From Networks of Texts to Networks of Genres? On the Classification of Texts in Compilations with a View towards Manuscript Transmission

At the end of the 14th century, Jakob Twinger von Königshofen, a cleric from Strasbourg, composed
a chronicle in the vernacular that spread widely – up to today nearly 130 manuscripts
are known that contain the text, wholly or in parts, and that were produced not only in
Strasbourg, but as far as Cologne, Augsburg, or Tyrol. About thirty qualify as true copies,
while in the big majority of the witnesses, the text is altered in various ways: abbreviated,
augmented, updated, corrected, put in a dierent order, and more often than not combined
with other texts, either with distinct text boundaries or resulting in new compositions made
of several texts.
In several manuscripts, a combination of historiographical texts – chronicles, annals, lists,
etc. – can be observed, leading to the assumption that Twinger’s work was preferably copied
for historiographical compilations and that its structure facilitated some historiographical
activity of the recipients.. But this view puts a big weight on the genre of

23-10-2020 10:00 - 10:45