Konrad Celtis und das Projekt der deutschen Dichtung: Studien zur humanistischen Konstitution von Poetik, Philosophie, Nation und Ich (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.2, 2005 547 stories, and not just Wolfram's Parzival, he is able to show that making Gawein into the hero of a Grail romance is no great innovation. After all, the 'First Continuation [of Chretien's unfinished version] takes up the Gauvain story and leaves Perceval out of account' (pp. 13-14). Secondly, Heinrich's Gawein is in no sense a second Parzival, transcending the Arthurian world of secular chivalry to enter into his predestined inheritance as Grail King, but a man with youthful blemishes who arduously makes good until he reaches his apogee by lifting the curse on the Grail community, after which 'there are no further moral/regal entailments and Gawein returns to court to report the benefits of what fromthe point of view of himself and his peers is primarily a famous victory for himself and the Round Table' (p. 100). This rehabilitation procedure is applied also to King Arthur, who in Diu Crone, so far from being that unchanging model of perfection in chivalric standards that we normally perceive him as being, is, when the poem opens, the 'injured party' in a love triangle and the butt of Guinevere's scorn, only gradually to be rehabilitated by the reflected glory of Gawein's success. (Heinrich even goes so faras to have Arthur voicing doubts about his own fitnessto have succeeded his father,11.398-411.) 'Heinrich's modus operandi amounts to a narrative strategy of prefixing accounts of characters' "earlier" deeds to their later, more wonted biographical profiles so as to simulate a diachronie process of progression' (p. 97). Thomas does not gloss over the difficulties of taking Diu Crone seriously, and admits that 'Modern readers [. . .] may [. . .] need to exert some determined suspension of disbelief to appreciate the romance in the same way as a medieval public' (p. 109). His monograph is, however, an enormous help to the modern reader in doing precisely this, affordinghim easy access to this 'literary historical enigma' (p. 109) and making a convincing case for its inner cohesiveness. University of Bristol Frank Shaw Konrad Celtis und das Projekt der deutschen Dichtung: Studien zur humanistischen Konstitution von Poetik, Philosophie, Nation und Ich. By Jorg Robert. (Friihe Neuzeit, 76) Tiibingen: Niemeyer. 2003. xviii + 564pp. ?124. ISBN 3-48436576 -5. Hard on the heels of Gernot Michael Miiller's book in the same series, Die 'Ger? mania generalis' des Conrad Celtis (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 2001), a study of Celtis's historiographical thinking in the wake of the discovery of Tacitus's Germania (see MLR, 98 (2003), 757-59), comes Jorg Robert's excellent investigation of Celtis's Amores (Nuremberg, 1502), the firstimportant cycle of Neo-Latin verse produced in Germany. Robert's book, a prize-winning doctoral thesis from the University of Wiirzburg, is a most impressive piece of work, awe-inspiring in its aims and achieve? ments. Leaving aside the brief introduction and conclusion, the study consists of six very substantial principal chapters. The firstof these analyses Celtis's conception of poetic theory as it emerges from his Ars versificandiet carminum (originally composed in 1486), and the next considers Celtis's view on the relation between philosophy (i.e. knowledge) and poetry. Chapter 4 investigates the preface to the Amores, and Chap? ter 5 the poems that constitute the collection. This is followed by a discussion ofthe relation between the Amores and the Germania illustrata project, and the finalchapter examines fiction and reality in Celtis's verse. What is so admirable about Robert's work is his sovereign command of the full range and many ramifications of his subject; it thus contrasts markedly with much earlier work which approached Celtis piecemeal from a worm's-eye view. Hence, by 548 Reviews famous Ode ad Apollinem repertorempoetices ut ab Italis cum lira ad Germanos veniat by viewing it in its broader context; this, taken together with an analysis of Celtis's hitherto largely neglected correspondence with Fridianus Pighinutius, leads Robert to an important reassessment of Celtis's views on the Italians. All told, his discussion of the Ars versificandi et carminum is an important contribution, not least because German humanist poetics generally have all too long languished in the largely unexplored gloom...