2020: Special Issue 4: Figures of the third in courtly novels

Triadic logics not only unfold on the most diverse levels and fields of observation, but also differ in their explicitness, consistency and dynamics, in the dimensions, effects and temporality of their inherent irritation and ambivalence. The fixation of such an interest on the goal of ›overcoming‹ binary thinking is therefore preferable to an analytical openness. This also historically avoids the fixation of a ›boiling point‹ at which we can only speak of ›actual‹ thirdness. This thematic issue deals with personal figures of the third in pre-modern texts and their narrative productivity: with triangular, serially unfolded jealousy constellations in the ›Trojan War‹, with a rival figure in ›Reinfried von Braunschweig‹, whose axiological ambivalence also encompasses the narrative voice, and finally with the narrator as a figure of the third in ›Parzival‹, who breaks up the dual structure of the duel with different textual-aesthetic strategies.