Wirnt von Gravenberg's Wigalois: Intertextuality and Interpretation (Arthurian Studies)

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ARTHURIAN STUDIES LXII

WIRNT VON GRAVENBERG’S

WIGALOIS INTERTEXTUALITY AND INTERPRETATION

Arthurian romance flourished in medieval Germany, but the preeminence of Wolfram von Eschenbach has perhaps overshadowed some of his successors. This book focuses on Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois, the later thirteenth-century Arthurian romance. It argues that whereas authors such as Der Stricker and Der Pleier follow the example of Hartmann von Aue by limiting themselves to an exploration of the pragmatics of the (fictional) chivalric value-system, the lay ethicist Wirnt chooses to examine the spiritual dimension of knightly existence, a theme first broached in the German context by Wolfram in his Grail romance, Parzival. Wirnt frames his romance as a corrective to that of his predecessor by creating a form of kingship for his hero which is more practicable than Wolfram’s millennial ‘Grail realm’. Rejecting the notion of an ideal space altogether, Wirnt’s naturalistic descriptions of his hero’s kingship give expression to a harmonisation of Arthurian and theocratic elements. The author thus suggests that Wigalois is not so much a paler imitation of Parzival as creative confrontation with the thought-world of his more famous predecessor. NEIL THOMAS is a reader in the department of German, Durham University.

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ARTHURIAN STUDIES ISSN 0261–9814 General Editor: Norris Lacy

Previously published volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book

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WIRNT VON GRAVENBERG’S

WIGALOIS INTERTEXTUALITY AND INTERPRETATION

Neil Thomas

D. S. BREWER

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© Neil Thomas 2005 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Neil Thomas to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2005 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 1 84384 038 3

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Neil. Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois : intertextuality and interpretation / Neil Thomas. p. cm. – (Arthurian studies, ISSN 0261-9814 ; v. 62) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-84384-038-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Wirnt von Gravenberg, 13th cent. Wigalois. 2. Guinglain (Legendary character)–Romances–History and criticism. 3. Arthurian romances–History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. PT1679.W8T486 2005 831'.21–dc22 2004016904

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

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Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

Abbreviations

viii

Introduction: The Problematic Reception 1

2

3

4

5

1

Contesting the Canon

11

The ‘post-classical’ challenge Wigalois: tradition and innovation

11 21

Knights of Fortune

44

Fortuna’s emissary The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel

44 49

Saint and Sinner

60

The hero’s descensus The father’s rehabilitation

60 78

Realism and Realpolitik

86

The last battle The matter of closure: Parzival and Wigalois

87 93

Romance and Exemplum

104

The Knight of King Arthur The place of Wigalois in German literary history

104 112

Conclusion

119

Appendix: Summaries of related romances

124

Bibliography

134

Index

155

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This book was published with the assistance of a generous subvention from the Vinaver Trust.

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Acknowledgements I am indebted to the Research Committee of the University of Durham for a study leave term in the summer of 2003 which afforded me valuable time for writing. As with my previous volume on Diu Crône (a work which, along with Wolfram’s Parzival, provides an important intertext to Wigalois and yields a number of interpretive clues to Wirnt’s work),1 I have received valuable support from Miss Linda Gowans and from my wife, Dr Françoise Le Saux, who has shown great patience with my long absences in the study. A particularly substantial debt goes to the anonymous reader for the press who suggested a number of improvements to the manuscript as originally submitted. (It goes without saying that any remaining errors are those of the author himself.) I should also like to thank colleagues in Durham and in Reading for providing a congenial environment for my labours, and the personnel at Boydell & Brewer for their active help and encouragement. I should also like to put on record a fundamental indebtedness to the late Professor George T. Gillespie for having first drawn my attention to the romance and its literary Umfeld more than thirty years ago. Neil Thomas. June, 2004.

1

Diu Crône and the Medieval Arthurian Cycle, Arthurian Studies 50 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002). The two works have previously been studied in tandem by Christoph Cormeau, ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’, Zwei Kapitel zur Gattungsgeschichte des nachklassischen Aventiureromans, MTU 57 (Munich: Artemis, 1977), and by George Edward Harding, ‘Tradition and Creativity. Narrative Elements in Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois and Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône’, dissertation, University of Tennessee, 1985 (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1987).

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Abbreviations AbäG ALMA ATB BBIAS CUP DTM DVLG EETS GAG GLL GRM JEGP LiLi MLR MTU OGS OUP PMLA SM UP WW ZfdA ZfdPh ZfrPh

Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. R. S. Loomis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959) Altdeutsche Textbibliothek Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society Cambridge University Press Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte Early English Text Society Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik German Life and Letters Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift Journal of English and Germanic Philology Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik Modern Language Review Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen Oxford German Studies Oxford University Press Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Sammlung Metzler University Press Wirkendes Wort Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie

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Introduction: The Problematic Reception To those accustomed to thinking of medieval literature in terms of the modern medievalist canon, it may be surprising to discover that after Tristan, Parzival and Arthur himself, the most commonly represented material from German romance in German art is the story of Wigalois.1

The early thirteenth-century Wigalois (recte Gwîgalois)2 by Wirnt von Gravenberg (the modern Gräfenberg near Bayreuth) exerted as great an appeal for medieval audiences as did the ‘classical’ Arthurian romances of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Since Wirnt’s romance is not so well-known in our own age as those of Hartmann and Wolfram, a brief overview of its main stages is here given at the outset.3 Wigalois begins with the account of how Gawein is taken from the Arthurian court by Joram, the denizen of a distant realm where the goddess Fortuna is said to be the tutelary deity. Having arrived in Joram’s kingdom, Gawein is married to Florie, Joram’s niece, and presented with a belt of Fortune held to confer valour and well-being on its possessor. Without the belt (or having Joram as his guide) it is not possible for Gawein to return to Joram’s kingdom, and the story of Gawein’s son begins after his father has ridden back to Camelot but omitted to take with him the girdle of Fortune (which is later passed to his son). Gawein, who leaves knowing Florie is pregnant but not that she is bearing a son (who is to be named Wigalois), tries but fails to return to his wife, hence he and his family remain cut off from each other. Having heard many honorific stories about his father, however, when Wigalois reaches early manhood he seeks out

1

2

3

James Rushing, ‘The medieval German pictorial evidence’ in William H. Jackson and Silvia Ranawake, The Arthur of the Germans. The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 257–279, citation 271. I keep to the conventional spelling used by the modern editor, Kapteyn, in order to harmonise my references with modern, electronic retrieval systems. There have been three editions of the romance: Wigalois, der Ritter mit dem Rade, getihtet von Wirnt von Gravenberch, ed. Georg Friedrich Benecke (Berlin: Reimer, 1819); Wigalois. Eine Erzählung von Wirnt von Gravenberg, ed. Franz Pfeiffer, Dichtungen des deutschen Mittelalters 6 (Leipzig: Göschen, 1847); Wirnt von Gravenberg, Wigalois, Der Ritter mit dem Rade, ed. J. M. N. Kapteyn, Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 9, part 1 (Bonn: Klopp, 1926). Citations will be from Kapteyn’s edition which is customarily recorded as the first volume of two because the text was originally planned to be followed by a Kommentarband which, however, never appeared. The only available continuous commentary comes in the form of the ‘Anmerkungen’ which Benecke appended to his editio princeps. On the circumstances surrounding the non-appearance of Kapteyn’s Kommentarband see Wolfgang Mitgau, ‘Bauformen des Erzählens im Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberc’ (dissertation, University of Göttingen, 1959), p. 3, n. 2. A fuller précis is given by Kapteyn in the Introduction to his edition, pp. 77–91.

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his father at the Arthurian court where Gawein (whom, we are told, the son does not recognise by his name and reputation) is appointed as his chivalric mentor. Here the son, in an action portending his future preeminence, is able to sit on Arthur’s ‘stone of virtue’. Thereafter, in an initial series of skirmishes with sundry adversaries under the censorious gaze of a female emissary (Nereja), he manages to convince his sceptical guide that he is the equal of his father (whose services she had requested in preference to those of the youth). He thereby wins the qualification to proceed to the major challenge of defeating the Mohammedan necromancer, Roaz of Glois, the murderer of the good King Lar of Korntin, and so to release the unquiet soul of the ‘undead’ king. For this task (which takes place in a location styled as a purgatorial netherworld) he is endowed with an abundance of holy objects (but not with the belt of Fortune which has in the meantime been stolen). With God’s aid he defeats a host of demonic enemies and the necromancer himself (who has concluded a pact with the devil). The work of salvation completed, he marries the old king’s daughter, Larie, and rules over the now restored land of Korntin. In an extensive sequel he is joined by his father (whose identity has in the interim been formally revealed to him) and other Arthurian knights together with numberless converted foes in his campaign against a second malefactor, Lion of Namur. The siege of Namur successfully accomplished, Wigalois pays a ‘state visit’ to Arthur at Nantes before resuming kingship in the land of Korntin where his rule maintains standards of statesmanship and Christian compassion inaugurated by the late King Lar. There are over forty surviving manuscripts of Wigalois4 and an index of the high medieval status of the work comes in the form of an adjudicating review of a number of medieval works by Hugo von Trimberg in the course of which he accords ‘hôhen prîs’ to Wigalois.5 Further mentions or allusions are found in a number of other medieval works such as Diu Crône, Der Göttweiger Trojanerkrieg (a composite romance combining material from the Matter of Britain with legendary material concerning ancient Rome and the Trojan War)6

4

5

6

On the manuscripts see Heribert Hilgers, ‘Zur Geschichte der Wigalois-Philologie’, Euphorion 65 (1971), pp. 245–73; Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘Ein rîs ich dar vmbe abe brach/ von seinem wunder bovme. Beobachtungen zur Überlieferung des Artusromans im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert’, in Deutsche Handschriften 1100–1400; Oxforder Colloquium 1985, ed. Nigel Palmer and Volker Honemann (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988), pp. 222–78; Oskar Pausch, ‘Handschriftenfunde zur Literatur des Mittelalters, 62. Beitrag. Eine Zwettler Überlieferung des Wigalois’, ZfdA 108 (1979), pp. 340–45; A. Janko, ‘Zwei Wigalois-Fragmente aus Ljubljana’, Acta Neophilologica 15 (1982), pp. 3–15; Christa Bertelsmeier-Kierst, ‘Zur ältesten Überlieferung des Wigalois. I. Die Handschrift E’, ZfdA 121 (1992), pp. 275–90; Klaus Klein, ‘Handschriftenkunde zur Literatur des Mittelalters. 112. Beitrag. Ein neues WigaloisFragment in Basel’, ZfdA 122 (1993), pp. 453–59. See Der Renner, ed. Gustav Ehrismann, reprinted with a ‘Nachwort’ and augmentations by Günther Schweikle, 4 volumes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970), lines 1221–6. The laudatory reference to Wirnt by Heinrich von dem Türlin (Die Krone (Verse 1–12281) nach der Handschrift 2779 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, ed. Fritz Peter Knapp and Manuela Niesner, Altdeutsche Textbibliothek 112 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), lines 2949ff) has also been taken as documentation of ‘die beachtliche Resonanz, die das Werk vermutlich noch zu Lebzeiten des Dichters erfuhr’ (Bertelsmeier-Kierst, ‘Zur ältesten Überlieferung’, p. 275). Der Göttweiger Trojanerkrieg, ed. Alfred Koppitz, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters XXIX (Berlin: Weidmann, 1926). On the Arthurian associations of this romance see Manfred Kern,

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and Konrad von Würzburg’s Der Welt Lohn.7 Konrad here takes Wirnt von Gravenberg as his protagonist, depicted as a man devoted to his worldly advantages who experiences a change of heart after glimpsing the hideous reverse side of the superficially seductive goddess, Frau Werlt. Seared by the vision, he resolves to devote his life to God by going on a crusade. Benecke included this short moral tale of 250 lines in his editio princeps and was inclined to see at least a kernel of historical truth in Konrad’s account (see his ‘Vorbericht’, p. x); but subsequent scholars have been more sceptical. Meanwhile, in the latter half of the thirteenth century the romance of Wigamur exhibits a number of ideological continuities with Wirnt’s romance.8 As with Parzival, Tristan, and other celebrated romances of the first half of the thirteenth century, scenes from Wigalois are to be found on the Runkelstein murals,9 whilst some pewter figurines from Magdeburg bear further illustrations from the romance.10 In the later Middle Ages Jakob Püterich von Reichertshausen, an enthusiastic chronicler of the courtly era, gives an honourable mention to Wigalois in his Ehrenbrief 11 and Ulrich Füetrer gives a condensed version in his Buch der Abenteuer.12 The continuing popularity of the romance in the Early Modern period is revealed in a number of literary recreations. There is a prose version of 1493, Wigoleis vom Rade,13 and translations of the romance into other European vernaculars, including a late seventeenth-century Yiddish redaction, Der Artushof, together with a printed version, Widuwilt, whilst a late Jewish version appeared under the title of Historie oder moralische Erzehlung von Ritter Gabein as late as 1789.14 A short, fragmentary poem by Ludwig Uhland,

7 8 9

10

11

12 13

14

Agamemnon weint oder arthurische Metamorphose und trojanische Destruktion im ‘Göttweiger Trojanerkrieg’, Erlanger Studien 104 (Erlangen and Jena: Palm and Enke, 1995). In Kleinere Dichtungen Konrads von Würzburg, 3 volumes, ed. E. Schröder with ‘Nachwort’ by Ludwig Wolff (Berlin: Weidmann, 1959), I. See Neil Thomas, ‘The sources of Wigamur and the German reception of the Fair Unknown legend’, Reading Medieval Studies 20 (1993), pp. 101–13. See Dietrich Huschenbett, ‘Beschreibung der Bilder des Wigalois-Zyklus’, and Ernst Karl Waldstein, ‘Zeichnungen zum Wigalois-Zyklus’, in Runkelstein. Die Wandmalereien des Sommerhauses, ed. Walter Haug, Joachim Heinzle, Dietrich Huschenbett and Norbert H. Ott (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1982), pp. 178–93 and 170–7. For a description of the Zinnfigurenstreifen see Helmut Nickel, ‘About a crown found and a Grail tournament held at the “Castle of the Maiden” (sc. Magdeburg)’, Arthuriana 7 (1997), pp. 36–44. ‘Der Ehrenbrief Jakob Putrichs von Reichertshausen, Die Turnierreime Johann Hollands, Der Namenkatalog Ulrich Füetrers : Texte mit Einleitung und Kommentar’, ed. Martha Mueller, dissertation (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1988). Ulrich Füetrer, Wigoleis, ed. Heribert A. Hilgers, ATB 79 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975). Wigoleis vom Rade in Prosaauflösung. Studien zur Rezeption der höfischen Epik im frühneuhochdeutscen Prosaroman, ed. Alois Brandstetter (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1971), pp. 190–235. On the Early Modern stage of transmission see John L. Flood, ‘Early printed versions of Arthurian romances’, in The Arthur of the Germans, ed. Jackson and Ranawake, pp. 295–302, and Guy Borgnet, ‘Le Wigoleis d’Ulrich Füetrer. Etude comparative de trois versions du Chevalier à la Roue: Wirnt von Gravenberg, Volksbuch, Ulrich Füetrer’, in König Artus und der Heilige Gral. Studien zum spätarthurischen Roman und zum Graals-Roman im europäischen Mittelalter, ed. Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok, Greifswalder Studien zum Mittelalter 17; Wodan 32 (Greifswald: Reineke Verlag, 1994), pp. 51–64. See Arthurian Legends or the Hebrew-German Rhymed Version of the Legend of King Arthur, ed. Leo Landau, Teutonia 21 (Leipzig: Avenarius, 1912); and Ritter Widuwilt. Die westjiddische Fassung des ‘Wigalois’ des Wirnt von Gravenberc mit dem jiddischen Druck von 1699, ed.

