Minnesang.

"Minnesang" is the term given to a large collection of lyric poetry written in Austria, Germany and Switzerland during the Middle Ages. The word identifies the theme of love (Middle High German "minne") and points to the fact that these were songs, intended to be performed to a musical accompaniment, though little of the music has survived. The emphasis here will be on the poets composing at the end of the 12th and during the first decades of the 13th century and exemplifying some of the important trends and features in a complex development. This is a period of great productivity in German narrative, and the two areas taken together demonstrate the remarkable flowering of courtly literature in German. Like the narrative works of Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, Heinrich von Veldeke and Wolfram von Eschenbach, the love lyric in German at this period owes much to French influences, though it, too, develops a characteristic German stamp. Moreover, the medieval tradition of songs of love is a broad one, with examples throughout Europe and beyond, and the very nature of transmission - wandering minstrels moving from place to place and accruing material on the way - means that it is often impossible to identify a single source with any certainty. The universal nature of the material means that similar themes probably arose coincidentally. Some of the earliest examples in German cannot be attributed to a named poet and may well derive from a native source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]