This essay attempts to describe anew the structures of literary reception which Gottfried von Straßburg develops in programmatic fashion, the main text being the first ›Minneexkurs‹, the first excursus on love. Research thus far has concentrated upon the rhetorical strategies of evoking emotions and directing sympathies. Here, contrastingly, the model of the cultural directing of empathy suggested by Fritz Breit-haupt (2009) will be re-employed. Together with the arousing of empathy a phase of its dissolution is decisive, for which Aristotle laid the theoretical basis with the concept of catharsis and thus pointed the way ahead for later discussion. It is in this perspective that the contested relationship between narrative and excursus in Gottfried’s romance is viewed anew.