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‘Ritter Wieduwilt’ (on the subject of Joram’s initial challenge), appeared in 1809/10.15 The first modern edition of the Middle High German text was that of Benecke in 1816, so it may be claimed that, unlike other medieval narratives which were ‘rediscovered’ only in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Wigalois maintained its popularity for eight consecutive centuries. The early favour enjoyed by the romance in the aftermath of the Romantic era was, however, to be eclipsed by the advent of a positivist trend in German literary scholarship which led to more negative verdicts concerning the ‘derivative’ nature of Wirnt’s work as a late manifestation of the Fair Unknown tradition (at the head of which stands the late twelfth-century Le Bel Inconnu).16 Furthermore, scholars of the later nineteenth century and many twentieth-century critics were inclined to work with a donor-and-recipient model of literary composition in mind and to view Wigalois (together with many other later works written in both German and French) as ‘epigones’ of the ‘classical’ predecessors, Hartmann, Wolfram or Chrétien de Troyes. Meanwhile, the lack of a morally problematical dimension in the protagonist’s fictional identity caused disquiet to critics wishing to fit Wirnt’s romance into the ‘binary’ literary sequence inaugurated by Hartmann and Wolfram (in which the hero, after an initial reverse in his moral life, labours to achieve a rehabilitation of chivalric standard).17 Criticism in the last few decades, on the other hand, has drawn attention to the elasticity of medieval genres, arguing that ‘romance – and, more generally, any literary genre – has no meaningful existence as a static category. Rather, is it a question of genre as process: the functional literary life of romance involves a series of generic transformations over time resulting in a kind of dynamic continuum.’18 That analysis undergirds many of the following arguments; meanwhile my footnotes contain further references to various scholarly and critical writings which will indicate to readers the fresh critical direction(s) which have been taken in the last two decades. The rules of evidence governing speculation about the authorship, patronage and dating of medieval works have become considerably more stringent in the

15 16 17

18

Siegmund A. Wolf, Sprach- und Geisteswissenschaftliche Texte 1 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1974). On the Jewish adaptations see Achim Jaeger, Ein jüdischer Artusritter. Studien zum jüdisch-deutschen ‘Widuwilt’ (Artushof ) und zum ‘Wigalois’ des Wirnt von Gravenberc (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), and Robert G. Warnock, ‘Wirkungsabsicht und Bearbeitungstechnik im altjiddischen Artushof ’, ZfdPh 100 (Sonderheft) (1981), pp. 98–109. Printed and discussed in Achim Jaeger, Ein jüdischer Artusritter, pp. 390–2. See the up-to-date Forschungsbericht in Achim Jaeger, Ein jüdischer Artusritter, pp. 97–116. The issue of tradition and innovation will be discussed more fully in Chapter One. Cf. the work of Christoph Cormeau, who saw Wigalois’s fully-formed character as being ‘highly inconvenient’ for a critic wishing to fit the romance into the literary sequence inaugurated by the ‘classic’ writers (‘eine Irritation für eine Gattungsgeschichte’): ‘Zur Gattungsentwicklung des Artusromans nach Wolframs Parzival’, in Spätmittelalterliche Artusliteratur, ed. Karl-Heinz Göller, Beiträge zur englischen und amerikanischen Literatur 3 (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich: Schöningh, 1984), pp. 120–31. Editorial Introduction by Kevin Brownlee to Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1985), p. 1. See also Simon Gaunt, ‘Romance and other genres’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), pp. 45–60.

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last few decades, the result being that those concerning themselves with the understanding of thirteenth-century romances must resort less to (unverifiable) historical speculation than to the exercise of ‘practical criticism’ through a close reading of the texts themselves.19 This can be observed most dramatically in the rejection of many opinions which were held about Heinrich von dem Türlin for the best part of the twentieth century. Whilst it was formerly supposed that Heinrich came of a burgher family from St Veit an der Glan, and that he stood in the employ of Duke Bernard of Carinthia (1202–1256), such identifications were rendered highly problematical by the work of Bernd Kratz in the 1970s.20 Similarly, nothing certain can be known of the author of Wigalois21 beyond his given name, the information that Wigalois was the author’s first work (although this information is embedded in a humility formula which for rhetorical reasons may have been framed to do less than complete justice to the totality of the author’s literary activities),22 and his putative connection with the town of Gravenberg. The dating of the romance also presents considerable problems23 with theories having been put forward dating it to from 1205 to 1235 or later,24 but more recently some time in the second decade of the thirteenth century has been favoured.25 Franz Saran once speculated that narratorial references to the lawlessness of his age indicated that Wigalois must have been composed towards the end of the interregnum in the period 1197–1208 when there was fighting between the two rival claimants for the imperial crown, Philip of Suabia and Otto of Brunswick.26

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20 21 22

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‘Literaturwissenschaftliche Forschung, die Ernst machen möchte mit der Forderung, jedes Wortkunstwerk als ein Gebilde eigenen Rechtes und Wertes unabhängig von seiner geschichtlichen Bedingtheit zu verstehen, findet im Bereich der altdeutschen Dichtung eine Ausgangslage vor, die sich in der neuen erst künstlich schaffen müßte’ (Werner Schröder, ‘Zur Chronologie der drei großen mittelhochdeutschen Epiker’, DVLG 31 [1957], pp. 264–302, 264). ‘Zur Biographie Heinrichs von dem Türlin’, ABäG 11 (1977), pp. 123–67. Cf. the useful Realien assembled in Wigalois. The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, translated by John Wesley Thomas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), Introduction. ‘nu wil ich iu ein maere/ sagen, als ez mir ist geseit./ zeiner ganzen wârheit/ trûwe ich ez niht bringen;/ wan eines wil ich dingen:/ daz ir durch iuwer hövischeit/ dem tihtaere des gnâde seit/ der ditze hât getihtet, mit rîmen wol berihtet,/ wan ditz ist sîn erstez werc’ (lines 131–40). On the general difficulties of medieval literary dating see Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture. Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 14–15. Benecke argued for 1212 (‘Vorbericht’ to his editio princeps, p. 12), Friedrich Neumann for 1210–15 (‘Wann verfasste Wirnt den Wigalois?’ ZfdA 93 [1964], pp. 31–62), but datings later than these have been proposed. Albert Schreiber: 1229–35 (‘Über Wirnt von Gravenberg und den Wigalois, ZfdPh 58 [1933], pp. 209–31); Ruth Bauer: 1220 (Studien zum Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberg [Berlin: Ebering, 1936]); Helmut de Boor: end of the third decade of the thirteenth century (Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. de Boor and Richard Newald, 8 volumes, II, Die höfische Literatur [Munich: Beck, 1953], p. 87); Volker Mertens: c. 1235 (‘Iwein und Gwigalois-der Weg zur Landesherrschaft’, GRM, new series, 31 [1981], pp. 14–31). See H.-J. Ziegler, entry on Wigalois in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), volume 10, columns 1252–7. ‘Über Wirnt von Grafenberg und den Wigalois’, Beiträge 21 (1896), pp. 253–420, here 269. As Saran conceded, ‘die chronologie des Wigalois kann nur mittelbar durch combination festgestellt werden’ (p. 267) and his speculations have more recently been adjudged an

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The early dating was supported by reference to a number of verbal echoes once held to prove that Wirnt knew only the first six books of Wolfram’s Parzival (which probably appeared in some form of ‘fascicle’ sequence in the period 1204–1210). Such views are now regarded as speculative and J. W. Thomas summarised present thinking in these terms: Although the narrator’s aphoristic intrusions into the story far outnumber those which criticise thirteenth-century society, the latter have received more attention from scholars, partly from those who wish to use the novel as a source of specific historical data, partly from those who wish to date it by matching the contemporary society described by the narrator with that of a particular decade of the the thirteenth century. Actually, however, the social criticism in Wigalois is of such a nature that it reveals no specific relationship to a particular society and, indeed, does not significantly differ from the social criticism of Le Bel Inconnu or, for that matter, in the works of Chrétien.27

At the other end of the chronological spectrum, on the other hand, the attempt by de Boor to use similar criteria as those of Saran as a means of advancing a late dating (in the 1230s) has been questioned on the grounds that it depends on a subjective, ‘decline-and-fall’ notion of courtly culture.28 Wirnt’s lofty praise of Wolfram as ‘the fine-feeling sage of Eschenbach whose verses have never been bettered by any layman’ (‘her Wolfram/ ein wîser man von Eschenbach/ sîn herze ist ganzes sinnes dach/ leien munt nie baz gesprach’)29 has more recently been taken to imply an acquaintance with the whole of Parzival.30 It is even possible, given the lapidary tone of the encomium, that Wirnt may have been repeating at second hand a judgement on Wolfram which had had time to become proverbial.31 The consequential possibility of a date in the second decade of the thirteenth century has in turn led to the speculation that Wirnt knew Wolfram’s Willehalm (c. 1217), or else that he might have been composing at approximately the same time that Wolfram was composing that epic.32 The exact chronology remains unclear, but it is likely that Wigalois

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‘Ausdruck der damaligen Hermeneutik mittelalterlicher Texte’ (Christoph Cormeau, ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’. Zwei Kapitel zur Gattungsgeschichte des nachklassischen Aventiureromans, MTU 57 [Munich: Artemis, 1977], p. 73) and as an ‘Überinterpretation’ (Wolfgang Mitgau, ‘Bauformen des Erzählens’, p. 7). Wigalois. The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, p. 49. ‘Die Meinung de Boors, daß es sich wegen der Zeitkritik im Wigalois [. . .] um den “Vorklang der epigonalen Verbürgerlichung des Artusromans” handele, halte ich für fragwürdig. Eine solche Meinung erinnert sehr an die Abwertung der romantischen Literatur im Hinblick auf die Weimarer Klassik’ (Dietrich Homberger, ‘Gawein. Untersuchungen zur mittelhochdeutschen Artusepik’ [dissertation, University of Bochum, 1969], p. 63, n. 2). Lines 6343–6. The references to Wolfram appear to reveal ‘eine im Abstand gewonnene Parzival-Kenntnis, die nicht vor dem zweiten Jahrzehnt des 13 Jahrhunderts möglich oder zu erwarten ist’ (Friedrich Neumann, ‘Wann verfasste Wirnt den Wigalois?’, p. 33). For this conjecture see Cormeau, ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’, p. 120. Werner Schröder (‘Der synkretische Roman des Wirnt von Gravenberg. Unerledigte Fragen an den Wigalois’, Euphorion 80 (1986), pp. 235–77, especially 245–7) argues that Wirnt knew Willehalm (that is, that Wigalois was written after 1217, accepting the conventional dating for Wolfram’s epic). Cf. also Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘Prädestination und Fiktionalität in Wirnts Wigalois’, in Fiktionalität im Artusroman, ed. Volker Mertens and Friedrich Wolfzettel

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was enriched by a broader acquaintance with Wolfram’s work(s) than was supposed by an earlier generation of scholars. Forty years ago Friedrich Neumann counselled against dismissing the literary claims of a text which had stood the test of time so well,33 yet despite the appearance in the last two decades of a number of publications on Wigalois, it continues to present unresolved cruxes.34 In the attempt to seek solutions to some of these problems, this study will offer a critical re-reading35 of the romance in the context of putative sources and analogues and in the light of its literary posterity. I adopt this comparative and diachronic approach because other treatments of the same basic themes may confirm or clarify readings or else suggest alternative realizations of a theme, helping us to recognize what any given poet was doing by showing us what (s)he chose not to do and what possibilities were ignored.36 The following remarks on the layout of the book are intended as a guide to the critical problems which will be dealt with in detail in the body of this study. Chapter One is concerned with matters of literary polemics and illustrates from a range of texts how several later German writings within and outside the Matter of Britain cycle reveal a nuanced and often critical attitude to those works of predecessors accorded laureate status in much modern literary historiography. Wigalois will be situated within this general trend towards literary dissent, my specific argument being that Wirnt’s reframing of the ideological parameters of the Fair Unknown tradition serves to dissociate Wigalois philosophically not only from its European analogues (Le Bel Inconnu, the Middle English Libeaus Desconus and the Italian Carduino) but also (and more significantly for the German tradition) from the best-known German exemplar of the Fair Unknown tradition, Wolfram’s Parzival. In particular, the emphasis placed on Wigalois as a hero who (albeit purportedly unbeknownst to him) receives early instruction from his supposedly lost father seems rather to oppose the premise of a

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(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), pp. 146–58, especially 157. More recently, a date of about 1217 has been favoured by L. Peter Johnson: ‘Wir vermuten, der Wigalois ist nach dem Parzival und etwa gleichzeitig mit dem Willehalm entstanden’ (Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit, ed. Joachim Heinzle [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999], volume 2, Die höfische Literatur der Blütezeit, part 1, pp. 365–72, 367). ‘Wir sollten uns hüten, einen solchen Erfolg nur wie eine Nebensächlichkiet zu betrachten’ (‘Wann verfasste Wirnt den Wigalois?’ p. 32). Cf. also L. Peter Johnson: ‘Wirnt hat bei seinem zeitgenössischen Publikum grossen Anklang gefunden; offenbar haben die mittelalterlichen Auftraggeber von Handschriften und mindestens zwei achtbare Dichter anders gedacht als manche Germanisten’ (Die höfische Literatur der Blütezeit, p. 368). Stefan Fuchs in particular has called attention to the ‘zahlreiche sich widersprechende Interpretationen und Bewertungen’ which the romance has received (Hybride Helden. Gwigalois und Willehalm, Beiträge zum Heldenbild und zur Poetik des Romans im fruhen 13. Jahrhundert, Frankfurter Beiträge zur Germanistik 31 [Heidelberg: Winter, 1997], p. 100). Cf. Neil Thomas, ‘Literary transformation and narrative organisation in Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois’, MLR 80 (1985), pp. 362–71, and A German View of Camelot: Wirnt von Gravenberg’s ‘Wigalois’ and Arthurian Tradition, Europäische Hochschulschriften, series 1, volume 963 (Berne, Frankfurt, Las Vegas: Lang, 1987). A comparativist trend has recently been discernible in studies of Wigalois. Cf. Jaeger, Ein jüdischer Artusritter, Jutta Eming, Funktionswandel des Wunderbaren. Studien zum ‘Bel Inconnu’, zum ‘Wigalois’ und zum ‘Wigoleis vom Rade’ (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1999), Volker Honemann, ‘The Wigalois narratives’, in The Arthur of the Germans, ed. Jackson and Ranawake, pp. 142–54.

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(temporarily) fatherless and therefore untutored (tump) lad which characterises Parzival and the Fair Unknown tradition as a whole. The ‘coaching’ administered by Gawein to his son must have counted as a provocative innovation in the context of a romance ostensibly offering an hommage to the spirit of the Fair Unknown stories, and is one indication that the socially conservative Wirnt was tendentiously rejecting the egalitarian basis of the ‘brave man slowly wise’ idiologeme given such influential currency by Wolfram. The second chapter presents the case that the ostensibly supernatural tokens of Fortuna (whose emblematic wheel [rota fortunae] gives the romance its editorial subtitle, ‘The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel’) are an example of a phenomenon common to medieval tradition of ‘magic that fails to work magically but that does work for the poem’,37 in this case metonymically since the winning of Fortune’s favours is so intimately associated with Gawein’s experience. Fortuna’s token of the magic belt (which, as will be observed below, has a legendary connection with Gawein in a number of medieval texts) plays only a small role as a magic object since its wonder-working abilities are limited. Its more important function is as a token linking Wigalois with the chivalric standard of his father since in Wirnt’s semiotic system the concept of knightly good fortune (saelde) becomes broadly synonymous with Gawein’s peerless knightly reputation. Hence, when Wigalois later comes into possession of one of Fortuna’s supposed tokens (in the form of the magic belt which had originally been conferred on his father), the effective implication is that he becomes a knight following in his father’s footsteps rather than one under the supernatural tutelage of the goddess. My third chapter seeks to demonstrate that the moral kinship of son and father is only temporarily annulled by the messianic nature of the protagonist’s central challenge. Although the Christological dimensions of the Roaz adventures place Wigalois on a different existential level to that occupied by the flawed Gawein (who puts up a notably poor showing at the testing ‘stone of virtue’ on account of a past sexual misdemeanour), the narrator’s undaunted partisanship for Gawein permits him to undergo a moral rehabilitation which in turn enables him to offer credible support to his son in the establishment of his kingship. Although the role of Gawein as a more or less negative foil to a hero surpassing him in either chivalric or spiritual standard is a literary commonplace in a host of medieval texts, Wirnt rejects that model, avoiding the binary distinction inherent in the topos by underscoring the capacity of father and son to pool their individual talents in the final section of the romance. The hero’s kingship forms the subject of the fourth chapter. The notion that Wigalois might be predestined to establish a theocratic kingship remote from the standards of the feudal, ‘Arthurian’ world is opposed by the comparison of Wigalois’s rule with Wolfram’s Grail realm (from which Wolfram’s Gawan is

37

Helen Cooper, ‘Magic that does not work’, Medievalia et Humanistica 7 (1976), pp. 131–46, 134. With reference to a number of English examples such as Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale and Richard Coeur de Lion, Cooper points out that ‘there is frequently – indeed normally – a lack of excitement in the treatment of such talismans, and this is often reinforced by the minimal part they play in the plot itself’ (p. 131).

