Walker Horsfall

Chancellor Jackman Graduate Fellow

Portrait of Walker Horsfall

Walker Horsfall (Centre for Medieval Studies) is a literary historian whose work focuses on the medieval German poet Frauenlob (late 13th-early 14th c.). The pen-name Frauenlob, meaning “praise of ladies” or perhaps “praise of Our Lady”, lays bare the poet's main artistic preoccupation: the praise of the feminine principle, typified as either the Virgin Mary, the biblical Sapientia, personified love (Frau Minne), personified nature (Natura), and especially combinations thereof. His poetry is infamous, both among his contemporaries and among modern scholars, for its highly learned and hermetic nature: Frauenlob interlaces his poems with frequent allusions to many intellectual traditions of his day, including Christian theology, Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy, visionary mysticism, and courtly romance. Walker’s investigation seeks to demonstrate further the scope of Frauenlob’s intellectualism by investigating his integration of contemporary natural science into his predominantly religious praise poetry. Frauenlob's concern with the physical and spiritual origins of the universe, as evidenced from his use of biological, medical, and cosmological source material, is united with his signature interest in women and femininity, and results in a unique world view, and accompanying poetic language, which centralizes the importance of sexual reproduction, and specifically sexual pleasure, in universal hierarchy. Supervisor: Markus Stock, FAS German and Medieval Studies.
 
What I'm working on: Science and Natural Philosophy in the Poetry of Heinrich von Meissen (Frauenlob)