertorio, il bando, la foresta, la grotta, la caccia, l’arpa, il talamo, la spada. L’esibizione della lama snudata tra i corpi vestiti degli amanti - motivo ricorrente e opaco - fa la parodia di celeberrimi luoghi letterari (dalla leggenda giudaico-cristiana di re David e da Amicus et Amelius, dove la spada è pegno di astinenza e castità), finendo per dire altro: la spada è quella donata da Marco a Tristano durante l’investitura e ne è poi morto Moroldo, sporcando irreparabilmente le relazioni fra i protagonisti del triangolo.
Il passo della Minnegrotte di Gottfried viene qui proposto da una delle redazioni manoscritte più antiche, Monaco, BSB, Cgm 51 (intitolato da una rubrica moderna Herr Tristrant). I codici di Heidelberg (Cpg 360) e Monaco, che trasmettono il romanzo incompiuto di Gottfried con la ‘continuazione’ di Ulrich von Türheim, divergono nell’estensione del lungo episodio. Alcune sequenze presenti nel manoscritto di Heidelberg (con la stilizzazione ovidiana, le allegorie e la disillusa autobiografia sentimentale del poeta) sono assenti in quello di Monaco. Il codice monacense, un Tristano ‘istoriato’, ne offre una versione ridotta, un testo talora banalizzato e un interessante layout. Gruppi di miniature a tutta pagina ne riproducono le scene salienti con l’accompagnamento di didascalie, aggiunte nel tempo da svariate mani. L’illustrazione al f. 90r, nei tre registri include l’azione completa dell’episodio riletto in questo volume: il bando dalla corte; la spada nel talamo; la riammissione a corte di Tristrant e Isot.

Currently, no ‘canonical’ classical text with a multi-testimonial tradition has a digital scholarly edition based on a complete digital transcription of all primary sources, and on the automated collation of those transcriptions. Most classicists simply do not feel that they need such editions. I argue that this is ultimately due to the ‘canonization’ of the corpus of classical texts. Classicists are more focussed on the ‘Text’ than on the documents (manuscripts) and their texts: they tend not to consider the textual variance in the manuscripts as culturally meaningful in itself, but merely instrumental in view of the constitutio textus. I suspect that we will not have ‘comprehensively digital’ editions of ‘canonical’ classical texts with a multi-testimonial tradition until classical philology broadens its research agenda. 1. We have a problem There is a problem which seems to be mostly going unnoticed. There is no (not one) ‘comprehensively digital’ scholarly edition of a ‘classica...

ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on the so-called Basler Trojanerkrieg, a short Middle-High-German rhyming-couplet epic (usually classified as a liet), which is handed down only in a fifteenth-century miscellaneous manuscript, where it functions as an introduction to the Roman history according to a southern version of the prose Sächsische Weltchronik. Arranged into four almost unrelated narrative
sections, this rhapsodic liet surveys the deeds of the second War of Troy, the destruction of the city and the heroes’ nostoi. The text established here diverges from previous editions for the different evaluation of few manuscript readings. The commentary addresses the codex structure (mostly in relation to the so-called Basler Alexander, a further piece of rhyme poetry interpolated into the prose account of the Sächsische
Weltchronik), in order to reassess the unique witness of Bale (and / or its antigraph), within late MiddleHigh-German epic and historiographic traditions.

Throughout the development of Middle High German literature, historical writings show a high degree of textual variability: old poetic corpora circulated within historical prose collections, and they were chronologically and typologically arranged
in compliance with conceptual patterns, such as the translatio imperii and the alleged legendary descent of European ruling groups from Trojan refugees or Alexander’s soldiers. This analysis will address the re-use of poetic works in a prosimetrical historical setting, that is Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, Codex E VI 26 (fifteenth century). This manuscript is ultimately focused on the very destiny of the city where it
was produced, on the fringe between courtly Middle High German and Early Modern literature and society. Though being a witness of the prose Sächsische Weltchronik, the Basel manuscript opens on a mishmash of poetic spoils, such as Rudolf von Ems’s and Jans von Wien’s Weltchroniken, an anonymous Troy liet (Basler Trojanerkrieg),
and the Basel redaction of Lambrecht’s Alexanderlied (Basler Alexander). This latter compiles the torso of Lambrecht’s poem with excerpts from Jans von Wien’s account of Alexander’s fantastic journeys and vernacular rendition(s) of the Historia de preliis. Through a textual analysis of both Troy and Alexander poems, this study aims
at envisaging the purpose of the composition of this German prosimetrum in the light of current categories of genres.

