Uta and Isolde: Designing a Perfect WomanSterling-Hellenbrand, Alexandra, 1965-

Essays in Medieval Studies, Volume 19, 2002, pp. 70-89 (Article)

Published by West Virginia University PressDOI: 10.1353/ems.2003.0008

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by BTCA Universitat de Barcelona at 09/22/12 6:31PM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ems/summary/v019/19.1sterling.html

Chapter 6 Uta and Isolde: Designing aPerfect Woman

Alexandra Sterling-HellenbrandGoshen College

Essays in Medieval Studies 19 (2002), 70-89. Illinois Medieval Association. Publishedelectronically by the Muse Project at http://muse.jhu.edu

Both art historians and scholars of medieval literature have noted the re-semblance between the position and pose of the figure of Reglindis and the liter-ary portrait of Isolde in German poet Gottfried von Strassburgs Tristan (ca. 1210).1Indeed, the fact that Gottfried was an approximate contemporary of the NaumburgerMeister suggests a logical parallel. In this essay, I will explore the possible artisticresonances between Gottfrieds description of Isolde and the Naumburg sculp-tures, focusing not only on the figure of Reglindis but also on that of Uta. Thecomparison with Gottfrieds Isolde will provide a unique opportunity to examinethe aesthetic parallels between two kinds of texts in verse and in stone; the dis-cussion will illuminate the nature of the community for which the texts were cre-ated and intended. As Mary Carruthers points out, the process of creating texts, oftextualization, is complex and multi-layered: Textus also means texture, thelayers of meaning that attach as a text is woven into and through the historical andinstitutional fabric of a society. For Carruthers, the process through which text isimbued with social context and meaning has to do with memory or memoria:Whether the words come through the sensory gateways of the eyes or the ears,they must be processed and transformed in memorythey are made our own.2We can perhaps view the interaction of the visual and the literary arts in our dis-cussion of Isolde and Uta as an exercise in what Carruthers calls the praxis ofmemory.

A portion of the memory dates back to a letter from the bishop of Merseburgin 1249.3 Hoping to inspire the generosity of present donors by citing the exem-plary patrons of the past, Bishop Dietrich requests prayers and (more importantly)monetary donations to support the completion of the renovations to the cathedralof St. Peter and St. Paul in the prosperous commercial city of Naumburg. Amongthese exemplary patrons, the letter names Hermann and Ekkehard, the two sons of

Uta and Isolde 71

Ekkehard I, who was one of the first rulers of the settlement at Naumburg in theearly eleventh century. The original cathedral at Naumburg was built upon thesite of his grave between 1002 and 1021. Following Ekkehards murder in 1002,his two sons succeeded him: Herrmann (d. 1032) and Ekkehard (d. 1046).

The success of Bishop Dietrichs campaign almost two hundred years afterthe deaths of the first Ekkehardiner, and his reverence for the original donors, canbe seen in the twelve life-sized stone figures, carved at a height of approximatelytwelve feet (four meters) that ring the west choir (see fig. 1). The figures are thework of the so-called Naumburger Meister, of whom little else is known, al-though there are works attributed to him in France and in the Rhineland: fromStrassburg and Amiens to Mainz and Meissen (seven figures in the Meissen cathe-dral are credited to him). While an exact chronology of his work is uncertain, thesculptor is said to have been active in Mainz in the 1230s or 1240s. The bishopsletter of 1249 is taken as evidence that the sculptures were in progress in Naumburgaround mid-century. Each statue appears designed to correspond to one of thedonors named in Dietrichs letter; indeed, five of the figures carry shields withtheir names inscribed on them, as we can see from the example of Dietmar (seefig. 2).4 One assumes that the sculptor was to craft memorial sculptures for thepatrons of the original chapel whose remains were buried in the church (in thecathedral or in the family parish). However exemplary these donors may havebeen in life, their memorials are grave monuments of a unique sort, the more sobecause the figures depict members of a secular and relatively minor aristocraticfamily represented in a context usually reserved for saints or for royalty (Bumke,2: 398-399). Four figures in particular command the gaze of the viewer: two couplesstand opposite one another, placed together as pairs, one pair at each of the centralpillars of the west choir. These couples can be identified as the sons of EkkehardI and their wives: Hermann and Reglindis on one side of the choir, facing EkkehardII and Uta. These pairs form the division between rectangle and polygon, support-ing the arch of the ceiling; their spatial significance underscores their political andideological significance.

