German Verse-Couplet Tales from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century

Multi-volume edition, commentary and English translation of German verse-couplet tales ('Maeren') from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries: the corpus of material is extensive (175 shorter narratives), amounting to some 100,000 lines of edited verse (from a total of around 179,100 lines of verse as contained in manuscripts and early prints). This edition is the result of a collaborative project involving two teams of scholars, based in Cologne and Tübingen. The 'Maeren' are edited in strict accordance with their principal manuscripts and, where appropriate, different versions of the same text are presented in parallel. The most important aims of the edition as a whole are to provide a philologically sound yet readable text and to make different versions of these tales fully accessible, giving the reader a complete overview of textual variance. The commentary explains the textual basis of each edited 'Maere', contains further notes on themes and literary context as well as comprehension-tips for the non-specialist. By virtue of this edition German verse-couplet tales from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries can now be read and studied more easily than ever before.

Sebastian Coxon, Reader in German at University College London (UCL).