Date of Award

12-1981

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Medieval Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Johannes Kissel

Second Advisor

Dr. Peter Krawutschke

Third Advisor

Dr. Friederike Wiedemann

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The romance is seen as a paradigm for emancipation in which Gottfried von Strasshurg deals with -the search for selfactualization and individualism which began to manifest itself in Western medieval society. The paradigm consists of two phases, entailing six consecutive steps of interaction between individual and society: the first poses the problem of alienation and is initiated by (l) the education of the individual which leads to (2) his/her isolation from mainstream society and ends in (3) the individuals attempt to gain full integration; the second phase deals with the consequences of alienation and brings a solution in that (4) the individual's attempt to integrate him/herself fails and leads to (5) the disruption of the established society which (6) brings the necessary rejection of the old norms.

Gottfried shows how human values and interactions become a private matter which leads to the collision between individual and establishment and brings about the protagonist's isolation from social acknowledgement which, in its final result, initiates the breaking down and restructuring of accepted social norms.

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