Heinrich Wittenwiler: Der Ring

von Heinrich Wittenwiler

Considered a "Haupt- und Schlüsselwerk des Spätmittelalters" (one of the most important texts of the Late Middle Ages), Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring (ca. 1410) is a comic, didactic, verse narrative of courtship, violence and war and even world war that reflects the crisis of meaning and breeches during the transition from the medieval to the modern era. This new translation is based on the sole manuscript and not on the edition previously published by Edmund Wiessner (1931). Even today, the fascination of The Ring is founded on its powerful eloquence, its delight at the reversal of socio-cultural orders and the play with all forms of the ugly and obscene, but also on its profound piety and its- admittedly futile - faith in the triumph of its teachings.