2003 / 10 Prospero. Rivista di culture anglo-germaniche

The urban character of Konrad von Würzburg's work reveals itself in the emphasised privatisation of the emotional life of the characters, which is emancipated from the codified forms of the manorial/feudal ritual and examined in light of the psychological motivations that animate the behaviour of the lovers. The reciprocal tendency of the protagonists is explicitly free from the duties of the chivalric ceremonial, and finds in the domestic space and in the affective structure of marriage a privileged fulfilment. Furthermore, the reference to an equal relationship, evidently far from the conception of marriage that was actually performed by the urban middle class, implies a utopian reference to horizon that is still pre-modern, defensively obscured against the radicality of modernisation phenomena and based on the ideal of a harmonious fusion between the culture of the aristocratic court and that of the middle class of the new cities.