The Centre hosts the following two talks:

1. Julia Lorenz (Merton College, Oxford), ‘Konrad of Wüzrburg’s Herzmaere: An Instruction on How (Not) to Love’

Konrad’s of Würzburg short narrative Herzmaere is one of the most transmitted Middle High German short narratives and follows a trajectory (re-)familiarising the audience with the emotion of love. To this end, he tells a short but tragic story about a lady, her husband, and her lover. My paper argues that the love in Herzmaere is simultaneously successful and unsuccessful: while the lady and the knight are not granted a happy ending, the narrative achieves its goal of illustrating intense love for the audience to see. Due to the diversity of transmission, this paper uses the sample manuscripts Heidelberg cpg 341, Karlsruhe Cod. Donaueschingen 104, and München cgm 714 as its analytical basis. The differences between transmission provide additional insight into the distinct ways in which Herzmaere was framed, adapted, and understood by different scribes.

Herzmaere employs different narrative strategies to offer an unobstructed view onto the emotion of love by eliminating potentially distracting story elements. The emotion of love is further intensified through acts of love performed by the lovers. These acts of love are presented in analogy to religious and devotional acts adding narrative depth and specific functions to each of them. After completing multiple devotional acts such as pilgrimage and martyrdom of love, the religious analogy fails in the last instance, as the lady is unable to complete a eucharist of love. Here, the worldly love between the lady and the knight is denied transcendence. So, despite the intensity of their love, the lovers fail on an intradiegetic level as minne fails to develop religious transcendence. On an extradiegetic level, however, the narrative strategy succeeds as their love and love-death causes Herzmaere to radiate love which is subsequently absorbed by the recipients.

2. Dr Alan Darmawan (SOAS, London), ‘Reconstructing a Sumatran royal manuscript library: thinking through landscapes, objects, and performances’

In this presentation, I will share my experience in reconstructing a royal manuscript collection of Palembang Sultanate in southern Sumatra, Indonesia. Displaced by colonial collecting in the 19th century, the royal manuscripts are now dispersed in the institutional libraries in Europe and Southeast Asia, while partly left as private and public collections in situ. Using certain features of the local style of bookbinding and ownership notes in my investigation, I trace the surviving royal manuscripts and attempt to situate them in their relations with sites, landscapes, ritual performances, and collective memory that resonate with colonial history of the region.

The session will be chaired by Professor Henrike Lähnemann (St Edmund Hall, Oxford).