I wish to pay particular attention to the portraits of Reglindis and Uta.Reglindis exudes a sense of almost dance-like movement (see fig. 3). She smileswith every feature of her face, even with the tilt of her heada smile so infectiousit provokes an answering smile in the viewer.5 Positioned with her head tiltedtoward the statue of her husband Hermann, she looks as if she is flirting with him.Her gesture accentuates her physical presence: she holds her cloak together at herneck and at her waist (the right hand of the statue closes the cloak at the top, whilethe left hand grasps the material further down her body). One detail to note aboutthis particular portrait is that the person of Reglindis is out of proportion with herpartner, her head for instance being considerably larger than life-sized. Pindercomments: the woman is too big (p. 22). He goes on to describe the portrait asgraphically flat and considers the statue to be of generally inferior quality. Art

72 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

historians of the mid-twentieth century (including Pinder and his contemporaryErnst Schubert) have referred to Reglindis as lusty, placing her in the categoryof a servant girl. The perception that Reglindis might be of inferior status seemsprompted less by the merits of the statue or its analogues than by the tendency tocompare this portrait unfavorably with the figure of Uta on the other side of thecathedrals west choir.

Indeed, the womens portraits are very different.6 Whereas Reglindis invitesthe viewer to join her laughter and her movement, the tall and regal (and betterproportioned) Uta gazes thoughtfully out across the intervening space (see fig.4).Utas aristocratic posture is accentuated by the heavy cloak that drapes her figure,falling long and straight to her beautifully shod feet, and half concealing her facebehind its stiff collar. A single large brooch indicates the richness of the garmentsbeaneath. The long fingers of her left hand, considered an artistic masterpiece,7grasp the folds of the material at her waist. Standing serious and graceful by herhusband, Uta offers an equally fascinating portrait, as compelling in its dignityand stateliness as that of Reglindis in her cheerful animation.

Tomb sculpture in Gothic art was representative in nature;8 while it was aparticularly rich form of self-presentation, according to Michael Camille, it isprimarily social rather than subjective identity that is carried into eternity.9Considerations such as these are not new to the discussions and descriptions of thesculptures of Naumburg, for clearly the statues represent the nobility, not theindividuality, of the aristocratic patrons. The social aspect of their identity is furtherenhanced through the allusive nature of the statues that enact it, intentionallyfacilitating a communication between the art and the viewer. Indeed, Camilledescribes Gothic art as a multi-layered, indeed a polyvalent, mode of discourserooted in a plastic, three-dimensional attitude to space offering a world ofincredible intensity and colour, constructing richly embellished three-dimensionalobjects into which people could enter psychologically. This art encouraged theparticipation of the viewer;11 it was allusive as well as dynamic and interactive.10The Naumburg sculptures offer uniquely allusive representations on multiple levels.As mentioned above, these undeniably secular figures inhabit an undeniably sacredspace. Their placement in the west choir alludes to standard personifications ofvirtue and vice that one might expect to find in such a space. Hermann, for instance,looks his part: the rueful and suffering victim of an assassination ordered by hisyounger brother, now eternally mindful of his human shortcomings andadmonishing us to learn from his example. Opposite him, Ekkehard takes a moreheroic/majestic stance, the leader whose ascent to power left a stain on hisconscience; beside him, the self-possessed Uta seems to protect her virtue behindher up-turned mantle collar, perhaps designed (literally) to separate her and herinnocence from her husbands more unsavory deeds and his guilt. Utas earnestgaze and solemn virtue contrast with the exuberance of Reglindis joyful demeanor.Gertrud Bumer associates this joy with the typical role of the courtly lady, quoting

Uta and Isolde 73

Gottfrieds description of Isolde as a wonder and a joy/the joy-giving sun (einwunder und ein wunne/die wunneberende sunne, 11005-11006); the sun bringsits radiance to all who behold it. For Stange, Reglindis exemplifies the joyful andunerring trust in God that Thomas Aquinas calls fiducia hilaris ac secura, and shethus provides an appropriate opposite for Uta. Aspects of her posture also evokecontemporary portrayals of the wise and foolish virgins. Bumer mentions a parallelwith the wise virgins at Magdeburg.12 An initial first glance might also invite theviewer to compare Reglindiss smile with the broad grin of the foolish virgin nearestthe tempter at the Strassburg cathedral; Reglindiss right hand grasps the tassels ofher cloak in a gesture analogous to that of the Strassburg figure.13

While the Strassburg virgins unequivocally dramatize and enact14 Virtueor Vicethat being the purpose of their design and their placement in the cathe-dralthe statue of Reglindis offers a locus for the intersection of a variety ofassociations from not only sacred but also secular sources, most notably Gottfriedsliterary portrait of Isolde in verses 10885-11020 as she enters her fathers hall toconfront the chamberlain. Isoldes right hand is positioned to hold her cloak inplace; she has hooked the left thumb in the string of pearls that fastens the cloakbelow her neck:

She had brought her right hand farther down down, you know,to where one closes the mantle, and held it decorously togetherwith two of her fingers. (10940-44)15

The hands of Reglindis offer an illustration (though in a mirror image) of Isoldesposition: the right hand of the statue closes the cloak at the top, while the left handgrasps the material further down her body. Indeed, Gottfried seems to be lookingat a statue and describing it, offering in his portrait an unprecedented synthesis ofvisual aesthetics and literary conventions.16 Entering the hall, Isolde representsthe height of Gothic art in the poets attempt to realize the aesthetic potential ofthe idea daz lebende bild. As art holds the mirror up to art, Gottfried showshimself to be a master craftsman like the Naumburger Meister.17 It is not sodifficult to imagine either Reglindis or Uta entering the hall of the Irish king.

We have noted that Gottfried and the Naumburg sculptor were approximatecontemporaries, and the possibility that the sculptor might have been active inGottfrieds geographical area suggests that we further explore this parallel withthe figures at Naumburg. Moreover, Naumburg lies in an area in which literatureand art flourished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Wolfram vonEschenbachs Parzival, for example, was written not far away at the court ofHermann of Thuringia. I do not suggest a direct influence of Gottfrieds text onthe sculpture in Naumburg. As Penny Schine Gold has suggested, however, anemphasis on the particular, without the presumption of a fixed causal relationshipcan allow us to examine possible connections that are the connections of a commonattitude or a common structure of thought and action.18 Such connections of a

74 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

common structure thus make the Naumburg figures uniquely significant for acomparison with Gottfrieds Isolde, for Reglindis and Uta lived more than twohundred years before the sculptor immortalized them in the Naumburg west choir.The thirteenth-century sculptor thus reveals much about his community and itsideals around 1250, as he crafts a new text while attempting to portray long-deadbut legendary patrons.

Another connection between Gottfried and the Naumburger Meister has todo with the interactive nature of the portraits they create. While recent attention inmedieval studies has focused increasingly on material culture, particularly withrespect to relationships between texts and images,19 I wish to use the remainder ofthis essay to explore a less direct connection between material object and text.Evelyn Vitz has described the audience of medieval romance as a communityinvolved in an intense, interpersonal, heavily-mediated, and strongly interactivesituation.20 Addressing the impact of this interaction on audience response andinterpretation, Vitz continues:

Thus, esthetic response and interpretive activity were fundamen-tally, and from the start, a collective construct. It is this power-ful social realityput negatively, this lack of interest in indi-vidual freedom, put positively this sense of communitythatmade public performance, including public reading, an endur-ing phenomenon throughout the entire medieval period, and wellbeyond. We must assume that people valued the experience ofgroup reception: the sense of a truly shared culture. They en-joyed being part of a family. (p. 282)

Gottfried and the Naumburger Meister were at least not-so-distant relativesin the family that shared thirteenth-century courtly culture. Golds connectionsof a common structure are mediated by the interactions that the cultural familyshares. The cultural overtones that associate the stone portraits of Naumburg withGottfrieds literary portrait draw our attention to the types of interactions encour-aged by both arts and to the artistic ideals reflected in and, perhaps more impor-tantly, refracted through these interactions. The question arises: what might thesculpture reveal to us about the realization or the materialization in concrete termsof the beauty described in Gottfrieds text? How might Uta, for instance, andIsolde encourage a quality of interaction with the viewer or listener that wouldgenerate for the audience the image, the portrait of a perfectly designed woman?

The statues in Naumburg elicit the dynamic interaction that Camille identi-fies with Gothic art. Across the space of the west choir, Reglindiss infectiouslyopen smile meets the veiled and contemplative demeanor of the more serious Uta,and the contrast between these figures invites the viewer to engage in their dia-logue.21 This dialogue brings us back to Isolde, for similar interaction is moreexplicitly encouraged and facilitated by the poet Gottfried. Her clothing receives

Uta and Isolde 75

most attentionthe mantle/cloak and the dress are described in detail for sixtylines of verse.22 Gottfried alludes to Isoldes facial features by their effect: ichwaene, st vil manegen man/ sn selbes d beroubete (I think, Isolde robbedmany a man of his very self 10960-61). Although the audience is left to imagineany specifics, they certainly would have known the type. As she moves into thehall and into her audiences sight, Isolde and her dress present a work of art thatdemands the participation not only of the audience in Gottfrieds narrative butalso of the medieval listeners and of the twenty-first century readers. By thus en-gaging multiple audiences, this work of art continuously resists fixed form, re-maining in motion and encouraging constant dialogue with the text.

