Ausgerenkte Ordnung. Vier Prosaepen aus dem Umkreis der Gräfin Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken: ‘Herzog Herpin', ‘Loher und Maller', ‘Huge Scheppel', ‘Königin Sibille'. Von Ute von Bloh. Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, 119. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2002. Pp. x + 473. 31 plates. EUR 58.

Ute von Bloh's Ausgerenkte Ordnung is a detailed examination of the four prose epics linked to Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken: Herzog Herpin, Loher und Maller, Huge Scheppel, and Königin Sibille. In addition to a detailed Forschungsbericht, von Bloh examines both the source history and the manuscript (and, to a lesser extent, print) tradition of the texts. She notes that the four epics have often been measured against historical reality, especially in older scholarship (p. 19), and queries the relationship of the narrative to the context. She then studies the epics in their cultural and historical contexts and, by linking specific narrative structures to the cultural-historical context in which they were transmitted and received, seeks to better understand the world of early-modern prose epics. In the last part of the study, von Bloh uses the manuscript illustrations to bolster her argument.

Katya Skow
The Citadel