Exemplarik und Erfahrung in allegorischen Ich-Erzählungen (am Beispiel von Konrads von Würzburg ›Klage der Kunst‹)

Abstract

Abstract Most of the longer worldly fictional Middle High German first-person narrations are allegorical. The article discusses the reasons for this interdependence between allegory and the first-person narrative form, which is observable not only in Middle High German literature, but also in texts belonging to other European vernacular literatures of the time. In my article I develop two main thesis: The first is that the use of allegoric forms marks on the one hand a highbrow literary level and serves as a stylistic ornament of texts, which tend to present themselves mainly as author-speech. This is also the reason why in these texts the ›I‹ is often not only a narrating ›I‹, but also takes over the role of an author on the narrative level of the histoire. The other reason for this interdependence is that among all kinds of narrators, only the first-person narrator is able to cross the border between the extradiegetic and the diegetic world, in which personifications like Frau Minne, Frau Triuwe, or Frau Âventiure have the knowledge about Minne, Triuwe, and Âventiure and wait for the first-person narrator to approach and to be taught. Only he can experience the encounter with the personifications and their instruction himself and only he can pass this knowledge to the recipients as an experience he made himself.