Essen und Trinken in der deutschsprachigen Lyrik des Spätmittelalters. Zum Funktionswandel der Schlemmerthematik in den sogenannten Herbstliedern

The so-called ‘Autumn songs’ celebrating the joys of this season have a particular position in late medieval German lyric poetry. This tradition begins with Steinmar’s Autumn song, a sophisticated literary experiment referring to the traditional courtly love lyric, in which the love for the Minnedame is rejected in favour of the devotion to the Autumn. Hadlaub’s experimenting with this new song form becomes the occasion for opposing a less radical joy concept to Steinmair’s absolute vision. The songs by Ulrich von Baumburg and Wizlav demonstrate that the Autumn glutton theme in the poetic production around 1300 is more and more often used exclusively to enlarge the motif repertoire. In fourteenth-century lyric the glutton theme is more and more detached from the love one, the opposition between the seasons is no longer used argumentatively to discuss poetological positions and the glutton theme is mainly aimed at representing the Autumn wanton life. The anonymously transmitted song Neidtharcz gefräß represents the peak of the new song type introduced by Steinmar. The sole theme is now the excessive praise of the manifold gifts of the Autumn which do not only include the unsurpassed abundance of culinary pleasures, but also – as clear counterpole to courtly love – erotic joys.