Zur Ordnung des Raumes in Benedeits Voyage de saint Brendan

On the Order of Space in Benedeit’s Voyage de saint Brendan This paper investigates the intricate relation between textual ambiguities and the narrative construction of an order of space in the Voyage de saint Brendan. In Benedeit’s 12th-century réécriture of the Latin Navigatio sancti Brendani, order and ambiguity are related to one another by means of two significant textual variations. The first variation concerns Brendan’s decision to embark on a journey. This decision shapes the space as a sphere of the protagonist’s actions, thus partially aligning it with heroic Arthurian spaces. A second variation concerns the depiction of a wall surrounding paradise, which is associated with military as well as monastic contexts, while oscillating between allegorical interpretations of gemstones and poetological reflections. The diverging layers of this literary motif contribute to an ambiguity of space, which seems to be the actual focal point of the narrative dynamics in the Voyage.