Three Songs of Reinmar Der Alee a Formal-Structural Interpretation
This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly ss received 66-1860 WEDGWOOD, Stephen H ensleigh, 1936- THREE SONGS OF REINMAR DER ALTE: A FORMAL-STRUCTURAL INTERPRETATION. The Ohio State University, Fh.D., 1965 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THREE SONGS OF REINMAR DER ALEE A FORMAL-STRUCTURAL INTERPRETATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Stephen Hensleigh Wedgwood, A.B., M.A. The Ohio State University 1965 Approved by v Adviser, Department of German PREFACE The modern interpreter of medieval literature faces certain difficulties which are, by the nature of things, insurmountable. The most serious from a practi cal viewpoint is perhaps the lack of reliable texts. The manuscripts which transmit Reinmar's songs, for example, date at the earliest from the end of the thirteenth cen tury — nearly a century after the death of the poet. During the several generations which separate the songs' composition from their collection and copying in the various manuscripts, numerous corruptions, omissions, and rearrangements necessarily occurred which, despite the best efforts of distinguished textual scholars since Karl Lachmann and before, simply cannot be rectified. The critic, seeking to approach and understand Reinmar and the other Minnesingers, deals at best with an approxima tion of what the poet actually sang. In yet another sense our understanding of Rein- mar's songs can only be approximate. Reinmar, like his contemporaries, was as much composer as poet. Words and music of the Minnesanp; were created together, each song in its own characteristic "Ton," and undoubtedly the musi cal structure of the songs in large part determined their verbal form.
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