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significantly excluded). Wirnt, unlike Wolfram, permits no terminal gulf between protagonist and deuteragonist, and the rehabilitated Gawein is given a symbolically significant place at the new king’s court. The conciliatory tone of a narrative in which Gawein plays such an important symbolic role in the new king’s rule (he arrives flanked by three further Arthurian knights, thus acting in both paternal and representative capacities)38 is underlined by the welcome shown to many (converted) Muslim adversaries in the ecumenical closure of the romance. The realistic features which characterize the description of the hero’s kingship have commonly been seen as a proof that Wirnt was improvising the last c. 4000 lines of his narrative. Untrammelled by any known source, Wirnt in these sections reveals much about his own preferred working methods, and in my analysis I point to the effectiveness of realism as the literary mode favoured by the ‘improving’ narrator to exemplify his conceptions of what feudal kingship might best consist in. I also draw attention to a previously unremarked intertextual implication of a mode of treatment sometimes criticised for its prosaic tone. That is, the naturalistic detail of this section will be shown to carry a deliberately programmatic force suggesting the desire to tilt against some of the more fantastical/escapist features of Wolfram’s Kingdom of the Grail. Wolfram’s grandiose conception, which depends to a considerable degree on the Oriental myth of Prester John, lacks the kind of familiar cultural reference points which might have shown contemporary listeners that this exotic kingdom might represent a realisable goal. On the basis of a reading of Wolfram’s later epic, Willehalm (which largely forsakes the realm of romance fancy by addressing the stubborn geopolitical realities of the Cross/Crescent divide), it is possible to infer that Wolfram himself may have come to see in his earlier work the abdication of an implicit mandate to provide a concrete evocation of an ideal kingship comprehensible to his medieval peers. It is a mandate to which Wirnt appears to have been particularly attentive since his romance is, as regards its mode of depiction, ‘made over’ into an epic (chanson de geste) in its later phase – this being a creative fusion of genres functioning as a generic signal that a ‘serious’ theme was being appropriately treated, that is, in a way which distinguishes Wigalois from the somewhat frivolous hyperbole of Wolfram’s account.39 Issues of kingship are further explored in the fifth chapter entitled Romance and Exemplum where I analyse ways in which Wirnt instrumentalised his

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It will be noted that I disagree with the view of Wolfgang Mitgau that the appearance of the Arthurian knights ‘schafft keine höfisch-gesellschaftliche Atmosphäre, sondern das PrivatIntime kommt dabei zum Ausdruck [. . .] Von der Eigenschaft Gaweins als des ersten Ritters des Artushofes und Repräsentanten der höfischen Gesellschaft ist hier nichts mehr zu spüren’ (‘Nachahmung und Selbständigkeit Wirnts von Gravenberg im Wigalois’, ZfdPh 82 [1963], pp. 321–37, 335). Erich Auerbach pointed out that whilst Arthurian knights do not generally perform political tasks in a recognisable historic context, the soldiers of the epic do act within such a context, albeit ‘simplified and distorted in the manner of a legend’ (Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard Trask [New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1957], p. 133). It is precisely that distinction which Wirnt’s switching of generic conventions is calculated to exploit as he presents images of a form of kingship with which his first audiences could more easily identify.

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material for homiletic purposes. The sobriety of his tone indicates that Wirnt’s purposes as a moralist were of a particularly practical kind. There is a conspicuous absence of reference in Wigalois’s form of kingship to the motif of the Grail – even though Diu Crône, using very similar material (some of which will have been culled from Wirnt), does include this motif. Wigalois does not attempt to show how the role of Arthurian chivalry is eclipsed by a superior dispensation only accessible in the imaginative world of literature – as is the case in Parzival and in the later romance based on Wolfram, Albrecht’s Jüngerer Titurel (c. 1280/1300). In Wigalois, by contrast, there is no evasion and no escape into a quasi-transcendent sphere. Rather, the moral equality of Wigalois and Arthur is stressed in what appears to be a literary rejoinder to Wolfram making the attempt to harmonise the conflicting God/World imperatives left unresolved in Wolfram’s notoriously ambiguous closure (where the rank and file members of the ‘Arthurian’ world are left out of account). Wirnt as a self-styled moralist co-opted the resources of the romance form to create an Arthurian exemplum with a more satisfyingly transparent ethical structure than that which is apparent in the work of his more famous literary predecessor. Wigalois may in that sense, I argue, be more properly accounted a counterblast to Parzival than an imitation of it. I finish with a conclusion drawing together in summary form the implications of previous chapters to suggest a new understanding of Wirnt’s still underrated romance.

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1 Contesting the Canon

Like life, literature is a matter of continuation. Each existence is a sequel to the existences of others, who remain vestigially alive within us [. . .] Beginnings and ends are the most artificial devices of literature because they correspond to nothing in life [. . .] There is always unfinished business, and the truest literary endings are those which demur about their finality.1 In medieval culture, the origins of stories tend to disappear in a way that would please the most deconstructive post-structuralists [. . .] The origins that we can trace are often of limited relevance to a particular manifestation of a narrative subject. What we must imagine is a skeletal, deep-structural form of a story floating in semiotic space, capable of being concretised, with widely different results, in any medium and in an immense variety of contexts.2

In this chapter the donor-and-recipient model traditionally said to dominate later medieval literature is challenged in favour of a narrative model which in a related context has been termed the ‘literary tiltyard’ (Anne-Marie D’Arcy)3. Since I wish to argue from an extensive corpus of evidence cumulatively tending to oppose the common opinion, I commence with a contextualising excursus showing from a range of examples how the surprisingly tenacious notion that later authors were simply derivative of their predecesssors is in fact often flatly contradicted by the testimony of the literary archive. I then relate this finding to Wigalois and its position within its literary sequence, exploring ways in which Wirnt’s work stands out by dint of eclectic and idiosyncratic working methods which could hardly have been bound by adherence to a canonical source or group of sources.

The ‘Post-Classical’ Challenge In much the same way that the writers of the ‘deuxième époque’ aspired to extend the tradition launched by Chrétien de Troyes in France, later German writers of Arthurian romance strove to advance traditions set by those writers conventionally accorded ‘classic’ status in German literary historiography, namely, Heinrich von Veldeke, Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Referring to ‘constant elements within the broad supranational

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Peter Conrad, To Be Continued. Four Stories and their Survival (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), p. 1. James Rushing, Images of Adventure. ‘Ywain’ in the Visual Arts (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1995), p. 264. Wisdom and the Grail. The Image of the Vessel in the ‘Queste del Saint Graal’ and Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreall’ (Dublin and Portland OR: Four Courts Press, 2000), p. 42.

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genre of Arthurian romance’ and to findings complementary to her own in Christoph Cormeau’s ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’,4 Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann noted the ‘extensive correlation between the generic characteristics of German post-classical Arthurian romances and those of the French romances. For the German writers of the thirteenth century the works of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach fulfil the same role in their system of references as Chrétien’s romances do in France.’5 In view of the significant parallels between the two literary traditions, cross-references to French tradition will be made where appropriate in the present study in order to illuminate the German romance through some of its intertextual connections. Although the terms Klassiker/klassisch are routinely used in referring to Hartmann and Wolfram, the somewhat problematical legacy which those writers bequeathed to their successors does not invariably justify the application to their works of the epithet ‘classic’ in the modern senses of that term. Modernday definitions run to such formulations as ‘a way of writing [. . .] marked by serene beauty, taste, restraint, order and clarity’6 (a gloss which does not square with some of the more fantastic elements of the medieval romances such as the Mabonagrin, Magic Fountain and Clinschor’s Castle sequences in Erec, Iwein and Parzival respectively). As to the looser, more proverbial definition of classic as ‘of the first rate, hence worthy of emulation’, such unqualified respect was not extended to literary predecessors by all ‘post-classical’ poets. To be sure, it was once commonly supposed that the typical approach of the post-classical writers was a predominantly mimetic one consisting in the more or less aleatory reintegration of renowned predecessors’ machinery and motifs into their own works.7 Many early studies of Wigalois were shaped in the form of a concordance in which (often minor) verbal echoes of Hartmann, Wolfram and other writers were minutely recorded.8 The popularity of this donor-andrecipient model coincided with the era when it was believed that the Arthurian romances of Continental Europe derived largely from more ancient archetypes thought to be closer to the (supposedly) pristine forms of the legends.9 This

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‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’; Zwei Kapitel zur Gattungsgeschichte des nachklassischen Aventiureromans, MTU 57 (Munich: Artemis, 1977). The Evolution of Arthurian Romance. The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart, trans. Margaret and Roger Middleton with Foreword by Keith Busby (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), p. 3, n. 3. German edition: Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart: Zur Geschichte einer Gattung, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Beiheft 177 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980). Dominic Secretan, Classicism, The Critical Idiom 27 (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 2. ‘When one considers the interrelations of medieval stories and their details, one will realize that elements were shuffled together like cards’ (Howard R. Patch, ‘Some elements in medieval descriptions of the Other World’, PMLA 33 [1918], pp. 601–43, citation 603). Full listings of this older literature may be found in Wolfgang Mitgau’s ‘Bauformen des Erzählens im Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberc’. For criticism of the trend of establishing stemmatic filiation on the basis of (claimed) verbal ‘borrowings’ see Heidi Wildt, ‘Das Menschen- und Gottesbild des Wirnt von Gravenberg nach seinem Wigaloisroman’ (dissertation, University of Freiburg, 1953), especially pp. 236–7, and Wolfgang Mitgau, ‘Nachahmung und Selbständigkeit Wirnts von Gravenberc in seinem Wigalois’, ZfdPh 82 (1963), pp. 321–37. See Michael Glencross, Reconstructing Camelot. French Romantic Medievalism and the Arthurian Tradition (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), especially pp. 119–43.

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perspective, however, began to be questioned from the 1950s onwards for taking too little account of the more reflective, dialogic process by which many medieval romances came into being and for failing to observe that behind many later writers’ humility formulae and fulsome praise of their elders went a competitive impulse eager to engage with renowned predecessors. According to de Boor’s influential study of the late 1950s, the later thirteenthcentury writer, Der Pleier, was in his Garel von dem blühenden Tal not imitating but ‘fencing’ with his immediate source, Stricker’s Daniel von dem blühenden Tal, providing a more acceptably chivalric tone where deeds are performed not by resort to subterfuge (list, as is the case in Stricker’s Daniel) but by traditional chivalric prowess.10 In more recent scholarship a further point has been made, with regard to another later author, Konrad von Stoffeln, in his Gauriel von Muntabel, that this work once routinely received critical censure for precisely those qualities which constitute the author’s best poetic signature, that is, his creative departure from his predecessors.11 In fact the ‘classical’ works often merely provide a literary point of departure for later writers, not least because collectively they constitute a controversial corpus of writings in which Arthur and his retinue of individual knights are portrayed in a wide variety of hues, not all of them glorious, and because many works of the classical generation were adjudged to be problematical in either a formal or a moral sense.12 In the (post-Wace) French tradition on which the German romances depend for much of their material, it is rare to encounter reminiscences of the heroic Arthur belonging to the sixth-century political context of sub-Roman Britain (although the quasi-historical account of how Arthur quells the claims of his indigenous Celtic adversaries before all make common cause against the Saxon invaders is preserved in the thirteenth-century prose Livre d’Artus).13 In the main, however, and this applies a fortiori to the verse tradition in France and Germany, the erstwhile Hammer of Anglian invaders and indigenous, British

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See Helmut de Boor’s seminal ‘Der Daniel des Stricker und der Garel des Pleier’, Beiträge (Tübingen) 79 (1957), pp. 67–84. ‘Doch gerade das, was die ältere Forschung unisono als Mangel empfunden hat, könnte nach den Forschungsergebnissen der letzten Jahrzehnte auch als Kunstfertigkeit gelten, die von den Zeitgenossen geschätzt wurde, nämlich die Neukombination, Variierung und Steigerung von Bekanntem zu einem spannenden und kohärenten neuen Text mit eigenständiger Intention’ (Der Ritter mit dem Bock, Konrads von Stoffeln ‘Gauriel von Muntabel’, ed. Wolfgang Achnitz [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997], p. 196). For an overview of later Arthurian romances and fragments see Matthias Meyer, ‘Intertextuality in the later thirteenth century: Wigamur, Gauriel, Lohengrin and the Fragments of Arthurian romances’, in The Arthur of the Germans. The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature, ed. Jackson, pp. 98–114, and, of the larger-scale German monuments, Neil Thomas, The Defence of Camelot. Ideology and Intertextuality in the Post-Classical German Romances of the Matter of Britain Cycle, Deutsche Literatur von den Anfängen bis 1700 14 (Berne, Frankfurt: Lang, 1992). In this mélange of apparently pseudo-historical reminiscence and romantic innovation, many British warriors (including Gauvain’s father, Lot of Orkney) refuse to do Arthur homage since they disbelieve Merlin’s claim about Arthur’s royal paternity (as the scion of Uther Pendragon), their scepticism ultimately having to be beaten down at the point of the sword when Arthur sends to Brittany for his family cohort of Ban and Bohort to help him quell the rebellious barons. See The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, ed. H. O. Sommer, 8 volumes (Washington, 1909–16; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1969), VII.

