Literary doubt. Scepticism and the dilemma of establishing the truth in Middle High German epics (12th to 14th centuries)

该项目的目的是阐明怀疑作为确定真理的一种生产性方法在12世纪至14世纪的中世纪德国史诗中的具体用途。在围绕正确解释另一种真理主张和对立观点的文学内部冲突中，怀疑的认知或情感效果尤其强烈地唤起了共鸣的隐喻、意象和修辞人物。此外，它还激发了诗意的(叙事)技巧、主题和人物类型，这些都是研究未能认识到的相互关联的。因此，该项目将寻求产生一种启发式的视角来应用于对文学怀疑论的分析，并通过这样做来首次系统地阐明自12世纪以来在德国中世纪文学的世俗史诗叙事传统中发挥作用的认识论。该项目的方法借鉴了思想史，建立在这样的前提下，即中高德语文学是知识文化的真实部分，在这种文化中，明显先于早期现代特征的世俗化，明显领先于早期现代特征的世俗化，明显地表现出作为隐蔽的文化知识的“权衡心理活动”的“怀疑精神”。因此，该项目的主要兴趣将放在审判到来之前的文学场景中，这些场景对寻找明确的东西提出了批判性的质疑，并试图产生真理；通过人物或叙事的声音，讨论作为一个关系量的什么是“真”；以及指向同等有效性的替代方案和理想，并在诗意和修辞手段中相互权衡。推动这一探索的具体问题试图确立一种方式，即在最广泛的意义上是对知识的批判的怀疑如何创造空间，在古典、冒险和传奇小说、经典宫廷浪漫故事和英雄史诗中展开论证，以及在(宫廷)传奇和中篇小说中展开论证。在研究之前，我们确定了两个主题核心领域的可能性，文学反思的怀疑表达。第一种是一种审美的表现形式，它是一种判断的方式，它通过言语和行为的权衡来进行，并展示了论点或“事实”的平衡，最终揭示了知觉接触到什么是“真”的关系性质(共济失调，纪元)。第二个主题核心领域围绕着阐明对立的场景和叙事技巧，这样做导致了有充分根据的确定性。因此，该项目直接涉及挖掘植根于文学史、世俗文学传统中的宫廷怀疑主义的根源。它对研究的贡献是通过提供一个系统的观点来填补目前的一个空白，即围绕源于文化史的疑虑和德语中世纪史诗之间的潜在互惠影响。

The project’s purpose is to illuminate the specific uses of doubt as a productive method of ascertaining truth in Middle High German epics of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. In intra-literary conflicts around the correct interpretation of alternative claims to truth and opposing points of view, the cognitive or emotional effect of doubt acts particularly strongly to evoke resonant metaphors, images and rhetorical figures. Additionally, it inspires poetic (narrative) techniques, motifs and character types which the research has failed to recognise as interconnected. The project will therefore seek to generate a heuristic perspective to bring to bear on the analysis of literary scepticism, and in so doing to provide the first systematic illumination of the epistemes at play in the secular epic narrative traditions of Middle High German literature from the twelfth century onward. The approach of the project, drawing on the history of ideas, is founded on the premise that Middle High German literature is an authentic part of a culture of knowledge in which a ‘sceptical spirit’ of a ‘mental activity of weighing’ (JOLLES) is evident, as concealed cultural knowledge, markedly in advance of the secularisation characterising the early modern age. The project’s principal interest will thus be in literary scenes preceding the arrival at a judgement, which critically question the search for the unambiguous and attempts to generate truth; which discuss, via characters or the narratorial voice, what is ‘true’ as a relational quantity; and which point to alternatives and ideals of equal validity and weigh them against one another in poetic and rhetorical devices. The specific question driving this exploration seeks to establish the ways in which a doubt which in the broadest sense is critical of knowledge creates spaces to unfold its argumentation within classical, adventure and minne romances, classic courtly romances and heroic epics, as well as in (courtly) legends and ‘novellas’. In advance of the research, we identify two thematic core areas among the possibilities for literary reflection of the expression of doubt. The first consists in the aesthetic forms of expression of a manner of judging which proceeds by weighing-up in words and deeds and which demonstrates a balance of arguments or ‘facts’ to the end of revealing the relational nature of perceptual accesses to what is ‘true’ (ataraxia, epoché). The second thematic core area revolves around scenes and narrative techniques which illuminate oppositions, and in so doing lead to well-founded certainties. The project thus concerns itself directly with unearthing the roots, planted in literary history, of a courtly scepticism in secular traditions of literature. Its contribution to research is to fill a current lacuna by providing a systematic view on potential reciprocal effects at work between discourses around doubt stemming from cultural history and the German-language medieval epic.