——. completion of commentary on Job; ed. A. Berliner in Melis.
14: 397 ff., 389 ff., rpt. in Harkavy, Abraham. Me’assef nidah.
iym (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 53–56, 69–75; cf. also I. Maarsen
in M.G.W.J. 83 (1939): 442–56.
——. Secundum Salomonem: a thirteenth century Latin com-
mentary on the Song of Solomon [according to “Rashi”], ed.
Sarah Kamin, Avrom Saltman (Benei Berak, 1989).
Secondary Literature
Berliner, Abraham. Ketaviym nivh.ariym (Jerusalem, 1945–49),
Vol. 2.
Blumenfeld, Samuel. Master of Troyes. A study of Rashi the edu-
cator (New York, 1946); actually only p. 75 ff. is on “Rashi,”
including excerpts from commentaries.
Hailperin, H. Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pittsburgh,
1963).
Rashi Anniversary Volume (New York, 1941); collected stud-
ies.
Rashi, torato ve-iyshato (New York, 1948); collected studies.
Sed-Rajna, G., ed. Rashi 1040–1990: Hommage a Ephraim E.
Urbach (Paris, 1993); I have not been able to see this in time
for this article.
See ̄fer Rashi (Jerusalem, 1956/57); collected studies.
Shereshevsky, Esra. Rashi the Man and His Wo r l d (New York,
1982); see critical review by Roth in Hebrew Studies 24
(1983): 221–23 with additional bibliography.
Norman Roth
REINMAR DER ALTE
(fl. late 12th c.–early 13th c.)
Reinmar der Alte (the old) or, as he is often called by
scholars, Reinmar von Hagenau, is the most prolifi c min-
nesinger of the twelfth century. He fl ourished (in the last
fi fteen or so years of the twelfth and the fi rst years of the
thirteenth) at the Babenberg court in Vienna, and prob-
ably also traveled widely, as did most courtiers and court
retainers. He left no documentary record; we know him
only as he presents himself and as other poets refer to
him. He lacks the range of Walther von der Vogelweide;
the only didactic lyrics he wrote were a few refl ections
on love, there is no Leich transmitted for him, and the
only political songs ascribed to him are a widow’s la-
ment and two crusading songs. Yet the view of him as
a singer of only one style of minnesong (courtly love
song)—the lament of the hapless suitor—though infl u-
enced by his own stylization of his persona, is largely
an artifact of scholarship during the past two centuries.
Especially toward the end of the nineteenth and the fi rst
half of the twentieth century, scholars created an ever
narrower image of Reinmar by claiming that songs and
strophes ascribed to him were spurious, until the number
of “pseudo-Reinmar” strophes exceeded those accepted
as genuine. If we accept that he sang (and, in large part,
created) most of the songs and strophes ascribed to him,
it becomes clear that his oeuvre was rich and varied in
addition to being extensive.
Even the narrow Reinmar canon is more nuanced
than scholars were initially willing to perceive. For one
thing, Reinmar utilizes the woman’s voice more often
and in more different ways than any minnesinger save
Neidhart, whose peasant women and girls refl ect the
pastourelle (bucolic) rather than the Wechsel (exchange)
that was Reinmar’s inspiration. One thing becomes
clear in the multifaceted roles the woman’s voices
depict: Reinmar’s women cannot be equated with his
persona’s lady. The lady as the suitor describes her is
recalcitrant, haughty, distant; the noble woman’s voices
show someone who, if she spurns her suitor, does so
unwillingly, constrained by fear of social sanctions.
Often, she demonstrates a desire for her lover far more
impassioned (and physical) than that expressed by “Re-
inmar” in his stereotypical role. Indeed, she exposes his
maunderings as misguided at best, ludicrous at worst. Of
course, the woman’s voice is Reinmar’s projection just
as much as the man’s voice, but he surely intends the
incongruity between the stances portrayed to be noted
and relished. Just as Don Quixote is Cervantes’s knight
of the woeful countenance, Reinmar’s suitor is doleful.
Both are (tragi-) comic fi ctions. In many of the songs
in the man’s voice, the lady is marginalized, referred
to sparingly and obliquely, and the primary subjects of
the song are an examination of the suitor’s feelings, the
singer’s singing, and the audience’s reaction to songs
or singer. The syntax is typically complex; abstractions
and legalisms (casuistries) abound. Imagery is rare; it
may be that where Reinmar tried to introduce imagery
(in part, perhaps, by appropriating strophes from other
singers), his audience rejected it. Several songs con-
taining a strophe with some striking image omit this
strophe in most versions and others are transmitted only
once. For many minnesingers songs are transmitted in
multiple versions; for no singer is this transmission ten-
dency more common than for Reinmar. Not only was he
prolifi c, he was apparently also intent on extending and
varying his repertoire by changing the order and number
of strophes and even, on occasion, the basic tenor of
songs. Changes in wording, form, and most strikingly
voice enable him to make new songs of old ones. Some
of the variants we have are due to later singers (such as
Niune) appropriating songs or scribes adding strophes
from other versions or deleting ones they consider inap-
propriate or corrupt. And some of the textual variants
are due to faulty copying, fl awed memory, or scribal
“improvements.” Nevertheless, though most scholars
dispute or disregard it, the texts make it abundantly clear
that an authorial intention is behind most of the variance
we fi nd in Reinmar’s (and other minnesingers’) songs.
Many minnesingers thematize singing about singing;
but Reinmar, with his unusually introspective and refl ec-
tive persona, does so more than most. While focusing
on the theme and engaging that segment of the listeners
most concerned with singing, other singers, directly, he
reacts to and may even borrow and adapt strophes fromREINMAR DER ALTE