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opposition becomes a largely depoliticised feudal figure-head,14 at times appearing even to descend to the position of a roi fainéant.15 Within the fictional world of Chrétien, Hartmann and Wolfram there was a sufficiently wide gap between the Arthurian ideal (as expressed in routine narratorial panegyric) and the Arthurian reality (as manifested in the actual deeds of Arthur and his knights narrated in the body of the romances)16 to make the question of Arthur’s notional status an issue apt to trigger further exploration by later writers-this giving rise to a number of literary ‘correctives’. The phenomenon of the literary continuation is common to all areas of medieval European literature, most famously in the case of Chrétien’s numerous continuators labouring to write/complete the mystery of the ‘grail’, the trend paralleled in the German context by Albrecht’s monumental labours to conflate Wolfram’s Parzival and Titurel into his more extensive opus, Der Jüngere Titurel.17 Individual works of a cyclic tradition often reflect themes characteristic of the wider tradition and may also offer an implicit imaginative commentary on them. In the Germanic heroic genre, for instance, the Hildebrandslied reflects themes of exile and loss characteristic of the larger Dietrich cycle with which it enjoys a legendary kinship,18 whilst the fifteenth-century Jüngere Hildebrandslied implicitly opposes the theme of a father killing his son in single combat by adding a conciliatory ending to what was most probably an originally tragic story.19 So common

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See Erich Köhler, Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der höfischen Epik. Studien zur Form der frühen Artusund Graldichtung, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 97, 2nd edition (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1970), and Elspeth Kennedy, ‘The narrative techniques used to give Arthurian romance a “historical” flavour’, in Conjunctions. Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 219–33. See Edward Peters, The Shadow King. Rex Inutilis in Medieval Law and Literature (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), especially pp. 170–209. Cf. Hugh Sacker’s seminal ‘An interpretation of Hartmann’s Iwein’, The Germanic Review 36 (1961), pp. 5–26; Hubertus Fischer, Ehre, Hof und Abenteuer in Hartmanns ‘Iwein’. Vorarbeiten zu einer historischen Poetik des höfischen Epos, Forschungen zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Literatur 3 (Munich: Fink, 1983), and Rudolf Voß, Die Artusepik Hartmanns von Aue. Untersuchungen zum Wirklichkeitsbegriff und zur Ästhetik eines literarischen Genres im Kräftefeld von soziokulturellen Normen und christlicher Anthroplogie, Literatur und Leben, new series, 25 (Cologne, Vienna: Böhlau, 1983). For a critical adjudication on the significance of the contributions of Voß and Fischer see Dennis H. Green’s review of both volumes in MLR 80 (1985), pp. 486–7. On this romance as a continuation of the Wolframian tradition see Andrea Lorenz, Der Jüngere Titurel als Wolfram-Fortsetzung. Eine Reise zum Mittelpunkt des Werks, Deutsche Literatur von den Anfängen bis 1700 36 (Berne, Berlin, Brussels, Franfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Vienna: Lang, 2002), especially pp. 153–346, and Herbert Guggenberger, Albrechts ‘Jüngerer Titurel’. Studien zur Minnethematik und zur Werkkonzeption, GAG 566 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1992). Dietrich is the type of the eternal exile, the embodiment of the most poignant theme in heroic literature, whose triumphs in the Battle of Ravenna are bought at a price so high as to render the victory futile. In the same way Hildebrand’s return home is bought at the price of his only son’s life, the tragic scenario being not a casual accretion but a contrafactura of the fate of the legendary master in that of the servant. See J. Knight Bostock, A Handbook on Old High German Literature, revised by K. C. King and D. R. McLintock (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), pp. 66–7. For the older version see Wilhelm Braune’s Althochdeutsches Lesebuch (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979), pp. 83–4, and for the ‘younger’ version (a fifteenth-century ballad) see Le Cycle de Dietrich. Morceaux Choisis, ed. Georges Zink (Paris: Aubier, 1953), pp. 231–5. For full discussion

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was the medieval habit of imaginative dissent from an ostensibly finished literary product that the author of the Nibelungenlied famously subjoined the medieval equivalent of a ‘copyright’ to the tragic conclusion of his work as a deterrent to writers who might have wished to spoil his deliberately bleak finale.20 His attempt to establish his own version as canonical was, however, unsuccessful to judge from the evidence of the Klage21 which defied the original writer’s interdict and largely changed the ethics and characterisation of what his predecessor had clearly wanted to remain a self-standing literary monument. In the Klage, the Nibelungenlied poet’s robust conclusion that Kriemhild’s descent into vengeful psychopathology qualified her as a ‘she-devil’ (vâlandinne) is replaced by the notion that her loyalty to Siegfried, allied to a woman’s ‘feeble mind’ (kranker sin), were justifications for her action. Hagen and the other Burgundians, on the other hand, are degraded from exemplars of loyalty and heroic fortitude to warriors puffed up by their own arrogance (übermuot).22 Kudrun, too, presents an imaginative rejoinder to the Nibelungenlied with its pacific heroine, a species of counterKriemhilt.23 There were apparently more than enough competitors (then as now) wishing to add the metaphorical equivalent of a ‘fortieth chapter’ to the Nibelungenlied.24 Similarly, the canonical status accorded to a small number of early Arthurian romances by modern scholars provides no reliable indication as to contemporary receptions of those works in either French or German contexts. With regard to the second of Chrétien’s texts adapted by Hartmann, Iwein, the eponymous hero’s denunciation by Lunete for not returning to Laudine’s realm at the agreed time clearly inculpates the protagonist for his omission, yet there is a spirited apologia for Iwein’s action in Diu Crône whose narrator challenges the conception

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of both versions in their cyclic context see the chapter on the Hildebrandslied in Bostock’s Handbook on Old High German Literature, pp. 43–82. ‘Ine kan iu niht bescheiden, waz sider dâ geschach:/ wan ritter unde vrouwen weinen man dô sach,/ dar zuo die edeln knehte, ir lieben friunde tôt./ hie hât daz maere ein ende: daz ist der Nibelunge nôt’ (Das Nibelungenlied, ed. Karl Bartsch, Helmut de Boor and Roswitha Wisniewski (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1979)). Both B and C manuscripts close on this indefeasibly tragic note. Because of dating difficulties we cannot be absolutely certain that the first incarnation of what is usually regarded as a sequel did not in fact arise at the oral stage as a ‘competing’ work. See Michael Curschmann, ‘The concept of oral formula as an impediment to our understanding of medieval poetry’, Medievalia et Humanistica, new series, 8 (1977), pp. 63–76. See George T. Gillespie, ‘Die Klage as a commentary on Das Nibelungenlied’, in Probleme Mittelhochdeutscher Erzählformen, ed. Peter F. Ganz and Werner Schröder (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1971), pp. 153–77, and The Lament of the Nibelungen (Div Chlage), translated by Winder McConnell (New York, Camden House, 1994), Introduction, esp. pp. xiii–xv. For the B text see Diu Klage, ed. Karl Bartsch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, 1964) and for the C text (a later revision), Das Nibelungenlied und die Klage, ed. Heinz Engels, Handschrift C der F. F. Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen (Stuttgart: Müller and Schindler, 1968). See Werner Hoffmann, ‘Die Kudrun: eine Antwort auf das Nibelungenlied’, in Nibelungenlied und Kudrun, ed. H. Rupp, Wege der Forschung LIV (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, 1976), pp. 599–620. For the vast modern reception/rewriting see Die Nibelungen. Ein deutscher Wahn, ein deutscher Alptraum. Studien und Dokumente zur Rezeption des Nibelungenstoffs im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Joachim Heinzle and Anneliese Waldschmidt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), and ‘Waz sider da geschach’. American-German Studies on the ‘Nibelungenlied’. Text and Reception, ed. Werner Wunderlich and Ulrich Müller, GAG 564 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1992).

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of there being anything incompatible with marital fidelity in Iwein’s forsaking of his wife for the world of knights, this stance implicitly shifting the blame on to Laudine herself for deflecting her husband from the path of chivalric duty: Her Ywein weste di triwe wol, Ob man ez allez sagen sol, Do er durch ir gahen zorn Het nah seinen leip verlorn, Jn einem walde durch ir minne Jm selben ze ungewinne, Da er verlos die sinne.25 (In point of fact, Sir Iwein was being a faithful knight as he rode through that wood at some cost to himself and almost lost both his wits and his life thanks to her [= Laudine’s] quick temper.)

It is conspicuous that when in Diu Crône Gawein takes a wife, she comes to dwell with him at court and the potential threat to the court from a foreign temptress is contained. The anonymous author of the Old French Durmart le Galois appears to take material from Chrétien’s Erec but, so far from offering an hommage to the romance, advances a critical confrontation with the earlier work in which ‘the image of the hero Durmart is [. . .] built up in such a way as to contrast with Chrétien’s hero’.26 In particular, the Durmart poet interprets the origins of Erec’s later woes as residing in his choice of ‘une povre pucele’27 to be his wife: [. . .] monsaignor Erec le sage Qui nez est de roial linage. Il prist une povre pucele, Por ce qu’il le vit jone et bele, Et s’est Erec mout riches hom Et fiez a roi de grant renom. (lines 8453–8) (My lord Erec the wise: he who was born of royal lineage. He took a poor maiden [as his wife] because he saw that she was young and beautiful. Erec was a man of great standing and a king’s son of great renown.)

It is, according to this conception, because Erec did not marry a woman equal to his station that he succumbed to recreantise, this being a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of the moral of Erec at odds with the gloss on verligen as meaning ‘sloth’/‘dereliction of knightly duty’ offered by Wirnt von Gravenberg (which appears to reflect the original Problematik articulated by Chrétien and Hartmann more faithfully): wan mit gemache niemen mac grôze êre erwerben.

25 26 27

Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, lines 1354–60. Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, p. 178. Durmart Le Galois, ed. Joseph Gildea, 2 volumes (Pasadena: Villanova UP, 1966), I, line 8455.

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[. . .] swer sich an êren wil erholn, der muoz kumber doln und underwîlen arbeit. ez wirt vil selten hirz erjeit mit slâfendem hunde; traeges wolves munde geschiht von spîse selten guot.28 (Nobody can win great honour through indolence. Whoever desires Honour’s gains must suffer pains – sometimes of an extreme sort. Seldom is a deer caught by a sleeping dog and a lazy wolf does not customarily eat well.)

However, the heterodox interpretation of this moral issue is repeated by Durmart’s father after his son embarks on a heedless affair with the pretty young wife of his father’s seneschal (the reproach to the son impels him subsequently to woo and win the more socially prestigious Queen of Ireland): N’est pas amors a fil a roi Vers la feme d’un vavassor. Filz de roi doit avoir amor A haute pucelle roial Ou a reine emperial. (lines 860–4) (The love of a king’s son is not for the likes of a vavasour’s wife. The son of a king should vest his love in a royal princess or a queen of a realm.)

In the later thirteenth-century German tradition, Der Pleier’s Tandareis und Flordibel (c. 1260/80)29 undertakes to problematise the motif of the king’s rash boon – a common motif but one found most notably in the abduction incident in Chrétien’s Le Chevalier de la Charrete and in Hartmann’s Iwein – when the Indian princess Flordibel gains from Arthur his bond that he will execute any knight who should sue for her favour.30 When the young and eligible Tandareis does so with the maiden’s approval, Arthur nevertheless stubbornly persists with his original oath. The sentiment that affairs of the heart are better decided by the parties

28

29

30

Wigalois, lines 2879–87. For Wirnt’s reception and understanding of this concept see Brigitte Edrich-Porzberg, Studien zur Überlieferung und Rezeption von Hartmanns ‘Erec’, GAG 557 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1994), pp. 192–8. Der Pleier, Tandareis und Flordibel, ed. Ferdinand Khull (Graz: Buchhandlung Styria, 1885). On Pleier’s place in the German literary tradition see The Arthurian Romances of Der Pleier, trans. J. W. Thomas (New York: Garland, 1992), Introduction. For the multiple occurrences of the ‘don contraignant’ motif in the French tradition see Elaine H. Ruck, An Index of Themes and Motifs in Twelfth-Century Arthurian Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 111–13, especially 111. There is already in Chrétien’s works a noticeable disparity between the author’s formal praises to the king and his strangely blinkered actions. The king’s ill-judged conduct at the beginning of Erec (where, in a passage not preserved in the German version, he persists in arranging a beauty contest despite Gauvain’s warnings that this could cause invidious divisions at court) together with his bizarre action in making his ‘rash boon’ in Le Chevalier de la Charrete (letting himself be manoeuvered by Keu into allowing the seneschal to escort Guinevere to his enemy, Meleagant) provide evidence that his foibles were sufficient to make even his early literary reputation appear problematic.

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involved than by the counsel of the great and good had already been introduced into romance discourse in Diu Crône when Gasozein, the pretender to Guinevere’s favours, claims that the dispute between himself and Arthur over Guinevere should be decided by ‘the goddess of love’ since her adjudications, he claims, would remain uncorrupted by the sophistries of clerical arbitration.31 A similar Artuskritik informs Pleier’s account where the wooer, Tandareis, is supported by Gawan as his legal advocate and by Kei who both place the blame on the king for his intransigence (opining that the king bears sole responsibility for the imbroglio). It is finally Arthur, rather than Tandareis, who has to yield by acknowledging the futility of trying to legislate in affairs of the heart, so resolving a tension which the king had failed to resolve in many previous romances, namely, how to strike a proper balance between stern absolutism and regal magnanimity. If Tandareis und Flordibel is concerned with the correction of a single regal foible, a more considerable moral aporia for many readers is to be found in the conclusion of Hartmann’s Iwein where the eponymous hero deserts his Arthurian peers to rejoin his supernatural dompna, Laudine, in her Otherworldly realm. In the Middle Ages the depiction in older mythologies of a two-way traffic in and out of Otherworldly locations had fallen under the influence of Christianising notions and a misogynistic interpretation of the erotic allure of fées as ‘aspects of a struggle between the world of chivalry and another, hostile world’.32 On this view, intercourse between a knight and a fée came to be seen as emblematic of a surrender of personal autonomy to atavistic, ‘pagan’ impulses which a later age would often consign to the domain of witchcraft. Given that premise, the threat of a competing source of ethical authority in the shape of Laudine’s realm in Iwein (to which the eponymous hero finally resorts, somewhat like Wagner’s Tannhäuser to the ‘Venusberg’) may have been interpreted as a demotion of the Arthurian realm from its position as the moral centre of chivalric existence (even perhaps as a herald of the Grail realm).33 Towards the end of the thirteenth century Konrad von Stoffeln appears to have advanced a corrective to this disquieting closure in his Gauriel von Muntabel.34 In a reprise of the ‘fairy-mistress’ tradition underlying Yvain/Iwein, Gauriel tells of how the lovesick hero is so taken with his Otherworldly consort (the

31 32 33

34

Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, lines 10803–30. Lewis Jillings, ‘The Abduction of Arthur’s Queen in Diu Crône’, Nottingham Mediaeval Studies 19 (1975), pp. 16–34, 16. For this view see Hildegard Emmel, Formprobleme des Artusromans und der Graldichtung. Die Bedeutung des Artuskreises fur das Gefüge des Romans im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert in Frankreich, Deutschland und den Niederlanden (Berne: Francke, 1951), especially p. 39, and Christoph Gerhardt, ‘Iwein-Schlüsse’, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres Gesellschaft 13 (1972), pp. 13–39. See Der Ritter mit dem Bock. Konrads von Stoffeln ‘Gauriel von Muntabel’, ed. Wolfgang Achnitz (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), pp. 195–232 (‘Einleitung’); Manfred Egerding, ‘Konflikt und Krise im Gauriel von Muntabel des Konrad von Stoffeln’, ABäG 34 (1991), pp. 111–25, and Neil Thomas, ‘Konrad von Stoffeln’s Gauriel von Muntabel: a comment on Hartmann’s Iwein?’ Oxford German Studies 17 (1988), pp. 1–9.

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unnamed Queen of Fluratrône) that, under her influence, he performs acts against the interests of his Arthurian peers. At the conclusion of the work, however, Konrad contrives to bring his errant hero and his faery spouse back into the Arthurian circle. Gauriel convinces his inamorata of the courtly doctrine of the Golden Mean and tells her that he must repair his relationship with the knightly world in order to be able to appreciate their sexual union in a broader perspective. The two lovers then forsake their enclosed domain and return to Court, Gauriel to perform penance for Guinevere for having abducted his brother knights, his mistress symbolically renouncing her opposition to Arthurian chivalry (leaving us to infer that she will henceforth defer to Guinevere’s command). This effectively opposes the implication that the affections of an Arthurian knight might be alienated by a foreign amazon ( pace Hartmann) and defuses the dangers perceived to lie in exogamous liaisons. A more large-scale apologia for the ‘Arthurian ideal’ was advanced by Heinrich von dem Türlin in Diu Crône.35 Here the king’s problematical regal status is confronted directly, his court initially depicted as being vulnerable to internal and external challenge as Arthur attempts to establish his authority with peers and external challengers alike. Following a shaming chastity test administered by an emissary of a distant king (which all courtiers except for Arthur fail) Gawein temporarily defects from the court with the majority of the other knights, leaving Arthur with only Kei and two other knights. The king’s troubles only increase when he is mocked by his wife for soft ways which for her contrast unfavourably with those of a man ‘known to her’ (who in this version is not Lancelot but an Otherworldly pretender, Gasozein).36 The initial positioning of the satirical tests of chastity/nobility together with the description of the triangular relationship between Arthur, Guinevere and Gasozein underscore the hesitant beginnings from which the mature Arthurian order is obliged to emerge. Arthur’s feelings of inadequacy also find expression in his funerary oration for his father, Uther, where he defines himself as one incapable of matching the standard of his illustrious forbear: Daz ist mein sendiv riwe, Daz er [sc. Uther] mich so gereichet hat, Wan mein lop dar an zergat. Diseu lant sint meiniu aigen Von iv, vatter, niht von mir!37 (I greatly lament the fact that that Uther has conferred such high honour upon me because my own honour will thereby be undermined: these lands have only become mine because of you, Father – I do not possess them on my own merits)

35 36

37

Cf. the summary of this 30000-verse romance in the appendix to this volume. Cf. Guinevere’s words, lines 3395–404. Heinrich almost certainly knew the Charrete and sources of the Lancelot-Grail cycle but does not link the name of Lancelot with the queen. In place of Lancelot, Heinrich chose the more obscure, semi-mythic figure, described as the brother of ‘ein reiche fei’ (Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, line 10500). Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, lines 398–403.

