Paradoxer Gewinn: Raumpoetik und utopische Anschaulichkeit in Ulrichs von Etzenbach ‚Alexander‘-Anhang

Abstract

The article discusses some opportunities and challenges of medieval utopian studies, taking the late 13th century ‘Alexander’ appendix by Ulrich von Etzenbach as its main example, but also commenting on other heterotopic or utopian passages in the medieval German Alexander tradition (Gymnosophists, Flower Maidens, and the Earthly Paradise) as well in Gottfried von Straßburg’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’. The centrepiece of the article is a reading of the ‘Alexander’ appendix, which designs a free republic of scholars and black magicians that bears certain utopian features: Elements of an ‘other’ system of government are combined with elements of an ‘other’ system of education, creating a chimera of an urban ordering of society that has at its disposal means to pull itself away, to be utopian and to exist freely in collective selfdetermination and self-rule. The article closes with a number of conclusions regarding the methodology of medieval utopian studies, which would especially benefit from including narratological methods.