Science and Natural Philosophy in the Poetry of Heinrich von Meissen (Frauenlob)
type: CreativeWork
description: The poetry of the Middle High German vernacular poet Heinrich von Meißen, better known as Frauenlob (ca. 1250/60–1318), is infamous for its hermeneutic difficulty, derived from the poet’s linguistic novelties and erudite use of intellectual source material. Recent scholarship has rescued the poet from academic obscurity and accusations of mannerist decadence, and now recognizes Frauenlob’s unique place in German literary history, as an author whose work is distinctly dialogic, polysemous, and rationally accessible. This dissertation expands on these conclusions through an analysis of the common literary techniques used in Frauenlob’s three longest works, his leichs, and argues for their role in the incorporation of contemporary natural philosophical information into these poems. Rhetorical devices like synecdoche, enjambment, concatenation, ekphrasis, and personification are used repeated and strategically in the leichs as didactic tools and hermeneutic guides, enabling the audience to augment the text’s overt theological, literary, and philosophical allusions with additional levels of meaning derived from geological science, chemistry, cosmology, and observational astronomy. The presence and recognition of these additional meanings gives important insight into both Frauenlob’s materialist worldview as well as into the intellectual expertise expected of his intended audience.
abstract: The poetry of the Middle High German vernacular poet Heinrich von Meißen, better known as Frauenlob (ca. 1250/60–1318), is infamous for its hermeneutic difficulty, derived from the poet’s linguistic novelties and erudite use of intellectual source material. Recent scholarship has rescued the poet from academic obscurity and accusations of mannerist decadence, and now recognizes Frauenlob’s unique place in German literary history, as an author whose work is distinctly dialogic, polysemous, and rationally accessible. This dissertation expands on these conclusions through an analysis of the common literary techniques used in Frauenlob’s three longest works, his leichs, and argues for their role in the incorporation of contemporary natural philosophical information into these poems. Rhetorical devices like synecdoche, enjambment, concatenation, ekphrasis, and personification are used repeated and strategically in the leichs as didactic tools and hermeneutic guides, enabling the audience to augment the text’s overt theological, literary, and philosophical allusions with additional levels of meaning derived from geological science, chemistry, cosmology, and observational astronomy. The presence and recognition of these additional meanings gives important insight into both Frauenlob’s materialist worldview as well as into the intellectual expertise expected of his intended audience.
author: Horsfall, Walker
keywords: medieval astronomy, medieval Germany, medieval poetry, medieval science, Middle High German, science and poetry
date published: 2022-11
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:28:01Z
provider: University of Toronto
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Toronto

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/140350