Aesthetic vocabulary – How does one talk about art in the middle ages?

The answer to this question from today’s perspective seems clear: The first thing that comes to mind is all kinds of sweet foods and luxury foods - above all sugar, which is ever-present in our modern age! In addition, cute baby animals or toddlers often elicit an “Oh how sweet!”. Or the tabloid press announces a new addition to the royal family under the headline “Sweet News!"

However, when talking about aesthetic artefacts, i.e. works of art, the word ‘sweet’ initially seems rather remote - or, if we think of ‘sweet’ music or literature, for example, it has a rather depreciating undertone, with a suspicion of kitsch attached. For the Middle Ages, however, the findings on ‘sweetness’ are quite different!

Compared to our modern usage of the word, the diverse usage of ‘sweet’ in the Middle Ages is surprising. The form of the German word at the time, süeze, had an extremely wide range of meanings. It denotes ‘sweet’, ‘pleasant’, ‘agreeable’ in a wide variety of areas - both in everyday life and in the narrower ‘aesthetic’ sense: e.g. nature, food, illness, medicine, kinship, social orders, religious experiences, practices and ideas, music, song, poetry, play or dance. This diversity is also related to the fact that ‘sweet’ refers not only to taste or smell, but to all kinds of sensory perceptions, including hearing, seeing and feeling.

As part of our research into the semantics of the aesthetic, we are searching for and collecting references to süeze in a wide variety of Middle High German texts - from the medieval novel and Minnesong to the legends of saints and nature stories, just to name a few examples.

In doing so, we seek to answer the research question: to what extent is a seemingly simple, everyday word, with its multi-layered references, capable of triggering reflection on the aesthetic from a historical perspective? We use computer-aided methods for our work on the medieval texts: This involves classifying the evidence for selected words, such as süeze, on the computer using so-called annotations.

At the beginning of the cycle, the available texts are examined in detail to determine where the phenomenon in question can be found in the text. This allows the first sources of error to be identified, such as ambiguous passages that could lead to problems during annotation. Then, annotation guidelines are defined. These aim to ensure that different annotators arrive at the same results independently of each other. The precise definition of the categories forces the annotator to delve deeply into the phenomenon being searched for.

The annotation itself is carried out as a parallel annotation, meaning that at least two people always annotate the same text. This allows the team to revise the quality of the annotation guidelines by comparing the results and to discuss difficult cases collectively. Evaluation using the Inter-Annotator Agreement (IAA) shows how often two or more annotators have assigned the same categories to a text passage. The IAA thus ensures consistency and comparability.

The result of this evaluation provides information on which text passages have led to discrepancies. On this basis, the annotation guidelines are revised and the annotators receive new instructions. The cycle then starts again from the beginning.

With the help of computer-aided annotation, the süeze documents can be assigned to different areas of validity and can thus be clustered by topic. The digital tool used makes the work easier, especially with large text corpora, and helps to make the allocations comparable if several people are annotating the same texts. It also offers the option of exporting the annotations sorted by area of validity, thus making research work on the results and the visualisation of these results much easier.

Through this annotation process, we not only examine individual words, but also entire text genres. For example, we are also taking a closer look at a particular type of medieval poetry: the ‘Sangspruch’ (sung-sayings or singsongs). This refers to single-stanza texts, usually of an instructive or promotional nature. In terms of content, they deal with various topics such as religion, ethics, current affairs, the praise of princes, knowledge or art.

Sangsprüche are more than just poems - they were not simply spoken, but sung.

We explore which words Sangsprüche use to describe themselves as a form of art that is integrated into society.

For example, the authors talk about the quality of their poems, the conditions under which they wrote and the role of the audience.

The verse shown here is a praise hymn by the poet ‘Der Unverzagte’: the singer explains why he prefers singing to string playing. He thus places singing above instrumental music.

In order to detect the aesthetic vocabulary of the Sangspruch (as a lyrical genre), we also use annotation with the help of a computer. This allows us to record, sort and evaluate a large number of terms. We then determine their frequency in the entire hymn poetry or check whether different poets use expressions often or rarely, for example.

When examining the individual Sangspruch stanzas, we are guided by certain criteria as to which words are marked.

In our praise hymn stanza, for example, all words that cover the topic of art and artistic ability in the broader sense were annotated. This includes poetry, but also music and singing. Accordingly, kunst, Saitenspiel, sanc / sang(e) and klanc (art, string playing, singing and sound) were marked. The effect of art on the listeners also plays a role in this stanza. This category includes the verbs vreuwen, lêrt und genesen (delight, teach and healing), which are therefore marked in a different colour.

We are thus tracking individual words in their aesthetic meanings as well as far-reaching word networks. Can conclusions be drawn from the changes in this vocabulary over time about what the Middle Ages understood as aesthetic – and what not?

We would like to answer this overarching question through our work on the word süeze and the aesthetic vocabulary of the Middle High German Sangspruch.