Plurilingualism in the ›Carmina Burana‹ – an Intercultural Reconsideration

Abstract
Plurilingualism has been a central topic in the studying of the Carmina Burana, which gather together texts in old Provençal and old French, in Middle High Ger-man, and even in Greek, alongside their main Latin idiom. Major studies on plurilin-gualism in the Carmina Burana have called attention to the occidental contexts of the collection’s vernacular languages (Zumthor 1960; Müller 1981; Sayce 1992) whereas oriental analogues or even potential influences have come into view only very tentatively (Vollmann 1987; Zwartjies 1997). More recent research on the rich tradition of Arab and Hebrew poetry composed in the multicultural milieu of medie-val Spain, however, reveals that Moorish al-Andalus played an influential role in the production of multilingual lyrics and their dissemination to the Romance speaking regions further North (e. g. Menocal 1987, Bossong 2005). A special feature in this old Andalusian tradition is the kharja, the ‘exit’ of a poem, which is composed in a language different from that of the main text (i. e. in a vulgar Arabian or Romance dialect, contrasting with the preceding part written in standard Arabian). Sometimes, this kharja is attributed to illiterate female voices.
The Carmina Burana make use of very similar techniques, especially in those final vernacular stanzas which conclude the Latin strophes that precede them. The present chapter analyses a selection of poems from the Carmina Burana collection from this intercultural perspective of Andalusian analogues.
Date Issued
2018-07-27
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