Gottfried begins by announcing the presence of Isolde as that perfect beingthat Love has created (als s diu Minne draete, 10894), a consummate piece ofworkmanship:

The girl glided gently forward, keeping even pace with her Dawn,on the same path, with the same step, exquisitely formed in ev-ery part, tall, well-molded, and slender, and shaped in her attireas if Love had formed her to be her own falcon, the fulfillmentof every wish which nothing can surpass. (10885-99; emphasismine)23

Though both Isoldes, mother and daughter, enter the hall together, the poet fo-cuses the gaze of the audience promptly and directly on the younger Isolde, craft-ing her figure by describing her clothing; indeed, as he describes Isoldes dressduring her entrance to the hall before the confrontation with the chamberlain,Gottfried encourages his audience to participate actively in his description:

She wore a robe and mantle of brown samite cut in the Frenchfashion and accordingly, where the sides slope down to theircurves, the robe was fringed and gathered into her body with abelt of woven silk, which hung where a belt is supposed to hang.Her robe fitted her intimately, it clung close to her body, it nei-ther bulged nor sagged but sat smoothly everywhere all the waydown. (10909-13)24

Gottfrieds words fairly caress Isoldes form, compelling the audience to followthe cut of the dress and the body within it and then explicitly inviting the listenersto complete part of the picture; he concludes this description saying of the dressthat its folds and drape were arranged about the feet as much as each of youdesires (10914-10916; italics mine)25 Each onlooker desires to have the dress, tohave the bodyto have the woman embodying and enacting for them a perfectdesign.

After describing the material and the folds of the dress, Gottfried then pro-ceeds to direct our gaze to the outer covering, i.e. the cloak. Again, the poet

76 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

provokes the audience to imagine where Isoldes hands are positioned (10935-44). We are given hints as to what else we might glean from the folds of the cloak,no longer in the second person inclusive form but alluded to in the third person:From there it fell unhampered in a last fold revealing this and that. (10945-47)26And then of course the poet qualifies what one could see, just so that we do notentertain any indecent thoughts (though we most certainly may have already!):I mean the fur and its covering (ich meine vederen unde dach 10948). Andjust to make certain we are following his design, literally thinking along his lines,Gottfried alludes again to that which one could see inside and out (inne undzen): One saw it inside and out, andhidden away withinthe image thatLove had shaped so rarely in body and in spirit! (10949-53)27 Isolde is a livingportrait, a living picture; she is the a perfect union of body and spirit, of body andmind, lbe and sinne (10951) that love has created to perfection: These twothingslathe and needlehad never made a living image more perfect! (10954-56)28 Love (minne) has outdone herself! No picture can surpass this living imageupon which the audience now gazes. The sense of motion is intensified by the factthat Isolde now seems literally devoured by the glances of the audience, whoseeyes are eager to have a piece of this treasure and even to steal some of it): Rapa-cious feathered glances flew thick as falling snow, ranging from side to side insearch of prey (10957-59).29 The motion, not only of the many darting eyes butof Isolde and her dress, conveys an unmistakable eroticism. Mario Perniola de-scribes eroticism in the figurative arts as conditional on the possibility of move-ment: In the figurative arts, eroticism appears as a relationship between clothingand nudity. Therefore, it is conditional on the possibility of movementtransitfrom one state to the other.30

As the young Isolde moves, she also looks, and Gottfried turns here to theimagery of birds and of the hunt to describe her: as upright as a sparrowhawk(sperwaere), as beautiful as a parrot (papegn), her eyes looking over the audi-ence like (hunting) falcons (valke):

Thus Isolde went with Isolde, the daughter with her mother,happy and carefree. The swing of her steps was measured, theywere neither short nor long, yet partook of the quality of either.Her figure was free and erect as a sparrow-hawks, well-preenedas a parakeets. (10994-99)31

Isolde can match these glances as she allows her eyes to dart here and there: sieliez ir ougen umbe gn/ als der valke f dem aste. (She sent her eyes roving likea falcon on its bough, 10996-97). A proud and beautiful huntress, her bearingaccentuated by the bird imagery used to describe her, this huntress is also thehunted; Isolde is the tame prey, of both the romances participants and its readers/listeners. In motion as she enters the hall, she also remains constantly in motionwith respect to the eyes of the audience; they cannot tear their own gaze from the

Uta and Isolde 77

delightful mirrors that are Isoldes eyes, marvels of creation that reflect and fixthe audiences wonder in return: that there was scarce a pair of eyes to whom hertwo mirrors were not a marvel and delight (11003-5).32 As the poet consistentlyreminds the audience to imagine and to envision and to gaze upon this wonder ofbeauty and craftsmanship, they form and mold her beauty in their minds accord-ing to his (that is, the poets) image.

