It might be a little unusual to review a book dedicated to late medieval German didactic poets in this journal, but since Danielle Buschinger, a well-known senior scholar in medieval German literature, traces this genre well into the fifteenth century, we still find ourselves within the same chronological framework. Since the early thirteenth century, many German poets turned to the topic of social, religious, philosophical, moral, and ethical criticism. Buschinger introduces us to this fairly large group of poets and discusses their backgrounds, their intentions, themes, and ideas, but there are no new observations, and we could easily rely on the relevant Verfasserlexikon, for instance. Some of the best known poets were Der Wilde Alexander, Boppe, Frauenlob, Der Marner, Der Meißner, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Rumelant von Sachsen, or Süßkint von Trimberg.

Buschinger summarizes all the relevant data and focuses, especially, on the individual themes treated by those poets. The major issues are the political situation in the Holy Roman Empire, the relationships among people (friendship, love, longing for a lady’s love), religion, the meaning of nobility, the relationship between the nobles and their subjects, teaching specific subject matters relevant for the aristocracy, and knightly virtues. From early on these didactic poets expressed great criticism of the social and moral decline in their time, and focused, in particular, on problems in the legal and political system, on the failings of the Christian church, on dangerous developments in the aristocracy and the urban world, and on the danger of usury. The discussion of issues pertaining to love also took place among those Sangspruchdichter, but it would have been necessary to explain the differences to the traditional Minnesang.

Subsequently, Buschinger examines the various debates between individual didactic poets and what they voiced about each other. Other issues deal with the death of a beloved person, personal invectives, funerary topics, science, general knowledge, wisdom, and riddles. The reader can quickly identify what the critical topics were as discussed by those poets. Overall, the author brings together much valuable information and allows us to comprehend quickly which poet had addressed what concern. Considering the large number of texts consulted, one can give Buschinger only credit for an enormous amount of work. Finally, she presents a selection of Middle High German poems in French translation, which stays close to the original but reads also well in the French. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography, an index of cited primary works, and an index of the poets’ names. As is often the case with books published in France, the table of contents is at the very end.

I suppose that Buschinger wrote her introduction primarily for French college students because the material has often already been covered by previous scholarship in German or English, because she has systematically translated all Middle High German texts into French, and because the scholarly apparatus is rather light, and, unfortunately, also rather out of date. This is the one major drawback of this otherwise impressive compendium insofar as Buschinger has not paid sufficient attention to research as published in the last decade or more. The bibliography comprises fifteen pages, but most studies appeared in the last decades of the twentieth century. Spot checks reveal, furthermore, that a good number of relevant investigations are simply missing (e.g., Jutta Goheen, Mensch und Moral im Mittelalter [1990]). For some titles, the author has provided the book series, for others she has not. More recent editions are mostly not mentioned, and new insights have not really been taken into consideration. For instance, Süßkint von Trimberg can no longer be identified as a Jew, as we read here. Oswald von Wolkenstein’s songs were preserved in manuscripts identified as A, B, and c (correct on 357), and not A, B, and E (42)—the information is repeated here unnecessarily. He was born around 1376, as Buschinger mentions several times, but we do not know this exactly. Recent years have seen major discussions of anticlericalism in those poems, but this new scholarship is not even mentioned. The editions of the primary works appear following the last name of the editors, which makes the search very difficult since the reader must know that Hugo von Trimberg is listed under Ehrismann, or Heinrich von Mügeln under Jahr. I find it regrettable that Buschinger has not created a thematic index, which would have made this study a really valuable inspiration for future research on this genre.

However, since the table of contents is detailed enough, we can easily find the relevant passages for specific topics overall, and there is no doubt that Buschinger has made a solid contribution to the study of late medieval German didactic poetry (Sangspruchdichtung), at least for advanced students of medieval German literature in francophone countries. The publisher also deserves our acknowledgment for this bold move, and we can only hope that Buschinger’s study and text edition in French will trigger a new interest in this genre among French students.