Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe by Marisa Galvez

Author:Marisa Galvez
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

31. Hartmann von Aue miniature from Codex Palatinus Germanicus 848, f. 184v (Codex Manesse) (ca. 1300–1340). Photograph: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.

Invention: Scriptural Rhetorical Performance in the Codex

Until now I have been applying the principles of classical and medieval rhetoric to the work of the Codex artists: how did they provide a persuasive image that emblematized the troubadour and his texts, and how can their techniques of deploying certain figures, themes, or stylistic strategies be seen as rhetorical acts of dispositio and elocutio? In deploying an effective language of signs, what do these images actually communicate to the reader of the Codex? That is to say, what is the act of inventio for the artists as readers of the lyric texts and, on the other hand, for the readers of the images that the artists produce?

To explore this last question, one can study how artists invent a scriptural narrative from verbal material in certain miniatures. In his De doctrina christiana, Augustine describes this invention as finding a “res,” or interpretation as discovering scriptural truths that will be expounded through preaching (1.1).123 Although it is apparent from the Codex that the artists draw equally from secular (courtly) and sacred texts, a quality that in many ways draws them closer to the rhetoric of classical oratory than to Augustinian hermeneutics of the scriptures, certain images demonstrate that artists interpreted lyric texts by means of images that privilege scriptural truth. In other words, they visually invent an Augustinian res that ennobles secular lyric, and teaches lay readers the cultural value of Minnesang.

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