Le albe di Oswald von Wolkenstein: inquadramento storico-letterario, analisi testuale e traduzione in italiano (Seconda parte)

Abstract

This article is the Second Part of an enquiry on the Tagelied, the medieval German version of the erotic dawn-song, published in Linguæ & (2/2009). This Second part offers a survey on the deviations from the “typical” Tagelied and discusses the main variant text-types. For each variant one instance is analysed in detail. A discussion on the reasons for such variance but also for the popularity of the Tagelied through several centuries of German poetry (from the 11th up to the 17th century) follows. It contains a critical survey on the state of the art on these issues and a preview on the author’s theses. The Third Part shall appear in a future issue of this journal, with the author’s views on the reasons for the long life of the Tagelied within German poetry and with an enquiry on Oswald von Wolkenstein’s Tagelieder, which conclude the era of the German courtly dawn-songs and smooths the path for the great production of bourgeois and popular dawn-songs in the German speaking areas up to the 17th century.