THE SATIRIC PERSONA IN NEIDHART VON REUENTAL'S LYRICS

Neidhart is a thirteenth century German poet who adapted certain themes from Minnesang, medieval Latin lyrics, and the French pastourelle to compose an unusual body of satiric lyrics. Neidhart's persona implies a close association with the medieval conception of the natural order. This persona expresses a peculiar sexual vitality in the summer lyrics while a winter Natureingang (introduction using distinctive references to the season) radically modifies the original persona of the summer lyric. Engelmar's theft of Vriderun's mirror precipitates this radical change in the persona's perspective on the natural order. This theft is a frequently mentioned cause for the persona's winter lament.Other medieval writers adapted Claudian's allegorical myth to serve their own purposes. Boethius patterns his Philosophy on the dialectical figure of Proserpine. He posits the necessity to subordinate one half of this dialectic to the other half, subjugating a fecund summer imagination to the restraints of winter reason. Bernard de Silvestris uses the dialectic to explain the composition of the cosmos Natura represents the intermediate figure (a balanced one) between her two sisters, Urania (a winter type) and Physis (a summer figure). Alanus de Insulis uses the natural dialectic to explore issues of human morality in both of his major allegorical works, de planctu Naturae and the Anticlaudianus. The Anticlaudianus is an allegorical reversal of the events occurring in Claudian's de raptu Proserpinae, urging a return to the Golden Age of eternal summer.Neidhart's perspective on this natural dialectic between seasons, instincts, and human faculties bears much in common with Alanus' viewpoint. Both writers reject the unnatural constraints of the winter order. Neidhart extends this dialectic further by applying it to themes from Germanic myth and folk ritual, incorporating certain summer and winter rituals (for example, the Wild Hunt) in his lyric scenes or dramas. Neidhart's persona claims insistently that Summer and its impulses are morally and naturally superior to oppressive winter and his gang of thugs. The poet, however, exposes his persona to the audience as a seductive, unaspiring, petty aristocrat. The dialectic within the natural order is reduced to the level of two morally vicious, but mutually hostile forces (Engelmar and Neidhart's persona). The cosmos reduced to this low level constitutes the satiric field upon which the persona can do battle against the social, sexual and economic oppression of one half of mankind by the other half.The medieval concept of Natura is derived, in large part, from the classical myth of the Rape of Proserpine. Claudian's version of this myth (written in the fourth century) provides an allegorical connection between the figures of Proserpine and Natura. Moreover, Claudian associates a distinctive natural and philosophical dialectic with the myth of Proserpine. Prior to her abduction by Pluto, Proserpine represents the Golden Age of Saturn, a period of year-long summer. After her rape, Proserpine is transformed into a type of Hecate, a sublunar representative of Jove's Silver Age, a period of endless winter. Proserpine's yearly alternation between the realms of her mother, Ceres, and her husband, Pluto, suggests a mythological explanation for the change in seasons, between summer and winter. Jove dictates this marriage between Proserpine and Pluto in order to resolve the imbalance between the principles or drives related to winter and those related to summer.