Chapter 12 - Plurilingualism in the Codex Buranus: An Intercultural Reconsideration

Summary

Man wird gut daran tun, den Blick vergleichend auf andere Traditionsstrange zu richten. Und dieser Vergleich mus wohl von jeder Generation neu unternommen werden, nicht nur weil der Fundus des Wissens wachst, sondern vor allem weil sich die Fragen andern.

One will benefit from turning to other literary traditions for comparison. Such a comparison will need to be undertaken afresh by each generation, not only given the increasing body of knowledge, but above all because the questions change.

With these words, Burghart Wachinger introduced a seminal article in which he provided evidence that the Codex Buranus was composed of diverse clusters or ‘nests’ (‘Nester’) that revealed the contours of several previous song collections. As part of this endeavour, Wachinger sought to demonstrate that Latin poems with concluding German stanzas could be related to such clusters. Roughly speaking, Wachinger distinguished a section originating from German regions, containing the bulk of the German stanzas (CB 132–CB 186), from a preexisting collection from Western Europe, in particular from France (CB 56– CB 131). The present chapter reconsiders the function of the plurilingualism apparent in these closing German stanzas by following Wachinger's advice that subsequent research ought to compare the Carmina Burana with other literary traditions in the light of changing scholarly questions and – more generally – a shift in cultural perspectives. In this context, it might be appropriate to situate the German stanzas within the broad panorama of poetic production in the European Middle Ages. Whereas the Romance milieu has long been studied in relation to the Codex Buranus, the more distant sphere of medieval Spain has not played a conspicuous role. In particular, Al-Andalus, which prior to the Christian Reconquista was a creative melting pot involving Arab and Jewish influences, has not been seen as a context relevant to an understanding of the Codex Buranus. Without claiming that the multicultural environment of Al-Andalus had a direct influence on the composition of the Carmina Burana, the present chapter compares characteristics of Andalusian poetry with those of the plurilingual Carmina Burana. This approach brings into view the so-called kharjas, stanzas in colloquial Arabic or a Romance dialect which conclude a preceding poem composed in classical Arabic. The kharja genre has been related to the closing German stanzas in the Codex Buranus before, but a more thorough approach seems necessary.