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Index |
Index
At the most basic level, and the most obvious to the first-time user who may or may not have experience with Thompson’s system of classification, the genre-volumes of the Motif-Index may also be used as text-books, providing short yet detailed English summaries and renarrations of the Middle High German texts. The motifs associated with each excerpt should give the first-time reader an approximation of Thompson’s systematics.
Readers still inexperieced with Thompson’s system of classification will most likely start by using the index of keywords and then narrow their searches to the relevant motifs which lead to the excerpts.
The third index provided is the index of names; however, it has to be noted that this is not meant to constitute a complete index of names mentioned in the works or even necessarily of the important persons of the works. This index simply lists all motifs associated with certain names and additionally points to the works where these motifs appear in conjunction with the name in question. In this way it is possible to identify certain motifs that are commonly – or sometimes surprisingly – associated with certain names.
The many redundancies and crossreferences make it impossible to show the complete list of excerpts associated with these motifs in the index of names itself, particularly because many of the motifs associated with names appear repeatedly on many occasions in the respective texts. The index of names mainly serves the purpose of identifying motifs commonly associated with certain names and of a first identification of the works in which the name appears. However, the omission of a name in this index does not necessarily indicate that this name does not appear in the works themselves, but merely that no motif was associated with the name.
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