Andreas Niederhäuser
"si underkusten tûsentstunt / ougen wangen unde munt"
Freundesliebe im höfischen Epos
Love between Friends in courtly Epics
English abstract
In the German literature of the Middle Ages sexuality between men is a marginal topic. In this context the few references form no independent aesthetic-literary discourse, they rather repeat the arguments developed in the normative discourse. Yet the behaviour of the male protagonists of the courtly epics with regard to their friends, strong affects and forms of physical intimacy between adult men which for modern readers are rather unusual - all this seems to refer to a latently erotic structure of these relations between men. However, the author proves with the help of poetological approach that these male friendships seem "homoerotic" in a subliminal way only if they are interpreted from the perspective of modern relations and behaviour standards. However, in the pre-modern world of courtly epics friendship is not the expression of an intrinsic affection, but the mutual acknowledgment of the courtly heroes as equivalent noble bodies. Gestures and gesticulations of affection and physical intimacy are still not referential in this context. They are not the expression of an inner solidarity with the opposite. Feelings are still resident in the gestures and gesticulations of the body (and only there) in the pre-bourgeois world of the courtly epics, which constitute social linkages as conventional behaviour patterns and which represent the acknowledgment of the other person as an equivalent body with regard to the courtly public.