Justice and the Social Context of Early Middle High German Literature

First published 2001 by Routledge. This book argues that far from preaching traditional, otherworldly ideals, the authors or these religious works were deeply engaged in the social, political, and spiritual issues that characterized the Holy Roman Empire at a time of radical transformation. The following study is an attempt to understand the social and historical content and context of German vernacular works of the eleventh and twelfth centuries by focusing on their conception of 'reht' or justice. This literature provides ample material to the literary historian. Aside from numerous fragments and significant prose works, it encompasses over 100 poems, ranging in length from 100 lines to many poems of well over 2,000 lines, and in the case of the massive rhymed chronicle of the emperors from Julius Caesar to Lothar III, the 'Kaiserchronik', to close to 20,000 lines. With the exception of Old English literature, there is nothing comparable in extent in any other vernacular European literature of this time, a fact that would in itself make these works of interest to medievalists. The themes of the works themselves are primarily religious, most often exclusively so, as their modern titles indicate, for example, the "Momento mori" or "The Heavenly Jerusalem".