This course will study Minnesang, German sung poetry of the 12th and 13th centuries. Literary scholars usually concentrate on the texts of this genre, acknowledging that they were always sung, but paying very little attention to the music. Musicologists consider the music, trying to find adequate ways to interpret the notation and the performance, but they usually ignore the poetic content of the texts. In this course we will give equal weight to both aspects, while investigating also the historical and cultural background against which this genre arose, the development of various themes within the genre, the poet-composers who produced the songs, and the influence of these songs on later literature, reaching even into the present.