(no subject)

Really must write up a post about our seminar trip to St Gallen and the wonderful things we saw there, but am still slightly giddy from actually getting my hands on the 'St Gallener Niblungenhanschrift' - which really ought to be called the St Gallener Epenhandschrift, as as well as the textually very important Niblungenlied B, it also contains good texts of Parsifal and my beloved Willehalm. Was unable to resist reading the prologue aloud. I know when you go and look and manuscripts, you're generally supposed to be looking at the binding, mis-en-page, the codex as a whole... but I'm afraid that the text, when it's of a great (or even merely good) work that excites me more - or rather, the text in an original context. Am probably too romantic to be a modern mediaevalist - but never mind. (Actually, it was all I could do not to break out into squeeing!)

St Gallen have digitized some of their manuscripts, btw, and the site is open to all: www.cesgr.unifr.ch Unfortunately, though, they haven't put up the Niblungenlied B ms; I suspect this may be connected to the fact that they sell DVDs of it. Couldn't quite justify the expense, which was round about sixty pounds, if I've worked out the conversion corectly, as I'm not a Wolfram scholar (or a Nibelungenite, for that matter), and am now being predictably gnawed by regret. However, there are some interesting things on the site.

Things inquiring minds want to know

Why is one of the two copies of the edition of Christus und der minnende Seele† in the university catalogue in the 'Archive of German Folk Songs and the Institute of Popular Song?


†by all accounts a very disturbing, in a rather nasty way, piece of mystic dialogue on asceticism as a necessary preparation for a union of the soul with God, in the form of an allegorised account of an abusive marriage, which I should think would be quite hard to whistle. I have to try to read it before a seminar on Thursday, and am not looking forward to it.