«swaz durch minne geschet». Didone e ifi nell’Eneit di Heinrich von Veldeke e nelle Metamorfosi di Albrecht von Halberstadt

This study considers Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneit (after 1183) and Albrecht von Halberstadt’s Metamorphoses adaptation (1190), two expressions of the so-called ‘reception of antiquity’ at the Thuringian court of the Ludowinger. Veldeke rendered the Aeneis into German through the old French Roman d’Eneas, whereas Albrecht adapted Ovid’s carmen directly from a Latin source text. Past philological investigations supported the idea that Albrecht knew Veldeke’s Eneit and was possibly influenced by it. Since no direct comparison has been carried out so far, this paper aims at reassessing this hypothesis by means of text analysis. With this purpose, the tragic story of Dido (Verg. Aen. 4 e 6) and Iphis (Ov. Met. 14) have been put to the test, as the two tales share various content commonalities: indeed, they deal with the narration of an unrequited love which leads the protagonists to commit suicide. A comparative lexical and stylistic examination supports the argument of contiguity and provides also evidence for a parallel conception of minne, which is described by using similar linguistic and poetic devices.