Thank you for inviting me for a chance to present my source on the use of prophecy in

secular medieval literature around 1200 and I hope you can all see my PowerPoint presentation now.

Since this is a vast topic that couldn't possibly discuss comprehensively in 40 minutes,

I'm going to concentrate on three aspects. Firstly, I will offer a theoretical approach

to how prophecy in medieval literature can be analyzed and understood in the context of a

narrative. I will illustrate this with the help of one seminal instance of prophecy from the Nibelungen

Lied. Secondly, I will show that medieval authors around 1200 were well aware of the ambivalent

and complex semantics of prophecies and used them in a variety of ways. To demonstrate this,

I will give a few examples of the presentation and evaluation of prophecy in two romances of

antiquity. Thirdly, I will delve deeper into the narrative functions of prophecy in the Nibelungen

Lieds. This close reading will examine the ways the narrative employs prophecy to discuss wider

scenes like human agency, the possibility of knowing the future, as well as its interactions

with other modes of temporal organization like the frequent prolepsies offered by the narrator.

That prophecies are a staple of middle high jam literature will not be surprising to anyone who

has ever read a medieval romance or heroic epic. Prophecies are reference points for the

intro-diegetic protagonists, they drive the plot of the story and they administer knowledge on several

narrative levels. Prophecies can be part of the text's ancient source material, they can stem

from theological discourse, employ astrological knowledge or simply be a new invention by the

author. They can also take many forms, be it the utterance of a prophetic character, a prophetic

dream or even an object inscribed with a prophecy. In my research, I consider prophecy as just one

type of foretelling found in many medieval texts. Foretellings can occur on every level of a narrative,

they are means to transmit and question knowledge about the future. They help organize the temporal

structure of a work and create complex configurations of contingency and providence of agency and fate.

They also interact in complex ways, connecting the intro with the extra-diegetic levels of the text,

the characters of the narrated world with the narrator and the implicit audience. I will be

coming back to these complex interactions in the third part of my presentation, for now let's concentrate on prophecy.

In its most clear-cut form, prophecy in those three instances, first the often transcendent

source of prophetic knowledge, second the prophetic medium, be it character or thing,

that receives this knowledge and transmits it to its intended recipient, and third the recipient

or recipients themselves. These three instances and the interaction between them can be visualized

in the form of a triadic communication model. The sender, that is the source of prophetic knowledge

which is imparted to the prophet, is most often of a transcendent, supernatural or otherworldly nature.

This sender possesses superior knowledge of the future and transmits it to the medium. It can be

encoded in a variety of ways, be it in dreams, signs, astrological configurations, horoscopes,

or utterances. The prophecy must then be decoded, either by the medium itself or by an additional

interpreter who makes its meaning available to the intended recipient. This recipient can either be

the medium itself, in cases where these two functions coincide, or it can be a wider audience

like a group of people or a whole society. To give an example, in the first aventure of the

Nibelung meat, a heroic epic put into writing around 1200, we are introduced to Krimhild,

a princess of Burgundy and her family. The court is large and well-ordered, Krimhild is very

beautiful, her brothers, the kings, are powerful and rich. In this state of great honor, Krimhild has a dream.

And I would read the Middle-Eight German original, you can find my English translation on the right hand side.

The originator of this dream is not named in the text, Krimhild serves as its medium, but lacking experience,

she is unable to understand the dream by herself. She employs her mother as interpreter, who gives

a succinct explanation, the hawk as a future husband who will die young. Extra-diagetically,

that is from the perspective of the implicit audience, the dream refers to the first half of

the narrative, and it is most often read in this function as a summary of a plot. Krimhild and the

exorbitant Siegfried meet and fall in love, he wins a hand by tricking Queen Brunhilde into marriage

with Krimhild's brother Gunther. After the trick is discovered, Gunther and his vassal Hagen

successfully plot to murder Siegfried. Krimhild suffers extreme pain and loss, which lead to the