By means of the dress, its motion, and the motion of its wearer, Gottfriedconsistently draws attention to the artistic construction of his Isolde. Indeed, it isIsoldes clothing (the dress that inscribes Isoldes space and simultaneously en-hances her movement) that illustrates the innovative nature of her portrait. Jaegercomments:

The motion of the entrance passes into the sweep of the gar-ments. The poet is not interested in color, fabric, richness, work-manship, but in the flow, sweep and folds of the garments.33

Isoldes dress performs the function here that social anthropologist Joanne Eicherhas attributed to apparel in general. Eicher understands dress not only as cloth andclothing, jewelry and other ornaments, but as the complex interaction of body andgarment including sound and texture, smell and motion.34 In this way, dress pro-vides an instantaneous communication system a means of interaction that isunderstood by both wearer and viewer. 35 The dress, and Isolde in it, functionhere as part of material culture that, according to Roberta Gilchrist, forms thearena in which social relatonships are negotiated, expressed through the construc-tion on landscapes, architecture and boundaries.36 The audience is repeatedlyencouraged to participate in the crafting of the young woman who is in the processof walking into their midst. To return to the image of the mirror (spiegelglas),we could refer to E. Jane Burnss most recent work as a way to extend the imageand ask how Gottfried uses the mechanism of the mirror to facilitate this interac-tive gaze and consciously fashion Isoldes self as she glides forward wrappedin the folds of fabric that constitute a significant cultural body of their own.37One can imagine Isolde positioned both as object and subject, as other and as self,though the questions of whose other? and whose self? have no simple an-swer.38 While the poet emphasizes on several occasions in this passage that Lovehas formed Isolde on a lathe (10896 and 10953-54), Isolde is not a statue and sheis not stone. Thus, the figure of Isolde as a living image (ein lebende bilde) is notsimply aesthetic, as Jaeger proposes,39 but it is also thematic (as I have arguedelsewhere)40 as an illustration of Isolde as a work in progress. Judith Butler andothers have emphasized that gender is performative: gender is relational, mobile,and negotiable. Gender is not simply always a doing, as Butler states, but it isalso a culturally specific process of becoming.41 This process, and the social bodythat results, is enabled by dress. The parallels suggested here between thirteenth-century text and image using the examples of Gottfrieds Isolde and the figure of

78 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

Uta (as well as that of Reglindis) encourage further questions such as the degree towhich sculpture and narrative, as texts, enable the processes of becoming andperformance and the degree to which they might encourage the fixation of beingin stone. They also raise the question of the role of memory (memoria) in theinterplay of visual and narrative texts, in the dialogue that the sculptures atNaumburg enact and engender as they allude variously to parallel images in othersacred spaces and in secular verse.

The possible connections between texts and various visualizations (particu-larly for a largely illiterate culture) raise questions regarding the nature and pur-pose of the textual communities that received them. I offer the above observationsas the beginning part of a larger project in which I will explore further interactionsbetween textual and visual representations of medieval women (from the twelfththrough the fourteenth centuries) in order to continue research on the relationshipbetween medieval people and the spaces they occupy, the spaces into which theyare placed and drawn, the spaces from which viewers and readers (from the thir-teenth century as well as the twenty-first) are expected to draw meaning. We arepart of the interpretive community, part of the hermeneutic circle that is generatedthrough the reception of medieval texts in the modern present.

And these spaces and meanings, as they are enacted and embodied, aregendered. As interaction occurs between texts and audiences, as we engage in akind of interpretive play, de Lauretis encourages us to become aware of a move-ment back and forth between the representation of gender (in its male-centeredframe of reference) and what that representation leaves out or, more pointedly,makes unrepresentablebetween the space of the positions made available byhegemonic discourses and the space-off, the elsewhere, of those discourses.42

An intriguing way in which to describe a relationship between the Naumburgstatues and Isolde would be to propose that the statues offer a frame, an attempt torepresent an ideal, to fix it. Both Isolde and Uta offer an imagined aspect of anideal woman. The importance of motion and movement highlight the dynamicnature of the interactions that represent the performance of gender, in Butlerssense, and the processes of becoming that are part of that performance. In the caseof Uta and Isolde, I suggest that both the statue and the text are part of a perfor-mance discourse, working with a community of viewers who participate in thelarger interpretive community of romance described by Evelyn Vitz. It is tempt-ing to wonder about the Naumburg sculptures as public performance, though thehistory of the sculptures from the thirteenth through the nineteenth century doesnot seem to corroborate this speculation.43 Goethe apparently referred to reliefs ofthe west choir screen using the word merkwrdig (remarkable) but Goethe doesnot mention the statues at all. This omission leads Wolfgang Ullrich to posit thatthe figures remained largely unkown as late as 1813.44 At some point, to para-phrase Carruthers, the practice of memory obviously changed or became redi-rected; with the passage of time, the ability to read the richly allusive visual

Uta and Isolde 79

texts was lost as the references gradually became obscure. The texts lost meaningas they became detached from, in a sense woven out of, the historical and insti-tutional fabric of the society around them.

