This work extensively describes for the first time the narrative meaning and integration of proverbs in the courtly Arthurian, grail, and Tristan novels of the High Middle Ages. Proverbs play an important role in the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach or Hartmann von Aue as "microtexts": they "evaluate" plot sequences, thus building a bridge between the fictional world of the text and the real world of the reader by connecting the generally accepted "knowledge of the world" of the audience with the narrated events in an exciting way.
Silvia Reuvekamp
Sprichwort /i.d. Literatur Höfisches Epos Sentenz courtly epic adage proverb/in literature