Lecture, Oct. 26: Florian Müller: “The Making of the Book of Heroes”

October 26, 2023
4-6 pm
Odette Hall 323

This is a hybrid event taking place at Odette Hall, room 323, and on Zoom. Please email florian.mueller@mail.utoronto.ca for Zoom details.

Stories of the legendary warrior and fire-spitting hero Dietrich von Bern were widespread folklore in the German-speaking medieval world. Oral traditions and manuscript transmission interacted in productive ways, bringing forth a wide range of heroic songs about Dietrich, his companions, and mythical ancestors. The late medieval/early modern Book of Heroes (six editions from 1479 to 1590) compiles four of the most popular epics and presents heroic poetry in the form of a modern, printed book. Texts marked by the structural openness (Heinzle) of a tradition rooted in oral story-telling and manuscript-typical variance (Cerquiglini) entered the more stable, but developing medium of print. Series of woodcuts responded to the poems and added new layers of interpretation to the printed text. Stories of dragons, giants, and dwarven rings of power entered the emerging modern book market at a time when concepts such as fictionality and reading for entertainment were highly contentious.

This talk will discuss the Book of Heroes and epic poetry by combining a book-historical approach with literary analysis. Focusing on a poem about Dietrich’s adventures in the underground kingdom of the dwarven king Laurin, I will discuss how the materiality of texts informs my research on the manuscript and print tradition of the Book of Heroes, and how print culture and the early modern ‘invention’ of the book impact narratives such as the tale of Laurin. No previous knowledge of medieval German literature is required: a summary of Laurin as well as English translations of all text samples will be provided.