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However, the choice of an alternative model of the sexual triangle involving Gasozein, rather than Lancelot or Mordred, together with the decision to place his challenge for Guinevere in the first decade of the king’s reign,38 is a positive factor giving the adultery motif in Diu Crône a less intractable implication from that which adheres to it in standard accounts such as the Arthurian chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace, the Didot Perceval and the cyclic romance of Lancelot. Whereas in those works the triangle forms a terminal episode leading to the ultimate tragedy in the Final Battle, the same motif in Diu Crône, situated within Heinrich’s imagined beginnings of the Arthurian order, becomes detached from the ‘canonical’ account where Lancelot, the ostensible saviour of the queen, betrays his trust to Arthur and is ultimately instrumental in bringing down the Round Table. The logic of the adultery story combined with dissension amongst the Arthurian courtiers might at first lead us to anticipate an Arthurian Armageddon by analogy with the Mort Artu, but Diu Crône allows scope for the processes of reconciliation. To remedy the initial images of regal weakness, the narrator assigns Arthur a messianic protector in the shape of Gawein (a knight Heinrich gradually rehabilitates from his initial status of feckless renegade)39 who is able to broker a concordat between king and queen. Heinrich’s ‘counterfactual’ version of the triangle story attempts to ‘steer the course of Arthurian history away from the path of destruction’,40 effectively creating a new foundation myth in which his vision of Camelot is redeemed from an initial condition of factionalism, sexual betrayal and diminished morale under an inexperienced king to one of law, order and security under the aegis of Gawein. Exposure to the complete range of the medieval Arthurian corpus brings home the sheer variety of competing interpretations to which the early texts were subject(ed) in the decades following their composition. This makes the notion of a universally acknowledged canon problematical, if not indefensible, a point to which James Schultz has already adverted in extenso in calling attention to the dangers of turning a set of descriptive observations on a few works into a prescriptive poetics for an entire genre: If a work can be made to fit the prescription, it is considered a legitimate Arthurian romance; if no one can be found to champion its orthodoxy, it is forced into literary-historical exile, like Gauriel, Wigamur or the works of Der Pleier. The critical literature, it seems, recognises only one province in the kingdom of Arthurian romance; if you want to live there you have to look like Erec. It must be obvious, however, that a structural definition that accommodates less than half the corpus remains just that: a structural definition of less than

38

39 40

Arthur had lost his father at the age of six (lines 313–15) and has the responsibilities of a crown and a wife to contend with ‘Nach vunfzehen jaren’ (line 422). Those twin rites of passage had taken place ‘seven years ago’ (lines 4807, 10777, 10933), making the Arthur of Diu Crône a man in his early twenties. Heinrich’s purported aim is to narrate the youth’s acquisition of adult chivalric qualities (‘Sîner tugende anegenge’, line 170). See Neil Thomas, ‘ “Sîner tugende anegenge sagen”. The rewriting of Arthurian (hi)story in Diu Crône’, MLR 95 (2000), pp. 744–63. Elizabeth Andersen, ‘Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône and the Prose Lancelot: an intertextual study’, Arthurian Studies 7 (1987), pp. 23–49, citation 46.

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half the corpus. If we want to understand the structure of all the Middle High German Arthurian romances, then we will have to remove the works of Hartmann and Wolfram from their privileged position. No one will deny that Erec, Iwein and Parzival are the masterpieces of our genre, yet this is irrelevant to an investigation of genre structure. Such words as ‘classic’ or ‘masterpiece’ tell us nothing about the structure of literary works: they refer to social acceptance, and there are no inherent formal qualities that classics or masterpieces have that other works do not have.41

Wigalois: Tradition and Innovation Heinrich ostentatiously rejects Wolfram’s Parzival who forsakes Karidol for the separate Grail realm of Munsalvaesche and subsequently for that of ‘Prester John’.42 His reappropriation of the Arthurian legacy and fabrication of a stronger moral genealogy for the fabulous court expresses the aspiration to give a more secure imaginative foundation to the Arthurian world. His attempts in this direction were compromised, however, by the signal lack of a religious basis on which to rest his Arthurian order. Invocations of the divine in Diu Crône are desultory,43 the ‘Grail’ quest more a military than a spiritual challenge (even taking into account the medieval preference for representing spiritual struggle through martial terminology). Whilst Heinrich, Der Pleier and Konrad von Stoffeln offer creative confrontations with the pragmatics of the (fictional) chivalric value-system, they remain largely silent on the spiritual themes adumbrated by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Since Wolfram’s continuator, Albrecht, was composing his Jüngerer Titurel only towards the end of the thirteenth century, it was left to Wirnt von Gravenberg of Wolfram’s immediate successors to confront critically the most challenging theme of the courtly era, namely the spiritual challenge ‘to be pleasing to God and the world’ broached but hardly resolved in Parzival because of Wolfram’s equivocal presentation of the Arthurian/Grail dichotomy, themes to which attention will be now directed via an initial analysis of the source problem. Wigalois differs from the better-known Arthurian romances of Hartmann von Aue in its author’s eclectic use of source material.44 Where Erec and Iwein

41

42 43

44

The Shape of the Round Table. Structures of Middle High German Arthurian Romance (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1983), p. 5. For a challenge to the concept of canon formation or what has more recently been termed The Great (Anglophone) Tradition see Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture. A Study of the Structure of Romance (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1976), especially pp. 42–3. On Heinrich’s ‘feud’ with Wolfram’s protagonist see Ralph Read, ‘Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Krône and Wolfram’s Parzival’, Modern Language Quarterly 35 (1974), pp. 129–39. On the secular tone of Diu Crône see Lewis Jillings, ‘Diu Crône’ by Heinrich von dem Türlin. The Attempted Emancipation of Secular Narrative, GAG 258 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1980), especially pp. 185–221. ‘Wirnt n’est pas un adaptateur dans le sens où on l’entend pour Hartmann von Aue adaptant les romans de Chrétien de Troyes [. . .] On a tendance à penser aujourd’hui qu’il aurait trouvé ses sources dans plusieurs oeuvres françaises, à partir desquelles il aurait réalisé un “montage” personnel’ (Guy Borgnet, ‘Le pouvoir politique dans le roman arthurien allemand. L’exemple de Wigalois, le “Chevalier à la Roue” ’, in Europäische Literaturen im Mittelalter.

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depend largely on unitary French sources by Chrétien de Troyes, Wigalois is a syncretic work whose material lies athwart a number of story-types and genres.45 A tradition of Gawein’s liaison with Florie – a fée whose name in slightly different form (Lorie de la Roche Florie) adorns the Old French Merveilles de Rigomer46 – appears to underlie the introductory story of the hero’s parents. In Le Bel Inconnu we are told that Guinglain was the son of Gauvain and a fée, here named Blancmal: Li roi Artus mal te nonma: Bel Descouneü t’apiela, Guinglains as non en batestire Tote ta vie te sai dire. Mesire Gavains est tes pere, si te dirai qui est ta mere: fius es a Blancmal la Fee. Armes te donnai et espee; au Roi Artus puis t’envoia, qui cest affaire te donna de secorre la dameissele.47 (King Arthur misnamed you. He called you the Fair Unknown but Guinglain is your baptismal name. I can tell you of your entire life. Sir Gauvain is your father and I shall also tell you of your mother: you are the son of Blancmal the Fay. It was she who gave you arms and a sword and sent you to King Arthur who assigned you the task of helping this maiden.)

Whether the German account represents some form of the parents’ story alluded to in this ‘flashback’ form in Le Bel Inconnu (it is not related in the main text) is uncertain, but the story of the parents is then succeeded by an account of a young knight’s testing similar to that occurring in Le Bel Inconnu and in other European variants of the Fair Unknown cycle. There is, however, no mention in the German romance of the motif fundamental to all the cognates of the Serpent’s Kiss ( fier baiser), the supreme act of courage according to which the hero must kiss a serpent/dragon and so release the beautiful maiden temporarily cast into

45 46

47

Mélanges en l’honneur de Wolfgang Spiewok à l’occasion de son 65ème anniversaire, ed. Danielle Buschinger, Wodan 30 [Greifswald: Reinecke Verlag, 1994], pp. 33–44, 34). On this point see especially Stefan Fuchs, Hybride Helden: Gwîgalois und Willehalm. This post-Chrétien verse romance penned by the otherwise unknown Jehan (possibly a collective nom de plume for a number of scribes) has a triple quest in which Lancelot (unsuccessfully) and Gauvain (successfully) set out to lift the curse of the mysterious castle of Rigomer, followed by the torso of an account in which King Arthur himself takes up the challenge. Gauvain is protected in his mission by the tutelary fairy, Lorie. See summary contained in the appendix section of this volume and Les Merveilles de Rigomer, ed. Wendelin Foerster and Hermann Breuer, 2 volumes (Dresden: Niemeyer, 1908 and 1915), and The Marvels of Rigomer, translated with Introduction by Thomas Vesce (New York: Garland, 1988). Renaut de Bâgé, Le Bel Inconnu (Li Biaus Descounëus; The Fair Unknown), ed. Karen Fresco, translated by Colleen P. Donagher, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, series A, 77 (New York and London: Garland, 1992), lines 3231–41. A similar account occurs at lines 4964–78.

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reptilian form.48 Instead of that striking motif there occurs an account of the hero’s redemption of the wasted land of an ailing king and the restoration of his Christian régime. For this Wirnt will have had to seek alternative sources of inspiration, one of which will doubtless have been Wolfram’s Parzival with its concern for the redemption of the ailing Anfortas and the later assumption by the hero of a theocratic form of kingship under the cognomen of ‘Prester John’. Generic similarities between Wigalois and the Grail tradition have often been noted49 and the fact that the king in Wigalois with the ‘speaking name’ of Lar (Latin ‘ghost’) is in a ‘death-in-life’ condition links Wirnt’s romance with similar conceptions encountered in the old Grail King in Parzival and in the Didot Perceval (where Merlin tells of the sick king awaiting the knight who will pose the question allowing him an easeful death).50 These similarities were already perceptible to Heinrich von dem Türlin when he used a variation of Wigalois’s redemptive act to furnish the metaphysical logic underpinning both his Grail sequence and some of his surreal, apocalyptic sequences (‘Wunderketten’) in Diu Crône.51 When Heinrich’s Gawein succeeds in redeeming the old Grail King from a limbo girt with what are termed ‘wonders’ of hellish fire, the author portrays a similar mode of messianic salvation as that described by Wirnt when his eponymous hero releases the old King Lar’s wraith from its purgatorial abode in the castle full of unearthly flames and lamentations.52 Gawein, like his legendary son in Wirnt’s Wigalois, acts as the elect redeemer of a stricken land and its people. Common to Wigalois, Diu Crône and many romances of the Grail cycle is a disquiet concerning a homicidal event glossed in cosmic terms as a sacrilege bringing divine wrath upon a bereaved people and a blight over the victim’s land. The curse is to be overcome by a saviour knight by the exercise of spiritual power and/or by the exaction of vengeance upon the original malefactor, the vengeance motif being found in a variety of romances such as Peredur, Sir Percyvell of Galles and in Manessier’s Continuation of the Conte du Graal (where Perceval uses the reforged Grail sword to slay the Lord of the Red Tower who had slain the brother of the Fisher King). The duty to lift the curse is typically

48

49

50 51 52

It is possible that a motif originally associated with the father was subsequently transferred to his legendary son in stories of the Fair Unknown type. The folk tale motif of the Loathly Lady Transformed occurs in the late Middle English The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell and The Marriage of Sir Gawaine and in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, all of which depend ultimately on older French sources. See John Withrington’s discussion of this group in The Arthur of the English, ed. W. R. J. Barron (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), pp. 207–10. Most recently by Guy Borgnet: ‘Wirnt von Gravenberg s’engage ici sur une voie qu’avait ouverte son maître Wolfram von Eschenbach dans son Parzival, chemin déjà esquissé par le Perceval de Chrétien’ (‘Le pouvoir politique dans le roman arthurien allemand. L’exemple de Wigalois, le “Chevalier à la Roue” ’, p. 40). For a brief summary of the Didot Perceval see appendix to this volume. The similarity was first pointed out by Irma Klarmann, ‘Heinrich von dem Türlin: Diu Krone, Untersuchungen der Quellen’ (dissertation, University of Tübingen, 1944), p. 62. In a separate sequence also resembling Wigalois (Crône, ed. Scholl, lines 19295–301) Gawein helps a group of women who appeal for his aid against a divine curse which had wasted their land. One of the women explains that her family receives the baleful attentions of a knight acting as a divine scourge (‘vrônebote’, line 19268; ‘wîzenaere’, line 19269) on account of the hubris which had characterised the past actions of some members of their kin.

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linked to a further obligation where the redeemer, having avenged his late predecessor, is required to restore order and dominion within the wasted realm. All these narrative patterns are evident in Wigalois where the eponymous hero triumphs over an infidel malefactor with God’s aid, avenges the just king murdered by that malefactor and assures a proper continuation of the recently overturned Christian rule through alms-giving and other good works53 (the possession of a standard of spiritual distinction by the quester typically being found in later, more sophisticated forms of the quest pattern).54 The concluding 4000 lines of Wigalois, on the other hand, describing a protracted siege led by the eponymous hero, his legendary father and a mixed-faith group of combatants (for which no source or analogue is known), is possibly an invention – albeit one influenced by aspects of the chanson de geste tradition of collective combat. How Wirnt came across his diverse material is unknown although some of it will have been of French origin.55 According to the narrator, he received his story by word of mouth from a squire or young knight (‘knappe’, line 11687) who may possibly have travelled from France in the entourage of a French noblewoman.56 Early scholars were sceptical about the ‘squire’57 but, despite the penchant of many of his literary peers for adducing fictitious sources58 many critics have taken