We cannot prove any direct influence of Gottfrieds poem on the sculpturesof the Naumburger Meister. More significant and more productive are discussionsabout the ideals that these artists used to create their pictures, their portraits andabove all the responses that these pictures appear designed to elicit. In Bodies thatMatter, Judith Butler proposes the notion of matter, not as site or surface, but asa process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of bound-ary, fixity, and surface we call matter.45 The embodied women in the texts wehave examined participate in various kinds of materialization, both literally andfiguratively. The dynamic and interactive nature of their design, however, ensuresthat they remain variously fixed or flexible. The figures of Uta and Reglindisseem to transcend their stone form as they jointly compel the interaction of thevisitor to Naumburg cathedrals west choir. Both statues resonate with Gottfriedsportrayal of Isolde, suggesting possible bodies in which we might visualize Isolde,fixing possible boundaries for interpretation . While Uta shows us one materialrepresentation of Isolde (we recall the nobility of Utas stature, the singular beautyof her left hand, the mystery of her gaze), Reglindis offers another (we are drawnby her gaiety and her gestures). It is indeed tempting to visualize Isolde on a spec-trum between these two poles.

Set in motion by Gottfrieds poetry, Isolde refuses to be contained withinthose words or fixed in stone. Burns demonstrates the ways in which clothingworks to situate bodies both historically and socially.46 Isoldes dress situates heras body and as lived experience and it thereby gives her meaning, even as thefabric is designed to present her audience with a constantly changing and multi-faceted performance.47 Gottfried embodies Isolde through her movement, cap-tured in the folds of her gown and her darting glances; this movement continues tocreate a space for Isolde that not only transcends the frame of her text but that alsoallows her text to resonate with others. Such resonance among texts and its signifi-cance for both medieval and modern audiences will be the focus of my futurework. The various mechanisms for embodying medieval texts, together with themeanings that are enacted and engendered by these mechanisms, demand interac-tion and encourage dialogue like the one in which the Naumburg sculptures takepart. The contrast between fixed form (in verse or in stone) and continuous move-ment (within texts and between texts) may provide a vehicle for multiple layers ofenactment and embodiment (among texts and audiences) that can be seen to char-acterize the richly embellished three-dimensional48 textual communities of thethirteenth as well as the fourteenth centuries.

80 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

Notes

1. See Gertrud Bumer, Der ritterliche Mensch. Die Naumburger Stifterfiguren(Berlin, 1941), pp. 116-118; Elke Brggen, Kleidung in der hfischen Epikdes 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1989), pp. 44-46; Joachim Bumke,Hfische Kultur (Munich, 1986), 1: 21-23.

2. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Cul-ture (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 12-13

3. From Hans K. Schulze, ed., Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Naumburg. Teil 2(1207-1304) (Kln, 2000), pp. 257-258. Helga Sciurie also discusses theletter in berlegungen zu den Stifterfiguren im Naumburger Westchor,Hfische Reprsentation: Das Zeremoniell und die Zeichen, ed. HeddaRagotzky and Horst Wenzel (Tbingen, 1990), pp. 149-171.

4. In addition to the couples Hermann and Reglindis and Ekkehard and Uta, theremaining eight patrons are: Dietmar, Sizzo, Wilhelm, Thimo, Gepa, Dietrich,Gerburg, Konrad. Thimo von Kstritz, however, was not named in BishopDietrichs letter.

5. Wilhelm Pinder, Der Naumburger Dom und der Meister seiner Bildwerke(Berlin, 1952), p. 23, noted this quality of her smile. The sculptor also fa-vored the stark, almost audible, contrast (den sprechenden Gegensatz) toUta across the space of the choir.

6. Pinders analysis focuses on the role of garments in the depiction and he di-vides the figures into two groups based on the quality of the clothing.

7. Pinder has only the highest praise for Utas left hand, calling it a wonder ofthe softest detail (ein einziges Wunder weichster Feinheit); with the cre-ation of this hand, thirteenth-century sculpture has reached its pinnacle (pp.24-25).

