German Literary Culture in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford on 4 March 1993

This inaugural lecture begins by presenting two "models of literary communication" from the period around 1200 AD. The first is a passage from the English Latin writer Gerald of Wales, illustrating the phenomenon of recitation, the second a pairing of passages from the "Nibelungenlied" and "Nibelungenklage" to demonstrate the interrelationship of oral culture, Latin literary culture and German literary culture.;The text then sets out a series of oppositions that can be drawn upon in analyzing German literary culture: orality and literature, Latin and vernacular, German and French, religious and profane. In the final part of his lecture, Professor Palmer investigates the codological and palaeographical analysis of the extant German manuscripts from the period, giving examples of what can be learned from them. His argument is structured around a sketch of the development of the German vernacular literary codex in these two centuries, touching on such questions as the physical make-up of the codex and the layout and punctuation of verse.