Opitz's Anno: The Middle High German 'Annolied' in the 1639 Edition of Martin Opitz by R. Graeme Dunphy (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.3, 2005 859 devote a whole book to the subject, although even his study, based on his Freiburg im Breisgau dissertation, focuses on a small segment of the history of the phenomenon, the years between the laureation of Conrad Celtis by Frederick III in 1487 and that of Nikolaus Mameranus by Charles V in 1555, and thus including the thirty-odd poets laureated by Maximilian I. Operating with the concept of 'field', a term derived largely from Pierre Bourdieu, and denoting a dynamic system of connections and influences, attractions and conflicting tensions (rather as in a magnetic field), Schirrmeister sees the poets as functioning within the context of a 'literarisches Feld' determined by a 'Feld der Macht', that is, the power relations of the world of the court (and other institutions) with its opportunities and challenges. Rather than focusing on the lives or output of the individualpoetae laureati, Schirrmeister's interest is in observing them as they func? tion, whether severally or collectively, both within the broader context of humanism and in their specific relation to court, Church, universities, publishers, and patrons. The firstmajor chapter views them in the tension between literature and the power structures ofthe court, examining their response to deaths, marriages, and other key events in their literaryoutput, the emerging literary groupings, and economic aspects of their work. The next chapter considers the poets' increasing autonomy as a group, investigating how they relate to individuals as evidenced by their correspondence, the dedications of their works (Rabelais, we are reminded, declared a book without a dedication to be acephalous, 'headless'), and their involvement in various loosely structured literary associations (sodalitates). Chapter iv examines the poets in their practical relations with the courts and their patrons: the need to have connections and to know how to exploit them in the interests of social advancement. The final section is informative about the actual practice of laureation, diplomas, and the involvement of patrons. Especially interesting is the discussion of why certain people were not laureated: for example, Helius Eobanus Hessus, whom some accounted the greatest Latin poet of his day, or Philipp Engelbrecht, who was thwarted in his ambition to be created poeta laureatus at the Diet of Worms in 1521. As a whole, the study offersa view of the growing self-awareness of the intellectuals in this period, of 'the triumph of the poet', as the title has it. Although Schirrmeister perhaps does not significantly repaint the overall picture of the poetae laureati, he succeeds remarkably well in bringing these largely for? gotten individual writers to life by adducing telling details and presenting them in their broader intellectual and social framework. Moreover, the book will repay study by anyone concerned with early German humanism, university history (especially Vienna, Cologne, Wittenberg, and Erfurt), and the history of the book. The dis? cussion of the sodalitates (pp. 170-82) is rewarding, not least for its reminder of Heinz Entner's suggestion to see them as the forerunners of the seventeenth-century Sprachgesellschaften. There are sixteen pages ofwell-chosen illustrations, an appendix with transcriptions of documents, an extensive bibliography, and indexes of concepts and names. Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London John L. Flood Opitz's Anno: The Middle High German 'Annolied'in thei6jg Edition ofMartin Opitz. By R. Graeme Dunphy. (Scottish Papers in Germanic Studies, ii) Glasgow: Scottish Papers in Germanic Studies. 2003. viii +189 pp. ?15. ISBN o907409 -11-3. Opitz's edition of the Annolied (c. 1077-81) interests us for two reasons. Firstly, it preserves the Annolied, for the single manuscript used by Opitz is lost. Secondly, 860 Reviews it bears witness to the rediscovery of older German texts by seventeenth-century scholars. Such texts were oftencited in that era to bolster cultural-patriotic arguments about the antiquity of German, though the seemingly degenerate German found in them was also seen as proof of its sorry,neglected state. Much, if not most, of this seventeenth-century scholarship is sadly inaccessible, as yet unreached by modern reprints or editions, though an exception noted by Dunphy is Manfred Zimmermann's photographic reprint edition of Goldast's Paraeneticorum veterumpars I (Goppingen: Kiimmerle, 1980). Dunphy's bilingual edition of Opitz...