53

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55

56

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58

Alms-giving is an important aspect of the old king’s rule and of that of his successor. Of the God-fearing Lar we are told, ‘ern liez ne deheinen tac/ ern teilte selbe mit der hant;/ swaz er armer liute vant,/ die beriet der tugentrîche man./ des sol in got geniezen lân,/ wand er im ie was undertân’ (lines 3745–50). And of Wigalois: ‘got sîn dienest was bereit/ mit lûterm herzen; alle tage/ vernam er armer liute klage/ und buozte in ir kumbers nôt,/ als im diu mâze ie danne gebôt’ (lines 11620–4). On the varieties of this pattern see Alfred Nutt’s Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail (London: Publications of the Folklore Society/Nutt, 1888); Dhira B. Mahoney’s extensive editorial introduction to The Grail: A Casebook (New York: Garland, 2000); Glenys Witchard Goetinck, ‘The quest for Origins’, in Mahoney, pp. 117–47, and Jean-Claude Lozac’hmeur, ‘Recherches sur les origines indo-européennes et ésotériques de la légende du Graal’, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 30 (1987), pp. 45–63. An epitaph for the dead Japhite, the widow of Roaz, is described as being written in Arabic and French (‘heidenisch unde franzois’, line 8258), whilst the hero’s ally, Adan, acting as an interpreter, is described as using the same languages of ‘heidenisch unde franzois’ (lines 8339–40). The term ‘fianze’ is glossed as ‘sicherheit’ (lines 7817–18) and Künicesberc supplied as a translation of the proper name Roimunt (lines 3755ff). Saran noted that Wirnt often assumes the perspective of his purported source (‘[Wirnt] schreibt eben vom standpunkt der quelle aus’) although his further inference that ‘der deutsche Wigalois [besitzt] ausser seinem eigenen wert noch den, dass er eine nicht mehr erhaltene französische Artusdichtung repräsentiert’ (‘Über Wirnt von Gravenberg und den Wigalois’, p. 285) is not supported by the conclusions of the present study. Friedrich Neumann thought that Wirnt’s claimed source was to be identified with a young Frenchman in the entourage of Beatrice of Burgundy who in 1208 married Otto I, Count of Andechs and Duke of Meran, this latter having possibly been Wirnt’s patron (‘Wann verfasste Wirnt den Wigalois?’). ‘Quelle qu’ait été la source où l’écuyer avait puisé et la fidélité avec laquelle il a communiqué son information, on ne peut guère douter que le chevalier bavarois n’ait pris à son tour de grandes libertés avec le récit qu’on lui faisait, ne l’ait amplifié notablement et ne l’ait beaucoup changé’ (Gaston Paris, ‘Etudes sur les romans de la Table Ronde, Guinglain ou Le Bel Inconnu’, Romania 15 [1886], pp. 1–24, 21). Der Stricker with little knowledge of French literature in his Daniel von dem blühenden Tal probably invents his source – a certain Albrecht of Besançon. Even Heinrich von dem Türlin

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Wirnt’s reference to the squire at face value (partly because the adduced source is unpretentious, the narrator making no claim to having had a prestigious, written source).59 On the other hand it must also be noted that Wirnt ‘appears embarrassed over his inability to produce a properly authenticated written source’60 and that a number of narratorial asides, liberally strewn with self-serving humility formulae, are suspiciously self-exculpatory. When telling of the defeat of Gawein by the intruder, Joram, for instance, the narrator anticipates his audience’s opposition, apologizes (lines 562–564), and blames it on the alleged source with whose account he claims to have disagreed.61 We may then be tempted to suspect a disingenuous motive in the adducing of an unverifiable oral source, namely, the desire to locate a scapegoat for the narrator’s own breaches with received tradition: Ich wil daz maere volenden hie, als mich ein knappe wizzen lie der mirs ze tihten gunde. Niwan eines von sînem munde Enpfie ich die âventiure; Dâ von was mir tiure Daz maere an mangen enden. (lines 11686–92) (I shall here bring to completion the story communicated to me by a young knight/squire who permitted me to cast it into verse. The traditions I have related come entirely from his mouth, with the result that the story is deficient in many details.)

That this formulation may be a form of captatio benevolentiae is suggested by its similarity to the narrator’s request made in the prologue that his audience should forgive him his inexperience: ich bin noch ganzer sinne hol; des sprich ich nâch kindes sit.

59

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with his encyclopaedic knowledge of French tradition somewhat mystifyingly cites Chrétien de Troyes as his sole source (Diu Crône, ed. Scholl, lines 16941, 23046, 23982 and 29970 [‘ûz einem exemplar’]). On Stricker’s small knowledge of French tradition see Daniel of the Blossoming Valley, Garland Library of Medieval Literature Series B, 58 (London and New York: Garland, 1990), trans. Michael Resler, Introduction, pp. xxviii–xxix. On fictitious sources see Friedrich Wilhelm, ‘Über fabulistische Quellenangaben’, Beiträge 33 (1907/8), pp. 286–339, and specifically on the Kyotfrage in Wolfram’s Parzival, Carl Lofmark, ‘Wolfram’s source references in Parzival’, MLR 67 (1972), pp. 820–44. Carl Lofmark, The Authority of the Source in Middle High German Narrative Poetry, Bithell Dissertation Series 5 (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1981), p. 126. ‘ezn kaeme ouch nimmer vür mîn munt/ hêt mirz ein knappe niht geseit/ zeiner ganzen wârheit,/ wider den ich alle wîle streit’ (lines 595–98). Whilst accepting as true the references to the knappe, Cormeau thought that the squire’s account may have provided little more than the ‘Anstoß und Kristillationskern für das erweiterte Konzept’ in which Wirnt himself will have played an active and productive role (‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’, p. 103). More recently Peter Johnson appears to add a further note of scepticism on the issue of the squire-assource: ‘Wirnt verfügt über grosse Formkunst und schreibt [. . .] flüssig, zweckmässig und elegant. Er versteht es auch, eine Handlung proportioniert darzustellen und spannend zu strukturieren. Diese Leistungen sind um so imponierender, wenn er tatsächlich bloß den Wortlaut seiner Quelle kennenlernte und seine Version nach dem Anhören zu gestalten hatte’ (italics supplied) (Die höfische Literatur der Blütezeit, p. 368).

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erziuge ich hie iht guotes mit, ob mîn geist gevüeget daz, des sol man mir danken baz dan einem sinne rîchen man, der meister ist und sprechen kan: der hât des mer dan ich getân. (lines 46–53).62 (I am rather without resources and so frame my verses as a novice. Should my faculties permit me to show any skill, there is more merit in that for me than there is in the case of the brilliant master of the poetic art who has amassed far more experience than I.)

The end of the romance is framed by similar, self-deprecating lines to the effect that the poet’s skills would be insufficient to allow him to versify the ‘wild annd convoluted’ story of Wigalois’s fictional son, Lifort Gawanides (‘des âventiure/ mir ze wilde waere,/ ze krump und ze swaere’: lines 11628–30).63 Regardless of whether Wirnt’s mentions of the squire as the source of his work are taken at face value or whether one is inclined to see references to the young knight-interlocutor as the kind of ‘symbolic’ language used by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his reference to ‘Kyot’ or by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his reference to the Oxonian archdeacon, Walter, as the source of his Historia Regum Britanniae,64 comparison of Wigalois with its European cognates shows that it must have been composed eclectically from a number of story-types in a manner which would have been at variance with audience expectations over a story of the Fair Unknown type.65 It would pose a ‘Homeric’ problem to define the precise stages at which various parts of a congeries of motifs originally came together into a pattern which has conventionally been taken to assign four works separated by two centuries and three national boundaries to the Fair Unknown cycle. The romances of that cycle evidence an early interpenetration with the Perceval material in that ‘Guinglain’s story treats the theme of interrupted communication [between a father and a son] in a manner remarkably similar to its

62 63

64 65

Fuchs refers to the lines cited from the prologue as ‘ein schwacher Topos [. . .] mit Bescheidenheitsfloskeln angereichert’ (Hybride Helden, p. 110). Gaston Paris reasonably concluded that this story of ‘Lifort Gawanides’ (the morphology of whose name suggests a generic patronymic calqued ad hoc from the name of the grandfather), was apocryphal since no echo of this is to be found in French tradition (‘Il nous semble fort probable que le bon Wirnt, tout en se donnant des airs d’ami scrupuleux de la vérité, comptait tirer de sa cervelle toute l’histoire du petit-fils de Gauvain’ (‘Etudes sur les romans de la Table Ronde, Guinglain ou Le Bel Inconnu’, p. 21). See The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, volume I, ed. Neil Wright (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), pp. xvii–xviii. On the Fair Unknown tradition and for comparison with the cognates see Jutta Eming, Funktionswandel des Wunderbaren. Studien zum ‘Bel Inconnu’, zum ‘Wigalois’ und zum ‘Wigoleis vom Rade’ (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1999); Denise Ann Adams, ‘The theme of the Bel Inconnu in the Literature of England, France, Germany and Italy in the Middle Ages’ (dissertation, University of Nottingham, 1975); Anthony van der Lee, Zum Literarischen Motiv der Vatersuche, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, new series, LXII, number 3 (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1957), especially pp. 145–54; Claude Luttrell, ‘The upbringing of the Perceval heroes’, Arthurian Literature 16 (1998), pp. 121–69, and Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail. A Study of the Prose ‘Lancelot’ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), especially pp. 10–48.

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usage in Le Conte du Graal and fulfills virtually all of the criteria of what LéviStrauss calls a Percevalian myth, even though it has nothing to do with Perceval or the grail.’66 The presence of aspects of the Perceval story in the Fair Unknown texts (particularly noticeable in the Middle English and Italian analogues) once gave rise to the idea that these versions reflected an early stage of the Bel Inconnu story on which Chrétien drew for his Conte du Graal and that ‘Libeaus Desconus is only Perceval with a new name.’67 On this view, the Fair Unknown complex of romances is a particular branch of an early Perceval story, but although much remains conjectural about the early development of the Fair Unknown legend, it is ‘at least as likely that they were a later addition, taken from Chrétien and Wolfram, as that they formed the nucleus of a pre-Chrétien story’.68 Perhaps Karen Fresco best reflects modern hermeneutic standards when she judges that ‘we must be content to note similarities between Li Biaus Desconeüs and other works and conclude some sort of relationship among them without specifying it’.69 The term ‘Fair Unknown’ as applied to just four European romances is in any case restrictive since elements of this tradition are found widely dispersed in works such as the Old French Roman de Fergus70 in Le Roman d’Yder, in the Lancelot-Grail cycle, the Middle Dutch Morien, the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, Der Pleier’s Meleranz, in Ulrich Füetrer’s Flordimar as well as in the Perceval/Parzival tradition to which the Fair Unknown romances are related. Meanwhile, the First Continuation, where Gauvain does battle with his son (section V, episode 8) and Second Continuation (episode 14) contain references to a series of events which, although they are here only referred to elliptically, may also constitute part of a once more extensive tradition concerning Gauvain’s son.71 Accepting the conventional generic label, however, the romances held to make up the cycle tell of ‘how a young man brought up in seclusion, whose main adventure was the rescue of a sorceress besieged by an unwanted suitor, was combined with that of a hero brought up in ignorance of his name by a fairy, who performed the Fier Baiser [sc. Serpent’s Kiss] and [who] learned his name and

66

67

68 69 70

71

Donald Maddox, ‘Lévi-Strauss in Camelot: interrupted communication in Arthurian feudal fictions’, in Culture and the King. The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend, ed. Martin B. Shichtman and James P. Carley (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), pp. 35–53, 39. William H. Schofield, Studies in the ‘Libeaus Desconus’, Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 4 (Boston: Ginn, 1895), p. 146. Pio Rajna too viewed the Italian hero (whose name he saw as a back formation from Carduel) as another incarnation of Perceval: ‘Carduino per un certo tempo non è altri che Perceval le Gallois transformato non poco, a dir vero ma pur sempre più che riconoscibile’ (I Cantari di Carduino, in Poematti Cavallereschi [Bologna: Romagnoli, 1873], Introduction, p. xiv). Similar views were expressed by D. D. R. Owen, ‘The development of the Perceval story’, Romania 80 (1959), pp. 473–92, and The Evolution of the Grail Legend (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1968). J. W. Thomas, Wigalois, The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, p. 18. Renaut de Bâgé, Le Bel Inconnu, Introduction, p. xxi. On Fergus as a Fair Unknown romance see Leo Jordan, ‘Zum altfranzösischen Fergusroman’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 43 (1923), pp. 154–86, and Neil Thomas, ‘The Old French Roman de Fergus: Scottish mise-en-scène and political implication’, Parergon 11 (1993), pp. 91–101. See Hilmar Wrede, ‘Die Fortsetzer des Gralromans Christians von Troyes’ (dissertation, University of Göttingen, 1952), pp. 120–27.

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antecedents’.72 The earliest work of the European tetralogy, Le Bel Inconnu (c. 1190), ascribed to Renaut de Bâgé (or Beaujeu), presents the material in the following account: Beginning at the time of Arthur’s coronation festivities, an unknown knight (Libeaus Desconus, later revealed to be called Guinglain) comes to Court and wins from Arthur the promise that the King shall grant him his first request. Shortly afterwards a female messenger, Hélie, arrives, with a dwarf (Tidogolain) requesting a knight to perform li fiers baisiers on behalf of her mistress. She is at first outraged that Arthur (held to the terms of his ‘rash boon’ by the ambitious cadet) should award this task to the unknown, but a series of successful combats performed by the young knight soon serve to convince her of his mettle. In one such challenge, Guinglain comes to the castle of a fée, called ‘la demoiselle aux blanches mains,’ who has the custom of giving her love only to the suitor who has served her for seven years. Guinglain defeats her unpopular protector (Malgiers li Gris), but cannot marry the lady since he has promised to go forth to perform the adventure of the Fier Baiser. After a preliminary encounter with Lampars, an ‘inhospitable host’ who gives shelter only to those who defeat him in battle, the small party proceeds with the guidance of the defeated host to its final goal of Senaudon, where the hero defeats the magicians, Eurain and Mabon, after which a door opens and a terrible serpent advances upon him. The latter assures Guinglain of its good will and kisses him on the mouth. At this point a voice announces to Guinglain his name and ancestry as the son of Gauvain and a fairy, Blancemal. Now a beautiful woman (Blonde Esmerée) stands before him and informs him that through his exertions he has killed the two men who had laid waste the Gaste Cité of Senaudon, afflicted the citizens with madness or death and transposed her into the serpent which had recently kissed him. Esmerée tells of how she could have escaped her terrible fate only by wedding Mabon but had refused the marriage, knowing that she could be freed if she could kiss the best knight of the Round Table (either Gauvain or else his son). She offers herself and her kingdom to Guinglain, and Guinglain promises to marry her if Arthur’s assent can be procured. The lady then proceeds to the Arthurian Court to ask for the King’s permission. In the meantime, Guinglain remembers all too keenly the charms of the fée and is drawn to her land once more. At first enduring great hardships imposed upon him by the fée as punishment for his erstwhile desertion, he is at length admitted to her bed, where she tells him that she had loved him since the time of his birth. At the same time she prophesies that he will marry another woman presently resident at the Arthurian Court. This other is Esmerée, and she and Guinglain are later wed, but the narrator enters a ‘codicil’ to the effect that, if his own lady would only present to him a lover’s ‘biau senblant’, he might presently produce a continuation of his story where he would reunite the hero with his tutelary fée. The mid fourteenth-century Middle English Libeaus Desconus, ascribed to Thomas Chestre, has a close historical relationship with the French version, although it is not certain whether the extant version of Le Bel Inconnu is its 72

Denise Ann Adams, ‘The theme of the Bel Inconnu’, prefacing abstract.

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source or whether another, similar poem, now lost, served as model.73 The English version begins rather like Chrétien’s Perceval with a young hero (Geynleyn or Gyngelayne) who was ‘be-gete [. . .] of Syr Gaweyn,/ Be a forest side’ (lines 8–9) and who (like Perceval) was shielded from knowledge of knighthood by his mother. One day, going into a forest to hunt, he finds a dead knight, filches his armour, and proceeds wearing his new accoutrements to King Arthur’s court at Glastonbury. Here, as in the French version, he wrings from Arthur the rash boon as previouly described and a similar series of exploits occurs as in the French poem under the watchful eye of the female messenger (Elene). A variation occurs when the two travelling companions come to the domain of the enchantress (the fée of the French version) for, although the hero is temporarily smitten with her, he never again returns to her world, and when he later releases the princess from her serpent-like form, he marries her without more ado. At this point the hero’s mother appears, now reunited with Gawain from whom the son learns his true name. After lengthy celebrations, King Arthur accompanies the couple back to their own land where they reign successfully for many years. The Italian Carduino (c. 1375), ascribed to Antonio Pucci since the codex in which it is written contains other works by the same author, is also connected historically to the French version but evidences a number of novel features. Carduino is here not the son of Gawain but of Dondinello who has been poisoned by Gawain, Mordred and others. For this reason Carduino’s mother secludes herself and her baby son in a forest, and the son grows up ignorant of knighthood. One day, however, he espies Arthur and other knights and he asks his mother for permission to go with them (a request to which she willingly consents). Here a similar sequence occurs as in the other versions with the hero proving himself to a sceptical emissary. Carduino too encounters an enchantress but after enduring both physical and emotional torments at her hands, is able to make his escape to perform the Fier Baiser, whereupon both the princess and many of her unfortunate subjects (who have also been cast into animal form) are restored to human shape. Having won the love of the restored princess, Carduino sets out to track down his father’s murderers. The poem ends with the marriage of Carduino and the princess. The relationship of Carduino to Wigalois and Le Bel Inconnu was the subject of an early, unresolved controversy. After the appearance of Célestin Hippeau’s first edition of Le Bel Inconnu74 some scholars were inclined to identify this work as Wirnt’s source. Others, on the other hand, recognising that Wigalois and Le Bel Inconnu were dissimilar in several crucial respects, concluded that Wirnt had no direct knowledge of the French poem. Hence Albert Mennung could use the

73

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Lybeaus Desconus, ed. Maldwyn Mills (Oxford: EETS 261, 1969). On the source problem see further the Introduction to Mills’ edition and Cormeau, ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’, pp. 68–103. Le Bel Inconnu, ou Giglain fils de messire Gavain et de la fée aux Blanches Mains; poème de la Table Ronde, par Renauld de Beaujeu, publié d’après le manuscrit unique de Londres avec une introduction et un glossaire, Collection des poètes français du Moyen Âge III, ed. Célestin Hippeau (Paris: August Aubry, 1860; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1969).

