Die hier publizierten Tagungsbeiträge bilanzieren und perspektivieren Aspekte der Forschung zum deutschen Spätmittelalter. Dabei kommen verschiedene Blickwinkel und methodische Ansätze zum Tragen, von der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung über die Gattungsperspektive bis hin zur weiterführenden, exemplarischen Analyse am Einzeltext. In der Summe ergeben die hier versammelten Beiträge in ihrer Kombination aus Global- und Gattungsperspektive sowie exemplarischer Einzeltextanalyse eine facettenreiche Sicht auf die deutsche Literatur des Spätmittelalters und die Methoden ihrer Erforschung.

The contributions in this anthology shed light on the thematic and poetic diversity of lyrical speech in the German late Middle Ages. The focus is on the productive engagement with genre and discourse traditions, the play with language, religious semantics and aesthetic conventions, transitions and modulations in the mirror of tradition, and finally also forms of self-thematisation and the staging of authorship.

The series Texte und Textgeschichte [Texts and Textual History] set up by the Würzburg research group on ‘Medieval Prose’ under its leader Kurt Ruh contains editions and studies of widely disseminated high-impact late medieval German functional texts. They are prepared and presented with an emphasis on the communicative function of literature, the mutual interaction of author, writer and public. This involves taking primary account of textual mutations in the course of transmission; the methodological objective of each of the editions is to present these editorially in an optimum manner (textual transmission methodology). The studies are directed in each case at the particular circumstances of the transmission - textual geography, chronology and sociology - process the sources and trace the impact of the texts.

The series Texte und Textgeschichte [Texts and Textual History] set up by the Würzburg research group on ‘Medieval Prose’ under its leader Kurt Ruh contains editions and studies of widely disseminated high-impact late medieval German functional texts. They are prepared and presented with an emphasis on the communicative function of literature, the mutual interaction of author, writer and public. This involves taking primary account of textual mutations in the course of transmission; the methodological objective of each of the editions is to present these editorially in an optimum manner (textual transmission methodology). The studies are directed in each case at the particular circumstances of the transmission - textual geography, chronology and sociology - process the sources and trace the impact of the texts.