An Introduction to A. Cipolla et al (eds), 'Storiografia e letteratura nel Medioevo germanico - Historiography and Literature in the Germanic Middle Ages', Filologia Germanica - Germanic Philology. Supplemento 1 (2019), pp. vii-xvii

Si pubblicano qui una serie di contributi di studiosi italiani e stranieri organizzati
intorno a un titolo generale ampio e tuttavia estremamente caratterizzante entro lo
spettro multidisciplinare della “Filologia germanica” nella declinazione italiana, ossia
il rapporto tra storiografi a e letteratura, inteso sia nell’evoluzione dei generi nelle
letterature germaniche del medioevo (dove fonti storiografi che e poetiche stanno in
rapporto di scambievole rivalità), sia in relazione alle caratteristiche della tradizione
manoscritta di questi generi in via di affermazione e alle metodologie filologiche atte
al loro trattamento.

The dawn of Middle High Ger- man literary Überlieferung is characterized by a relatively limited making of vernacular books, and by extremely mov- able texts (as each survived manuscript often represents the testis unicus of an autonomous Fassung).
This paper aims at reassessing the ecdotic issues posited by the tradition of Alexanderlied and the editorial treatments of the text, also envisaging the advan- tages that digital edition and ap- paratus might produce for the interpretation of the poem and of its multi-lingual recensio.

The internal relations within the recensio of the multiversion Alexanderlied (each of the three witnesses representing an autonomous Fassung), like those of similar early vernacular documents, is a tough problem to textual criticism and to the understanding of the involved cultural phenomena. This is the reason why the scholarship of German medieval literacy displayed an inborn aptitude for “new”, material approaches. This paper reassesses the ecdotic issues posited by the varia lectio of the Alexanderlied’s manuscripts
(which is difficult to be classi fied and evaluated with neo-Lachmannian procedures) and the editorial treatment they received by the “page paradigm” philology. Further, the paper will question how the digital documentary editions and digital archives (so patently advantageous for the editorial treatment of similar early vernacular traditions) could replace, in their hermeneutic rank, the interpretative strength of the classical philological method and of its hypotheses. In other terms: does the means justify the end?

Questo contributo prende in considerazione l’origo dei Franchi e l’adattamento islandese della translatio imperii et artium, due complessi mitico-leggendari di cui da tempo è stata dimostrata la dipendenza reciproca: pure se ormai generalmente ammessa, l’inconsistenza, in entrambi, di una genuina concezionedella regalità sacra (che i fautori della Kontinuität indicavano quale loro
presupposto) merita di essere rivalutata sullo spettro dei contesti letterari da cui l’origo franca e la migratio norrena si deducono

Along with the Kaiserchronik and other minor texts, the Vorauer Handschrift (the most prominent poetic miscellany of Early Middle High German book production), contains an epic on Alexander the Great. This Austrian poem has been aknowledged as a version of Lambrecht’s Alexanderlied (also transmitted in the Straßburger and Basler Handschrift). Historical and literary details have traditionally been matched to determine the poem’s birthplace(s) – conjecturally posited in the Middle Rhine, in Cologne or Trier – and Mundartforschung has been employed to validate philological hypotheses. The scripta of the codex, however, is hard to classify in grammatical terms and no univocal dialectal identity emerges from its analysis. Textual peculiarities that are claimed to evidence traces of the Middle German original appear inextricably interlaced with Austrian features and scribal oddities, so that the rationale behind editors’ choices is not always apparent. Straßburger Alexander, by contrast, though partially displaying similar script peculiarities, amends old-fashioned irregular words and couplets, in order to normalise its Mischsprache in compliance with the usages of regularised rhyme.
This paper will test the usefulness of the editions as repositories of linguistic data, considering current dialectal interpretations against scribal hallmarks of both Vorauer and Straßburger Alexander. Renewed attention will be devoted to the calligraphic late Caroline hand of the Vorau codex, as well as to its inconsistent spellings, variable regionalisms and obscure features (such as the reversibility of diphthongs and consonant clusters), which prevent a unique and indisputable regional attribution. The rationale of editorial decisions will be reappraised through the consideration of specific questionable features (involving superscripts, consonant usage, verbal morphology and rhyme). This examination has the eventual aim of highlighting the hybrid linguistic character and erratic vernacular orthography of the whole Vorau poem, evidencing methodical difficulties in its normalisation.

