Erecs Scham. Kulturelle Umbesetzung einer Emotion im mittelhochdeutschen höfischen Roman

Abstract

When interpreting medieval literature, literary historians often rely on the cultural-anthropological distinction between “guilt cultures” and/or “shame cultures”. Whilst this is a valuable tool to analyse ways of regulating social behaviour, it becomes problematic when dealing with emotions. Analyses of medieval German literature have misunderstood the term “shame” as the emotion of shame. Using modern psychological and evolutionary theories one can reformulate the model and explain thus much better changes in mentality and social behaviour mediated through literature. Hartmann von Aue's Arthurian romance Erec provides an example for this.