8. Ernst Schubert, Naumburg. Dom und Altstadt (Leipzig, 1983), p. 167, assertsthat details were obviously unimportant (Individuelle Details warenNebensache).

9. Michael Camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions (New York, 1996), p. 163.Camille continues: When the Gothic artist was called upon to delineate peopleit was this public persona or mask that was the object of portrayal (p. 164).

10. Wolfgang Htt, Der Naumburger Dom: Architektur und Plastik (Dresden,1956) and Alfred Stange, Idee und Gestalt des Naumburger Westchores (Trier,1955), emphasize the representative purpose of the statues. Camille, GothicArt, pp. 167, 180, 183.

11. Courtly love was, for instance, a vision-centered discourse. (Camille, p.167)

Uta and Isolde 81

12. Baumer, Der ritterliche Mensch, pp. 116-18. Stange, Idee und Gestalt, pp.86-87. Stange interprets Uta as a representation of Hildegards verecundia,concerned to protect herself from being tainted by the sins of her spouse (p.87).

13. Analysis of the Strassburg figures can be found in Appendix A of C. StephenJaegers book The Envy of Angels. Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals inMedieval Europe, 900-1200 (Philadelphia, 1994). The statues at Magdeburg,at Naumburg, and at Strassburg are also depicted in Brggen (figures 224,225, 231 and 250). The Strassburg figures date from around 1290, approxi-mately forty years after the Naumburg statues, with which the Magdeburgsculptures are more closely related chronologically and geographically. Onecan only speculate at any overt connections; however, the suggestion of thesmiles translation, and even of the posture, from the wise virgin at Magdeburgto the foolish virgin at Strassburg suggests a change in the social practices ofthe textual community that would interpret these texts. As Jaeger pointsout: In the Strassburg statues, the foolish virgin laughs because excessivelaughter is foolish in social practice. We see her in the grips of seduction, andthere are few better visual realizations of foolishness that the smile of theseduced (Envy, p. 343). As it invites comparison with depictions of both thewise and the foolish virgins, the smile and the pose of Reglindis add yet an-other layer to the complexity of her embodiment and her meaning.

14. Jaeger, Envy, 339.15. die rehten haete s gewant

hin nider baz, ir wizzet wol,d man den mantel sliezen sol,und slz in hfschlche in einmit ir vingere zwein.

16. C. Stephen Jaeger, Medieval Humanism in Gottfried von Strassburgs Tristanund Isolde (Heidelberg, 1977), p 111.

17. Jaeger, Medieval Humanism, pp. 116-18. Jaeger concludes that the portraitof Isolde is not totally unconventional, in that it uses forms of descriptionalready available from sculpture.

18. Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin. Image, Attitude, and Experi-ence in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago, 1985), pp. xx-xxi. Golds workwith images of the Virgin Mary during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries isof the type we are attempting here, because the images show a preoccupa-tion with working out an understanding of the relationship between male andfemale (pp. 73-74). In terms of the present essay, one would say that theimages show a preoccupation with exploring the construction of bodies, gen-der, and gendered relationships.

82 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

19. In the area of recent German studies, two particular authors deserve mention.James Rushings recent Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts(Philadelphia, 1995) explores representations of Ywain in various visual media(including murals and embroidery as well as manuscript illustrations).Stephanie Cain Van DElden has published extensively on manuscriptillustrations of Tristan. Tristan and the Tristan story generally seem to have asolid and well-researched foundation in the realm of material culture. For acomprehensive summary of recent research see also Julia Walworths Tristanin Medieval Art, in: Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook, ed. Joan TraskerGrimbert (New York, 1995) . According to Walworth, research on the visualTristan is only beginning (p. 296).

20. Evelyn Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early French Romance (Roch-ester, N.Y., 1999), p. 275.

21. Sciurie (n. 3 above) notes that each figure seems to be involved in a dramaticsituation; each figure has a dialogue partner and reacts to that partner by meansof gesture and posture, giving the impression of a dramatic context that isnever made explicit (p. 151).

22. As scholars have often observed, Isoldes face and physical attributes do notreceive as much attention as her dress. Her dress, however, provides the mecha-nism which brings her other attributes to life.

23. diu sleich ir morgenrtelse unde staetelche mitein einem spor, in einem trite,suoze gebildet ber al,lanc, f gewollen unde smal,gestellet in der waete,als s diu Minne draeteir selber zeinem vederspil,dem wunsche zeinem endezil,d vr er niemer komen kan.

24. si truoc von brnem samt anroc unde mantel, in dem snitevon Franze, und was der roc d mited engegene, md die stensinkent f ir mlten,gefranzet unde genget,nhe an ir lp getwengetmit einem borten, der lac wol,d der borte ligen sol.der roc der was ir heinlch,er tete sich nhen zuo der lch.

