Perception of illness and methods of communication with it in middle high German medical incantations

This article examines methods of verbal interaction with illness in Middle High German medical incantations on the material of three charms of the 15 century aimed at healing fever, apoplexy and purulent disease. The analyzed texts are of particular interest as they have never been discussed in such types of research before and have never been translated into the Russian language, whilst they may provide some useful material for typological studies within the German charm literature as well as within the Germanic and Indo-European traditions. All the texts are printed in the original in the transcription of V. Holzmann (her book «„Ich beswer dich wurm und wyrmin…“: Formen und Typen altdeutscher Zaubersprüche und Segen») with our translation into the Russian language and necessary comments. In this article, we speculate upon the specifics of perception of illness in Medieval German charms as heterogeneous and hostile substance originated in the Lower World and establish our typology of Middle High German medical incantations, which is based on 3 main types of communicative strategies, supplied with text examples. The drawn conclusions will interest specialists in the field of history of the German language and literature as well as folkloristics, culture studies and medicine of the Middle Ages.