Herberth, Felix
Dissertation topic:
"History of transmission and authorship concept of Johannes Hartlieb's 'Histori von dem großen Alexander'."
Contact address at the University of Würzburg:
Chair of German Philology
Am Hubland
97074 Würzburg
First supervisor: Prof. Dr Regina Toepfer
Second supervisors:
Class in the Graduate School: "Middle Ages and Early Modern Age"
Doctorate in the Graduate School from SS 2024.
Abstract:
Johannes Hartlieb's 'Histori von dem großen Alexander' is without doubt the most important German-language Alexander text of the late Middle Ages. It was written around the middle of the 15th century by the Munich-based physician and man of letters Johannes Hartlieb, who translated the text from Latin on behalf of Duke Albrecht III of Bavaria-Munich. The 21 known manuscripts that were produced within just 25 years of the work's completion testify to the text's great success. However, the end of the manuscript age by no means marked the end of the transmission of 'Alexander': Between 1472 and 1682, a total of 13 printed editions were produced, six of which were incunabula.
The textual form of the printed editions appears remarkably constant and in many cases is limited solely to dialectal adaptations and language change processes in the more recent editions. All the more interesting are the cases in which the text was deliberately altered. The dissertation will comprehensively identify and analyse these textual interventions in order to draw conclusions about how the reception of the text changed in the course of its transmission. The aim is to investigate which parts of the work are particularly affected by textual interventions, to what extent and to what extent changes were made, how these can be typologised and what effects these changes have in particular on the understanding of authorship. The places of printing and the printers themselves will also be analysed: An evaluation of the relevant publishing programmes will be combined with an analysis of the intended recipients in order to allow conclusions to be drawn about the usage situation of the text.
