Mirror literature
As mirror literature , also: mirror literature , Germanic Medieval Studies describes a group of texts from medieval literature with the term “mirror” ( Latin speculum ) in the individual work titles. In the mirrors , the specula , the most varied areas of life are recorded, such as law, government, morality, religion and world knowledge. The mirror literature belongs to edification and teaching poetry; their purpose is to inform and instruct.
Contents and forms
Older mirror literature includes the Middle Latin works of the High Middle Ages , e.g. E.g. the Speculum regnum Gottfried of Viterbo (around 1185), which shows popes and kings, the Speculum stultorum of Nigellus de Longchamp (around 1180), a fool's mirror , and the Speculum maius of Vincent von Beauvais (around 1250), the largest encyclopedia of the Middle Ages.
The first German-language mirrors were mainly compilations of legal sources , which represent the oldest prose texts in the vernacular: the mnd compiled by Eike von Repgow in the first third of the 13th century . Spegel aller Sassen ( Sachsenspiegel ), the Upper German mirror of all German people created from it around 1275 , Conrad Heyden's Klagspiegel (1436) and Ulrich Tengler's Laienspiegel (1509). The name of the Schwabenspiegel , which was created in the 13th century, was only given later in the 17th century.
The mirror literature also includes works of German and Latin edification literature , u. a. the sinner's mirror and the mirror book (15th century), the prince and salvation mirrors ; in addition, professions such as Johannes Rothes Ritter-Spiegel (around 1410). In addition, there were also medical works in the mirror literature ( Spygel der Gesuntheit , Der frawn mirror , both 14th century) and collections of fables ( Spygel der Wyßheit , 1520).
The mirrors , often written in bound prose , were not restricted in form and structure . Their layout, according to one representation, is rather that of a literary “panorama” with “peep-box-like individual scenes without a fixed composition and connection that is based partly on harmony, analogy, partly on contrast”. The virgin mirror , Latin Speculum virginum , from the 12th century, for example, has the form of dialogue. Staged representations have also been found in mirror literature since the 16th century, and Archduke Ferdinand II's Speculum vitae humanae (1534) is considered a first variation of this type .
literature
- Herbert Grabes: Speculum, Mirror and Looking-Glass. Tübingen 1973 (= book series of Anglia, 16)
- Uta Störmer-Caysa: Mirror . In: Reallexikon der Deutschen Literaturwissenschaft . Revision of the real dictionary of German literary history. Berlin; New York: de Gruyter 1997-2003: Vol. 3: PZ (2003), pp. 467-469; on the term “mirror literature”: p. 469.
- Gunhild Roth: Mirror literature ( I. Middle Latin literature ). In: Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. 7 (1999), Col. 2101-2102.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gero von Wilpert : Spiegel . In: Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 231). 5th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1969, DNB 458658170 , p. 722.