This paper aims at assessing the meaning and text-critical value of a puzzling appearance of Apollonius, in a crucial point within the poem of my title: in Alexanderlied manuscripts,  after the fall and the devastation of the stronghold Tyre and before continuing toward the next episodes of the Persian campaign, the poet adds a notice, in which the learned reminiscence of Apollonius’s story and a scriptural allusion (from Mt 15, 21-22, the apologue of Jesus exorcising the daughter of the pious Cananea) are matched together. The verse sequence concerning Apollonius has a remote source of inspiration in Curtius’ text. Scriptural matter, read with a glance on Crusade chroniclers, however, impregnates even the primary models (in our case, that of Curtius, which represents the paramount inspiration for the Tyre episode in the Alexanderlied tradition). The same couple of people (Apollonius and Jesus) emerges among the learned memories that William of Tyre organizes within his excursus on the city (13, 1), to introduce to its siege and capitulation. There a profusion of literary figures appear from a wide-ranging learned repertory culminating with Solomon and Hiram and Apollonius («gesta cuius celebrem habent et late vulgatam historiam»: 13, 1, 61). After the list of Tyrian celebrities, William’s excursus devotes a long account  to the story of the riddle race between Hiram and Solomon, which strictly follows Josephus. William’s excursus, as the corresponding passage in Alexanderlied, is closed by the evangelical apologue on Jesus meeting the Cananea and freeing her daughter from the Devil. The relationships between the Alexander and Apollonius matters are well-known through relevant manuscripts which couple them together (as the oldest codices of Curtius’ Supplement, from 12th-century France, which match them with Josephus’ Antiquitates also)  and the very inception of the French-German Alexander complex of the century is affected by the impact of the Crusaders’ subjugation of Tyre in 1124

As is widely known, Skáldatal is a list of court poets and of their aristocratic patrons, from the 9th to the 13th century, i.e. from Starkaðr inn gamli to the Sturlung family. It is recorded twice, in a shorter and in a longer version, respectively, in Kringla (the lost vellum codex of the Norwegian kings’ history) and in Uppsala-Edda. Its textual variability is highly meaningful and reveals different contextual attitudes.

The paper aims at shedding light on the interplay between kingship, warfare and poetry in the archaic civilisization, as sketched by Northern historians from 12th and 13th centuries, in order to legitimate preliterate traditions in the new era

Pergiuseppe Scardigli's 'I Germani come problema storico' (1970): 'i Germani negativi'; Reinhardt Wenskus' 'Stammesbildung und Verfassung' (1961); developments in Germanic scholarship: Wolfram's ethnogenesis, Goffart's 'Germanic culture construct'; the Germanic issue in the 'Ergänzungsbände zum RGA'; origines gentium and learned Abstammungstraditionen; linguistic identity in Medieval learning: lingua thiotisca; the myth of Arminius / Herrmann as conditor patriae

Reading canonical and apochryphal Scriptures: the development of Satan / Lucifer; Satan / Lucifer in Latin and vernacular sources of the Middle Ages; Satan's names; the ekphrasis of the devil; Hell; Satan's deeds; the bargain: Basilius, Theophilus, Faust

The essay analyses the inconsistencies in the use of the Volsung matter within Snorri's Edda medieval manuscripts. The Volsung legend is witnessed in Háttal, in the Prologue, þulur and, above all, in a long report in Skáldskaparmál (within the section concerning goldkennings): this summary, wich shares  the genelogical pattern with Poetic Edda and Vǫlsunga saga, is differently sketched in Edda manuscripts (in compliance with the general plan of each codex), being its most complete version that of R (Gks 2367 4°).

Marquis Scipione Maffei (1675-1755), from Verona, one of the most renown savants of his time, was deeply interested in the barbaric roots of Italian civilization and repeatedly worked on the topic of Goth and Lombard domains in early Medieval Italy