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The emergence of a secular culture in the High Middle Ages saw positive value attached to the pleasures and loves of life in an imperfect and complex world within which we are still trying to assimilate ourselves today. In this, the third volume of the Camden House History of German Literature , new essays deal with the most significant authors, literary genres (the heroic epics, the romances, the love lyrics, and the political and didactic poetry), and with key political, social, and cultural issues of the time. The essays seek to demonstrate how the emergence of a vernacular-based literary culture in Germany was an important part of a broader cultural transformation in which medieval people began to redefine themselves, their relationships, and the position of humanity in the grander scheme of things.