SFB 804 TP Friendship

The ethos of friendship. Discourses and narratives of public spirit in medieval literature

(from May 2011 - June 2014 as subproject S in the CRC 804 "Transcendence and Public Spirit")

The research project investigates friendship as a central element of a social virtue system and as a concept that underpins social order in high medieval literature and culture. In medieval society, friendship functions as a key concept for various political, social and personal relationships. This leads to an extreme ambiguity of the concept of friendship, whose polysemic structure the project analyzes within the different but interlinked discourses and narratives.

The central question of the project is the extent to which conceptions of friendship draw on transcendences in order to lend meaning and stability to social bonds that are not structured by kinship or power relations. This gives rise to further questions about the function of friendship for the integration of strangers into communities, about the possibilities and limits of homosocial and heterosocial gender relations and about the precondition of elite conceptions for the construction of friendship.
The aim of the project is to show the respective semantic formulation of the concept of friendship and to examine its significance for the construction of public spirit.

Project manager

Prof. Dr. Marina Münkler

Research Associates (according to the structure of the SFB project):

Supplementary equipment (DFG-funded):

• Matthias Standke

• MA Denise Theßeling

Basic equipment (Chair staff):

• Anne-Katrin Federow

• Dr. Kay Malcher

• Antje Sablotny, M.A.

The project is divided into five work areas.

Work area 1

The ancient discourse on friendship

The ancient discourse on friendship can be regarded as a leading discourse that for the first time reflects constructions of friendship as an ethical-political resource. The analysis is dedicated to the question of the extent to which the ancient friendship ethic establishes and stabilizes the cohesion of the polis or the res publica.

Cf. publications by Marina Münkler

Research area 2

The monastic discourse on friendship

With regard to the monastic discourse on friendship, this project examines the way in which the question of the social connection of individuals and its binding nature is linked to the question of the claim to a relationship with God and the extent to which this is a relationship of justification or competition.

Cf. publications by Marina Münkler and Antje Sablotny

Work area 3

Friendship in the heroic epic

Heroic epic texts are analyzed under the guiding question of how they narrate the possibilities and aporias of the friendship medium with regard to different integration mechanisms such as brotherhood in arms, patronage and trust between the representatives of different ruling associations.

Cf. dissertation project and publications Anne-Katrin Federow

Research area 4

Friendship in the courtly novel

The courtly novel is examined in terms of the extent to which friendship oscillates between the generation of delimited close relationships and the orientation towards courtly-chivalric values and whether the two selective achievements are linked or compete with each other.

Cf. dissertation project and publications Denise Theßeling

Work area 5

Friendship in the legend

The investigation of legends and legendary narratives pursues the question of whether the communication medium of friendship as a fundamentally otherworldly orientation of the future saint necessitates different selections of inner-worldly friendship in different types of legends.

Cf. dissertation project and publications Matthias Standke