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term ‘ziemlich getreue Übersetzung’75 with regard to the German romance and Franz Saran postulated the existence of a ‘French Wigalois’ as the original of the German text.76 But from the sheer number of differences between the French and German versions Richard Bethge had already arrived at the different inference that Wigalois must represent a very loose version of the French.77 It seems clear that, despite similarities at the level of individual motifs between the European cognates, their thematic concerns vary considerably. The English author presents the combination of untried youth and serpent’s kiss in its most straightforward form,78 whilst the French author combines two types of narrative, that of the Fier Baiser and that involving a fée’s erotic compulsion, in order to point up the conflict between the two love interests.79 The Italian version, by contrast, introduces the unique theme of a vengeance for a slain father. Comparison of Wigalois with the three analogues reveals that the German romance supplies further idiosyncrasies of its own. These were apparently perceptible to one of the early illustrators of the manuscript now in the Donaueschingen Court Library who has very few pictorial representations of those parts of the romance where Wigalois proceeds away from the ‘Arthurian’ world to commence his infernal journey, and whilst there is an illustration of the dragon fight and one of the combat with the wild woman, Ruel, ‘the hero’s most dramatic encounters with the primeval forces of darkness are underrepresented. They, as well as the final episode of the romance that involves a mass combat, were viewed as “un-Arthurian.” ’80 Whilst the German hero’s initial series of challenges under Nereja’s supervision is analogous to Guinglain’s challenges in

75 76

77

78

79

80

‘Der Bel Inconnu des Renaut de Beaujeu in seinem Verhältnis zum Lybeaus Disconeus, Carduino und Wigalois’ (dissertation, University of Halle am Saale, 1890), p. 59. ‘Der mhd. Wigalois W hat in allem tatsächlichen von belang und gewis [sic] in den meisten einzelheiten einem altfranzösischen Wigalois des 12. jh.’s O entsprochen’ (‘Über Wirnt von Grafenberg und den Wigalois’, p. 412). ‘Wirnt hat nicht das französische gedicht selbst gekant [sic] oder gar [. . .] teilweise in einer handschrift vor sich gehabt, sondern er folgte wie er selbst angibt der einmaligen mündlichen erzählung eines knappen die von anfang an ungenau war und gegen das ende hin immer lückenhafter und verworrener wurde. Die abweichungen des deutschen gedichts von dem französischen beruhen zum teil auf vergesslichkeiten teils des dichters teils seines gewährsmannes, zum teil aber auch auf absichtlichen veränderungen, auslassungen und zusätzen Wirnts’ (Wirnt von Gravenberg. Eine litterarhistorische [sic] Untersuchung (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), p. 77). Gaston Paris thought that Renaut’s elaboration of the love conflict, by contrast, went far beyond the ‘conte original’ and that, by a particular fondness for the theme of erotic passion embodied in the fairy ‘demoiselle aux blanches mains’ (who comes to overshadow the ‘original’ heroine), the author ‘avait détruit par là même l’unité et la proportion de ce récit’ (‘Etudes sur les romans de la Table Ronde’, p. 12). On the foregrounding of the second heroine see Alice Colby-Hall, ‘Frustration and fulfilment: the double ending of Le Bel Inconnu’, Yale French Studies 67 (1984), pp. 120–34, and Donald Maddox, Fictions of Identity in Medieval France (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), pp. 99–109. In terms of its composition ‘the [French] romance brings together three courtly genres. It is a lay (a knight is drawn away from court by the love of a fay) within a romance (a knight achieves a series of exploits and is rewarded with a wife and fief) within a lyric frame’ (Karen Fresco, Le Bel Inconnu, Introduction, p. xiv). Ingeborg Henderson, ‘Manuscript illustrations as generic determinants in Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois’, in Genres in Medieval German Literature, ed. Ingeborg Henderson and Hubert Heinen, GAG 439 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1986), pp. 59–73, 65.

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the company of the reproachful messenger, Hélie, in Le Bel Inconnu, the ancient motif of the serpent’s kiss81 is replaced by that of the stricken king’s redemption (which agrees in terms of material with a sequence in a fifteenth-century prose work, Le Chevalier du Papegau).82 Meanwhile, none of the analogues possesses a full story of the eponymous hero’s parents or the more extensive innovation (involving the sequel of some 4000 lines) in which Wigalois, crowned King, coordinates the siege of Namur. Most unorthodox of all is Wirnt’s treatment of the ideological core of the Fair Unknown tradition. The hero of the Middle English derivative of Renaut’s Le Bel Inconnu is conspicuously a man ‘wytles and wylde’, begotten out of wedlock in a rural tryst and bereft of paternal instruction, the bastardy being part of the standard tradition according to an early version of the Gauvain/Floree story in the Old French Livre d’Artus, where Gauvain’s son is represented as the illegitimate issue of a fleeting sexual encounter. Despite the somewhat more genteel surroundings ‘en une chambre molt bele’ at the castle of a noble host, the issue of bastardy is in no doubt when we are told that sen uient au lit & se coucha deioste [la pucele] & sentrebracent & baise li uns lautre molt doucement. Ilec perdi la pucele son pucelage si com lestoire me tesmoigne & concut un fil qui molt fu puis de grant proesce & de chevalerie pleins.83 (Gauvain went to the bed and lay down at the side of the maiden and they both kissed with great tenderness. There the maiden lost her virginity according to the testimony of my source and conceived a son endowed with superlative chivalric potential.)

In the German version, on the other hand, the prefacing story of the hero’s parents shows him to be the scion of a formal marriage, the legal status of the couple’s union apparently being a Wirntian innovation since both prior tradition and Heinrich von dem Türlin, writing probably more than a decade after Wirnt, identified Floree/Flori(e) only as a sexual partner (amie) of Gawein. In Diu Crône Flori is described as being related to Arthur and as the second most important lady at court next to Guinevere due to her liaison (not marriage) with Gawein: (Flori)/Meins herren Gaweins amyen, Des chüniges gesweien, Div nah der chünigin

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82 83

On the origins of this tradition see Emma Frank, Der Schlangenkuß, Form und Geist 9 (Leipzig: Hermann Eichblatt, 1928) and the article ‘Schlangenkuß’ in J. Bächthold and J. Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (repr. New York: de Gruyter, 2000), VII, columns 1114–95, especially 1179–81. Its origins in stories of human metamorphosis are ancient. Pio Rajna also saw a similarity with the ‘weisse Frauen’ of Norse mythology, spirits condemned to confinement in inaccessible places or turned into deformed animals. In its present form he suspected a myth which had lost its religious force but which had ‘moved from the sphere of faith to that of fancy’ (Carduino, Introduction, p. xxxiii and note). Ed. Ferdinand Heuckenkamp (Halle am Saale: Niemeyer, 1896). See pp. 57–75 for the analogous sequence and for a summary of this romance see the appendix to the present volume. The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romance, ed. Sommer, VII, p. 110.

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Div best was vnder in. Daz chom von ir amys, Hern Gawein, daz si den pris Vor den vrowen allen het. (Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, lines 1294–301) (The Lady Flori, the mistress of my lord, Gawein, was the sister-in-law of the King who, after Guinevere, was the most highly esteemed of the ladies. This was all because of her lover, Gawein.)

In Wirnt’s version not only is Wigalois a legitimate son but one who had, despite Gawein’s subsequent absence, heard much about his father’s valour since boyhood during which time no prohibition was laid on his mentioning the father’s name (as is the case in Ulrich von Zatikhoven’s Lanzelet),84 and he is subsequently given over to his father’s tuition when he arrives at the Arthurian Court. It is in fact scarcely credible that when officially informed at a later stage that his father is the very same Gawein he had encountered at Court, he can deny that he had known that this particular Gawein had been his father (lines 4807–9).85 Even if an audience were to have accepted the protagonist’s strange disclaimer at this point, there are no narratorial attempts to disguise the fact that he enjoyed much of the substance of a father-son relationship under Gawein’s aegis: er sprach ‘juncherre, sît gewert aller iuwer bete hie’. in sîn genâde er in enpfie und bevalch in an der stet, nâch der küniginne bet, sînem vater, dem herren Gawein. dô was under in zwein diu grôze triuwe unbekant die kint ze vater vant: ir deweder erkante den andern dâ. her Gâwein underwant sich sâ des knaben mit sîner lêre; des gewan er vrum und êre. (lines 1591–603) (Arthur said: ‘Young noble, all your petitions shall be granted.’ He took the young man under his wing and, acceding to the preferences of his queen, handed him over to his father, Sir Gawein. At this time their strong filial bond was unknown to either man, for neither recognised the other. Sir Gawein undertook to be the youth’s tutor – from which his charge acquired much knightly prowess and esteem.)

84 85

See Lanzelet, ed. K. A. Hahn with a ‘Nachwort’ and Bibliography by Frederick Norman (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), lines 302ff. Saran termed this a ‘geschraubte Erklärung’, quite reasonably adding ‘daß Gawein am hof des Artus lebt und der berühmteste von dessen rittern ist, [ergo] müsste Wigalois eigentlich wissen, denn könig Joram, sein oheim, hat Gawein ja von Karidol weggeführt’ (‘Über Wirnt von Gravenberg und den Wigalois’, p. 325).

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The fictional father was as well-known in medieval tradition for being an unobtrusive educator as he was for being a formal pedagogue,86 and in this case the biological link is said to enhance their mutual understanding: Her Gâwein dô mit im gie: Von des râte kom er nie. Ir geselleschaft was harte guot: Beidiu ir herze und ir muot Warn einander heimlîch; Deiswâr, daz was billich, Sît si eines lîbes wâren. Ir ougen es niht verbâren Sine lachten ofte ein ander an. (lines 1851–9) (Sir Gawein accompanied him, giving him advice all the while. Their relationship was a very strong one. Hearts and minds were in tune, which was indeed to be expected since they were of one flesh. There was no reserve between them and much laughter was exchanged.)

The warmth of the father-son bond as evoked by Wirnt is very different from the rather distant father-son relationship found in Le Bel Inconnu87 and indeed was so transparent to the adapter of the the prose Wigoleis vom Rade as to be glossed by him as ‘great love’: Her gabon nam den jungen in sein pflege.wenig gedencken dz er sein sun waer.vnd hielt den in aller zucht und lere mit sorgueltikeit als ein vater sein sun oder sein kind. Dergleichen tet der junge mit allen dingen hinwider was jm zuogehoeret. Also wuochße grosse lieb zwischen jn beiden.wie wol auch einer dem andern vnbekant was so hielten sy doch nicht anderß gegen einander als dann vater vnd kinde pflegen zesamen.88 (Sir Gawein took the young man into his care little thinking that he was his own son and was keen to attend to his educational needs as a father should with his own son or child. For his part the son did everything that might properly be expected of a young man in such a position. In this way a great love grew up between the two men even though they were unknown to each other, and their day-to-day relationship was no different to that which is customarily expected of a father and son.)

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88

Mere exposure to Gawein’s charismatic presence appears to have dispensed educational rewards (although Gawein does give formal instruction to other heroes of the Arthurian cycle: see Ute Schießl, ‘Die Gawangestalt im Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberc’ [dissertation, University of Munich, 1968], pp. 32–42). On Gawein as a subtle promoter of humane impulses in others see Wolfgang Mohr, ‘Parzival and Gawan’, Euphorion 52 (1958), pp. 1–22. Elizabeth Archibald recently reported being ‘struck by the fact that so little is made of Guinglain’s parentage in Le Bel Inconnu; he discovers his identity halfway through the narrative when he achieves the Fier Baiser, but does not meet Gawain till the very end, and then it is a pretty cursory meeting’ (‘Comedy and Tragedy in some Arthurian Recognition Scenes’ in Arthurian Literature XIX, ed. Keith Busby and Roger Dalrymple [Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003], pp. 1–16, p. 4, n. 9. Wigoleis vom Rade, ed. Brandstetter, p. 196, lines 29–39.

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Even before he encounters Gawein, Wigalois receives initial tuition from his mother and her female attendants from whom he learns the moral qualities of ‘conscience and readiness to help others’ (lines 1222–35).89 Then at a second stage of his young life the ‘best knights’ at Florie’s court instruct him in horsemanship, chivalric decorum and the technical skills of bohort and tourney.90 Later his tuition at the court of Arthur provides him with additional experience since he receives instruction there not only from his father but also from the king and other chivalric models: Dem künige wart er heimlîch und diente im aller tägelîch als er beste kunde. den von der tavelrunde was er allen vil bereit: zu turnein er mit in reit, und swâ man manheit begie, dâ versûmte er sich nie ern waer zuvorderst an der schar; si muosen es alle nemen war. (lines 1606–16) (He became an intimate of the King whom he served every day to the best of his ability. He always placed himself at the disposal of Arthur’s knights; he rode to tourneys with them and when it came to performing chivalrous feats with the utmost alacrity, he was always first among their number and a force they were all obliged to reckon with.)

It is clear that the very extensive education he receives both from his father and others does not occur in an ad hoc way since it ‘devotes its emphasis to the moral probity requisite for a knight and to the necessary instruction and practice of warfare’s skills’.91 This blunting of a basic premise of the Fair Unknown motif,92 according to which the young protagonist should be uninstructed and anonymous, implies a considerable commitment to the notion of (noble) family connections and the transference of inherited values.93 Whilst little can be known of Wirnt as an historical person, many of his excursuses on the lamentable state of

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‘gewizzen unde güete’ (line 1229). ‘aller hande rîter spil/ lêrten in die rîter vil:/ buhurdieren unde stechen,/ die starken sper zebrechen,/ schirmen unde schiezen’ (lines 1254–8). Madeleine P. Cosman, The Education of the Hero in Arthurian Romance (Chapel Hill: North Carolina UP, 1966), p. 146. ‘Ein kurzer Blick jedoch zeigt, dass Gwigalois’ Kindheit eine direkte Kontrafaktur zum “Dümmlingsschema” des Parzival oder des Lanzelet Ulrichs von Zatzikhoven zeigt [. . .] Kaum verläßt er mit seiner Mannbarkeit die erziehende Mutter, nimmt sich der Vater seiner an – er befindet sich also objektiv zu keinem Zeitpunkt eigentlich im Zustand einer Haltlosigkeit, die als existenzielle Defizienz empfunden werden könnte.’ Hence the ‘conspicuously superficial’ Fair Unknown motif may best be understood on Stefan Fuchs’ reading in rhetorical terms as ‘ein dramaturgisches Moment der Spannungserzeugung’ (Hybride Helden, pp. 115–116). ‘As Arthur’s nephew Gauvain represents the established power, the haute noblesse, primogeniture – three forces hostile respectively to barons, petite noblesse and landless knights’ (Stephen Knight, Arthurian Literature and Society [London: Methuen, 1983], p. 84). Schießl characterises the narratorial stance as ‘staufisch eingestellt’ (‘Die Gawangestalt’, p. 93).

