Information may be Subject to Change

Time & Place

2024 Winter Term 1
Tuesdays & Thursdays
3:30pm to 5:00pm

Language & Prerequisites

This course is taught in English and there are no prerequisites.

Live Streaming

All our sessions will be streamed live.

Degree Requirements

This course counts towards the Literature Requirement for UBC’s Bachelor of Arts degree.
This course fulfills upper-level requirements for UBC’s Major and Minor Degree in German.

Course Description

The German Middle Ages produced some of the most prolific images, motifs and narratives in the Western canon. Siegfried the dragon slayer came to epitomize the mythical age of heroes; the poetry of Walther von der Vogelweide foreshadowed modern notions of love; and the legends of Hartmann von Aue explored a courtly society coming to terms with the triumph of Christianity.

In this course, we will study key literary traditions of the German Middle Ages. The first section is dedicated to the heroic epic and, above all, the paradigmatic example of the Nibelungenlied. Subsequently, we will discuss the court culture of the High Middle Ages, focusing on the courtly novel and the Minnesang tradition. In the final weeks of the term, our attention will turn towards texts that reflect on medieval religious culture, and we will conclude our seminar with an outlook on the Reformation period.

Primary Materials

The Song of Songs
The Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200)
Hartmann von Aue – Erec (ca. 1190)
Hartmann von Aue – Gregorius (ca. 1190)
Konrad von Würzburg – The Tale of the Heart (ca. 1260)
Luther, Martin – On the Freedom of a Christian (1520)
Tepl, Johannes von – Death and the Plowman (1401)
Medieval Love Songs

Evaluation of Student Work

Two midterm exams (33% each)
Final Exam (34%)

Exam Modalities

All our exams are open-book exams that are based online, and you can complete them from anywhere in the world: your dorm, your apartment, your family home out of province – as long as you log in during the proper time slot. This also means that our final exam should not meaningfully impact your end-of-term travel plans. As long as you are travelling to a location where internet connections are readily available, you need not stay in Vancouver on account of our course’s final.