Uta and Isolde 83

ern truoc an keiner stat hin dan,er suohte allenthalben anal von obene hin ze tal.

25. er nam den valt unde den valunder den vezen alse vil,als iuwer ieglcher wil.

26. vrbaz d viel er selbe widerund nam den valt al zende nider,daz man diz unde daz d sach

27. man sach ez inne und zenund innerthalben lzendaz bilde, daz diu Minnean lbe und an dem sinnes schne haete gedraet.diu zwei, gedraet unde genaet,diun vollebrhten nie bazein lebende bilde danne daz.

28. diu zwei, gedraet und genaet,diun vollebrhten nie bazein lebende bilde danne daz.

29. gevedere schchblickedie vlugen d sndickeschchende dar unde dan.

30. Mario Perniola, Between Clothing and Nudity, in Fragments for a Historyof the Human Body. Part Two, ed. Michel Feder (New York, 1990), p. 236.

31. si was an ir gelzefreht und offenbaere,gelch dem sperwaere,gestreichet alse ein papegn.

32. daz d vil ltzel ougen was,in enwaeren diu zwei spiegelglasein wunder unde ein wunne.

33. Jaeger, Medeival Humanism, p. 110. Isoldes face and hair, on the other hand,are depicted in a more conventional manner.

34. See Eichers introduction to Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning, ed.Ruth Barnes and Joanne Eicher (Oxford, 1997), pp. 13-14

35. Joanne Eicher, Fashioning our Lives, University of Minnesota Magazine,Winter 2002 (Minneapolis, 2002), p. 1.

84 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

36. Gilchrist, Medieval bodies in the material world: Gender, Stigma and Body,in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester,1994), p. 43.

37. E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medi-eval French Culture (Philadelphia, 2002), p. 16.

38. Burns comments on the example of women looking into a mirror: theadored object becomes, to a degree, the looking subject: a subject gazing ather own clothes rather than someone elsesCertainly the inscribed femaleprotagonists mentioned here are not free to do as they please in shaping theconcept of femininity, but the terms of the construction alter significantlywhen they move from being a mirror reflecting the male lovers worth towomen looking at themselves in the mirror (pp. 85-86). Gottfried undeni-ably constructs Isolde for the audience who views her.

39. Jaeger asserts that the image of Isolde gliding into the hall, in dress andposture like a statue, has no thematic importance, only an aesthetic one...(Medieval Humanism, p. 113).

40. Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Topographies of Gender in Middle High Ger-man Arthurian Romance (New York, 2001), ch. 4.

41. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (NewYork, 1990), pp. 24-25.

42. Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, andFiction (Bloomington, IN, 1987), p. 26.

43. The history of the sculptures after the thirteenth century also does not contra-dict such speculation.

44. Wolfgang Ullrich, Uta von Naumburg: eine deutsche Ikone (Berlin, 1998),pp. 12-14. Ullrich points out that Carl Peter Lepsius identified the portraits inhis 1828 history of the cathedral, but he also registered more curiosity aboutthe statues as oddities than admiration for them as masterpieces of Gothic art.The situation changes as ancient Greek art loses its status for German criticsand scholars as the standard by which all outstanding art must be measured.In the late nineteenth century, the Naumburg sculptures are rediscovered andbecome part of the German cultural canon in the twentieth century.

45. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter (New York, 1993), p. 9 (her emphasis).46. One could also say that sculpture and other visual representations function

similarly to demonstrate or document experience, in addition to narrative text.47. Toril Moi criticizes Judith Butler for disembodying gender with the con-

cept of performance, for the body itself is divorced from all meaning. Moifavors Simone de Beauvoirs idea that the body is a situation , and as such, acrucial part of lived experience. The body as a situation is the concrete

Uta and Isolde 85

body experienced as meaningful, and socially and historically situated. SeeToril Moi, What is a Woman? Sex, Gender, and the Body in Feminist Theory,What is a Woman? And Other Essays (Oxford, 1999), p. 74. For Burns, cloth-ing suggests one way in which bodies are historically and socially situated; alogical corollary to Burns work would investigate how sculpture and othervisual representations might function similarly to situate or embody experi-ence, in dialogue with narrative text. The most recent work by Carruthersdiscusses another facet of the role of images as they support the practice ofmemory and the dissemination of ideas. See Mary Carruthers, The Craft ofThought. Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images 400-1200 (Cam-bridge, 1998).

48 Camille, Gothic Art, p. 180.

86 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

Fig. 1

Uta and Isolde 87

Fig. 2

88 Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

Fig. 3

Uta and Isolde 89

Fig. 4