"Ich erwirbe von ir ein lachen [I Will Receive a Smile from Her]: Female Laughter in Minnesang.”
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Overview
Overview
Description
The word “lachen” was found to be the word of the medieval German literature. This paper will analyse the way female laughter is presented in the courtly poetry of Minnesang.
The highly idealized and unattainable lady of the classical Minnesang does not laugh. In Des Minnesangs Frühling, very few poems mention laughter, and only those by the authors like Wolfram, Walther, and Heinrich von Morungen, who are known to abandon the canon of the Hohe Minne and to use erotic elements in their works. At the same time, one observes an enormous “splash” of laughter in post-classical Minnesang poetry. Descriptions of the lady laughing become very common. One also notices a particular fixation on the woman’s mouth. Often the expression “rôter munt” is used as a metonymy for a woman, and the minnesinger’s pleas are being addressed directly to it. This sensuality of the female mouth might be explained by the known connection between the two body openings – the mouth and the vagina (cf. Jane Burn’s study of French fabliaux [1993]), and the medieval story Der Borte des Dietrich von der Glezze shows that the former can serve as a substitute for the latter. The late Minnesang poems mentioning laughter often express the poet’s hope that the lady will finally reward his efforts. Not being able to consummate his love, the minnesinger transfers his attention from one body opening to another in order to make the lady appear more human and reduce the distance between her and himself. The laughter serves as one of the means of shortening or eliminating the artificial distance between the minstrel and his lady, by means of eroticizing the woman.
