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Speaker: Margit Dahm

Abstract: Crises are a typical component of the macrostructure of medieval courtly novels. This is also the case in Konrad von Würzburg's novel Partonopier und Meliur (13th century): The novel tells of the male protagonist's betrayal of his lover, which results in the breaking up of the love affair and in a fundamental crisis for Partonopier. This state of crisis is designed as a complete destruction of the character and his ideal courtly body. The matrix for this condition is lovesickness as a present motif in the courtly epic of the Middle Ages and at the same time as a concept to be understood pathologically, as in illness, which in the historical order of knowledge is closely related to melancholy. The lecture will deal with the connections between illness as an aspect of historical anthropology and the poetic form and structural logics of the novel.