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his own age and the peace and stability supposedly enjoyed by denizens of previous ages suggest that he may have favoured the kind of conservative politicoreligious sympathies proverbially associated with the fictional Helmbrecht senior in Wernher’s celebrated diatribe against social climbing, Helmbrecht, and with the writings of various courtly moralists.94 Just as the old Helmbrecht expatiates somewhat uncritically on an idealised chivalric yesteryear, Wirnt situates his romance chronologically within an imagined Arthurian heyday when, we are informed, even egregious malefactors could be relied upon to keep their word once they had been shown the error of their ways: Bî den zîten was der sit: – Dâ behielten si ir triuwe mit – Swer deheinen eit zebrach, Swâ man den immer mê gesach, Der was ungenaeme, Den liuten widerzaeme, Als der tôtsieche man Der von der werlte wirt getân. Des muosen si ir sicherheit, Ez waer in liep ode leit, Behalten, als man in gebôt, Od an den êren ligen tôt; Des waer ouch noch der werlte nôt. (lines 2146–2157) (It was the custom in those days to be true to one’s word. Whoever was seen to be breaking an oath became an ill-favoured pariah – a virtual leper driven forth from society. People had to keep to the oaths which had been enjoined on them whether they wanted to or not – or else lose the esteem of their peers entirely. What a crying need we have of such standards today.)

Wirnt repeatedly defends a socially exclusive definition of the chivalrous estate as a bulwark against the anarchy which he fears would arise should any opportunist succeed in making his way up through the ranks. According to numerous such moral and political commentaries,95 chivalry should be passed down in dynastic succession, any breach in this procedure risking social strife as surely as neglect of God’s law would produce moral chaos : Got müeze si vellen Die dem immer swert gegeben

94

95

Cf. Wernher der Gartenaere: Helmbrecht, ed. Friedrich Panzer, revised by Kurt Ruh, ATB 11 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), lines 279–98, 329–60, 487–508. Karin R. Gürttler has pointed to the affinities of Wirnt with the courtly moralists: ‘Wirnt [ist] das Bindeglied zu den lehrhaften Dichtern wie Thomasin und Freidank, denn wenn man die Dichterexkurse nach ihrem Gedankengehalt und ihren Intentionen beurteilt, so gehört der Wigalois in die Reihe der beiden Genannten’ (‘Künec Artûs der Guote’. Das Artusbild der höfischen Epik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts [Bonn: Bouvier, Herbert Grundmann, 1976], p. 181). Schießl too situates the romance generically ‘in den Grenzbereich von Epik und Didaxe’ (‘Die Gawangestalt’, p. 89). See the special study of Rudolf Latzke, ‘Über die subjektiven Einschaltungen in Wirnts Wigalois’, Zeitschrift für die österreichischen Gymnasien 57 (1906), pp. 961–85.

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Der daz rîterlîche leben Niht behalten künne Und der von sînem künne niht dar zuo sî geborn! Daz alte reht reht hab wir verlorn. Daz was ê guot, sô man seit; Mit valsche und mit bôsheit ist es nû leider hin geleit. (lines 2339–48) (May God strike down those who have got hold of swords but who – not being born to that station – cannot sustain a knight’s way of life. We have lost our old standards. People now say that what was once good has been usurped by false and debased values.)

Wirnt’s narratorial asides are the rhetorical means he uses to carry his audience with him96 as he unlocks the pedagogic potential latent rather than explicitly foregrounded in many other ‘post-classical’ romances on the theme of a young man who rises from relative anonymity to regal distinction.97 Such sentiments are however in large part contrary to the axiomatic basis of the Fair Unknown pattern where a little regarded young man at arms ‘becomes known, and it is revealed that he is not the incursionary thug that his presentation has implied, but in fact a member of the aristocracy’.98 The Fair Unknown stories traditionally rest on this nice ambiguity – providing a demonstration of an upward social ascent but allaying aristocratic misgivings when the supposed ‘new man’ turns out to be an aristocratic scion after all. In Parzival such an ambiguity underlies the notion that its protagonist can initially fail in his Grail quest even though he is ostensibly destined to succeed from on high.99 The original ‘premises’ for a successful Grail quest are apparently altered by Wolfram to allow the hero to receive tuition for a task which the previous ‘rules’ had stipulated should be performed unbidden (Parzival being finally ‘called’ to the Grail by the heavenly epitaph).100 By contrast, Wirnt’s treatment

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‘Die reflektierenden Exkurse des Wigalois-Erzählers [. . .] sind nicht philosophisch, sondern rhetorisch motiviert, und ihre Funktion besteht primär darin, das Einvernehmen und die Geneigtheit eines geschulten Publikums zu sichern’ (Wulf-Otto Dreessen, ‘Wandlungen des Artusromans im Yiddischen’, p. 86). See also Elisabeth Lienert, ‘Zur Pragmatik höfischen Erzählens. Erzähler und Erzählerkommentare in Wirnts von Gravenberg Wigalois’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 234 (1997), pp. 263–75. ‘Die Artusromane des 13. Jahrhunderts schildern die Wege ihrer Protagonisten aus der Bedeutungslosigkeit und Anonymität bis zu deren Einordnung in die höfische Gesellschaft. Sie demonstrieren dabei, wie die Orientierung an höfischen Normen und Werten zu persönlichem und gesellschaftlichem Erfolg führen kann und fordern so zur Nachahmung auf. Der Roman wird–wie nebenbei–zum Musterbuch höfischer Tugendlehre’ (Wolfgang Achnitz, Der Ritter mit dem Bock, p. 229). Other examples which might be cited are Stricker’s Daniel, Pleier’s Meleranz and the eponymous hero of Wigamur. Stephen Knight, ‘The social function of the Middle English romances’, in Medieval Literature. Criticism, Ideology and History, ed. David Aers (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986), pp. 99–112, 105. His calling is proclaimed on a celestial ‘epitafjum’ declaring that he shall in future time be ‘des grâles herre’ (Parzival, ed. Lachmann/Nellmann, section 781, lines 15–16). Despite being informed early on that the Grail cannot be found intentionally (section 250, lines 26–30), Parzival does not finally ask the Question spontaneously but after an explicit

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leaves no room for productive ambiguities of this kind and the barest possibility that the protagonist might be an unsuitable parvenu is ruled out from the start (the reactionary stance being consistent with the author’s excursuses in praise of ‘degree’ in contradistinction to the ‘mere oppugnancy’ said to ensue when the ill-bred are able to assume knightly rank).101 Lar, the stricken king, insists that the knight sent to release him from his torments must be one of the ‘elect’: Du solt von rehte sîn ein helt, Wan dîn vater ist erwelt, Der süeze her Gâwein. (lines 4792–4)102 (You may justly account yourself a hero since your father, the noble Sir Gawein, is one of the chosen ones.)

Wirnt’s interpretation of the underlying moral inherent in his subject matter reflects what might be construed as a somewhat perverse deterministic bias, yet in line with other literary contemporaries, he appears to have harboured notions of romance heroes as being somewhat inflexible fixed essences. The author of Der Jüngere Titurel, despite undertaking to tell the Parzival story in the spirit of Wolfram, appears sceptical about the capacity for moral development on the part of his adopted hero; to the extent that he does not entirely absolve Parzival of his youthful offence of unwittingly causing his mother’s death.103 For this reason he confers on Parzival only a symbolically significant limited tenure of Grail kingship in his retelling of the Parzival biography. Likewise Wirnt appears to have had little sympathy with what Hatto termed ‘the trampoline effect’ of Christian doctrine regarding the regeneration of Man according to which, the deeper one falls, the higher one rises – in Parzival’s case below the standard of Gawan and thence to the summit of lay Christendom as Grail king.104 Unreceptive to the ‘classical’ depiction of the knightly Fair Unknown as represented by Wolfram’s young Parzival, Wirnt rejects the bipartite structure favoured by Wolfram to test and rehabilitate his imperfect hero. He employs instead a linear sequence to exemplify the ascending stages of his hero’s career in a more clearly programmatic narrative structure better suited to his pedagogic aims, evidently wishing to show his protagonist as being morally superior

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summons to do so by the Grail messenger, Cundrie (section 781, lines 27–30). Hence when Parzival stands with Feirefiz before the old Grail King, the latter is notably chary of guiding him too much towards the Question he is ostensibly to pose unprompted (‘ine getar iuch anders warnen niht’, section 795, line 15). Cf. lines 2146–57, 2339–48, 10254–79. Cf. also ‘Dâ von muoz er sîn erwelt/ der zem besten wirt gezelt;/ daz bejagt her Gwîgâlois der helt’ (lines 2964–6). ‘Daz Parcifal niht staete [= permanently] die krone haben solte,/ daz machten sunder graete, daz sin muoter fur in dolte./ vater und muoter sol man bieten ere:/ Herzelaud ein sterben nam, do Parcival verwarf ir lere’ (Albrechts Jüngerer Titurel, ed. Werner Wolf and Kurt Nyholm, 5 volumes, DTM XLV, LV/LXI, LXXIII, LXXVII, MLXXXIX [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955–95], III, part two, strophe 6323). For a brief summary of this romance see appendix. Parzival, trans. A. T. Hatto, ‘Introduction to a Second Reading’, p. 415.

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to Erec, Iwein and Parzival – heroes who are all compelled to learn virtue through experience.105 Wirnt implicitly endorses the same kind of paternalistic feudalism which is evident in the evolution of the Lancelot story away from the stage represented by Ulrich’s Lanzelet (where the eponymous hero’s father, Pant [Ban] is tyrannical and unworthy) in the direction of ‘a conception of chivalry in which a noble heredity plays an important role in the making of a great knight’ as articulated in the Lancelot-grail cycle.106 The moral justification of this political system lies (in the classic gloss supplied by the Lady of the Lake to Lancelot) not in an original inequality of persons but in the fact that after the Fall the strong and wicked began to oppress the weak, and that God was obliged henceforth to decree that the noblest in mind and body should be set above other men in order to ensure justice for the disadvantaged: Et tant sachiez vos bien que chevaliers ne fu mie faiz a gas ne establiz, et non pas por ce qu’il fussient au commencement plus gentil home ne plus haut de lignage l’un des autres, car d’un pere et d’une mere (sc. Adam and Eve) descendirent totes les genz. Mais qant envie et coveitise commança a croistre el monde et force commança a vaintre droiture, a cele hore estoient encores paroil et un autre de lignage et de gentillece. Et qant li foible ne porent plus soffrir ne durer encontre les forz, si establirent desor aus garanz et desfandeors, por garantir les foibles et tenir selonc droiture.107 (And know this: that people were not made knights lightly or because they started off as more noble or from a higher lineage than others, for everyone descends from the same father and mother (that is, from Adam and Eve). But when jealousy and avarice began to grow in the world and strength started to overcome justice, everyone was still equal in terms of lineage and nobility. But when the weak were no longer able to endure against the strong they established above them guardians and defenders to protect the weak and maintain justice according to the principles of equity.)

The preceding comparison of Wigalois with its cognates has indicated that Wirnt must have composed his narrative eclectically from various written sources and/or from matériel roulant in a way which either omits or obfuscates many données of the Fair Unknown tradition. The German author clearly had a moral agenda of his own which was not ideologically compatible with the ambivalences of the story of an unknown knight ‘finding himself’ in an axiological

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See on this point Cornelia Dandaraw, ‘Wirnts von Gravenberc Wigalois’, p. 72. Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail. A Study of the Prose ‘Lancelot’ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 13. Cf. also Elizabeth Andersen’s analysis of the dynastic politics implicit in the prose cycles: ‘Der beste Ritter der Artuswelt zeugt den Ritter, den seine geistige Tugend befähigt, die Gralsuche zu vollenden. Dadurch werden die Werte des weltlichen Rittertums nicht zurückgewiesen, sondern relativiert. Das Vater-Sohn -Verhältnis zwischen Galaat und Lancelot ermöglicht es, die Artuswelt als den rechtmäßigen Vorläufer der Gralswelt zu verstehen.’ (‘Väter und Söhne im Prosa-Lancelot’, in Wolfram-Studien IX, Schweinfurter ‘Lancelot’ Kolloquium 1984, ed. Werner Schröder [Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1986], pp. 213–27, 215–16). Cited by Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, p. 12.

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vacuum. The suspicion arises that the fundamental motif of this tradition was deliberately corrupted in Wigalois. Possibly this was as a reaction against the first literary realisation of the Fair Unknown theme on German soil, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s picaresque Lanzelet (c. 1195) whose eponymous hero is described as being ‘stupid and wild’,108 his education up to the point where he meets his knightly instructor, Johfrit de Liez, sporadic,109 and his conduct even after the receipt of formal instruction, deeply problematic.110 However, a more challenging opportunity for such a self-consciously moralistic writer as Wirnt might have been a work more ambitious than ‘the first Arthurian romance to dispense with ethical pretensions’.111 From Wirnt’s perspective it might have been more natural to view Wolfram von Eschenbach as the worthy literary opponent and to wish to enter the lists with the supreme exemplar of the Fair Unknown theme in medieval German literature, Parzival, a work whose creative commitment to the Fair Unknown dimension of his story is made clear not only in its unsparing treatment of Parzival’s numerous errors but in the fact that the only knowledge the protagonist has of his father is gained indirectly through the subconscious tug of heredity (when we are told that his father’s nature (art) stirs within him).112 Studies of the relationship between Wigalois and Parzival were long guided by the assumption that the successors of the more famous German romance writers, Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram, were pasticheurs of their predecessors. Although the second editor of Wigalois, Franz Pfeiffer, was generous in his praise of Wirnt’s independence and versatility (expressing the wish that more

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‘wilt und törlich’ (Lanzelet, ed. Hahn, line 425). The Dümmling scheme, so significantly absent from Wigalois, is strongly represented in Lanzelet, as is the other generic marker of the Fair Unknown pattern, the Fier Baiser (which Lanzelet performs by kissing a dragon and causing it to transform itself into a fair maiden who had been condemned to remain in that form until kissed by ‘the best knight in the world’). On the subject of Lanzelet as a Fair Unknown romance see Owen, The Evolution of the Grail Legend, and Nicola McClelland, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s ‘Lanzelet’. Narrative Style and Entertainment, pp. 69–70. On further continuities between the Perceval and Fair Unknown cycles see Madeleine P. Cosman, The Education of the Hero in Arthurian Romance, pp. 114–15. In a romance in which many fairytale qualities are evident, Lanzelet is abducted from his natural parents by a Lady of the Lake figure who raises him in an aquatic realm predominantly inhabited by women. He is instructed in courtesy by the ladies and in sports by some ‘mermen’, but acquires no knowledge of formal combat. When he desires to join the world of knights he is ignorant of his name and parentage and of all chivalry. See the summary of Lanzelet in the appendix section. The first known Lancelot romance, Chrétien’s Le Chevalier de la Charrete, was not translated into German. The German Lanzelet (c. 1195) depends on a different source and shows no acquaintance with the famous triangular relationship between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. So far from being an ardent and tormented lover, Ulrich’s Lanzelet is a carefree sexual adventurer described as being constitutionally incapable of languishing in love (‘der niht enweiz waz trûren ist’, line 1341) whose tally of four loves is built up on the basis of his slaying of his conquests’ fathers. Hence the romance fails to engage with the kind of principled questions about love in society which we encounter in the tradition inaugurated by Chrétien. See Walter Blank, ‘Zu den Schwierigkeiten der Lancelot-Rezeption in Deutschland’, in Chrétien de Troyes and the German Middle Ages. Papers from an International Symposium, ed. Martin H. Jones and Roy Wisbey (Cambridge and London: D. S. Brewer and The Institute of Germanic Studies, 1993), pp. 121–36. Nicola McLelland, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s ‘Lanzelet’, p. 234. Parzival, ed. Lachmann, section 179, line 24.

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lauded poets had eschewed a written French source and had composed their romances from oral hints),113 Georg Friedrich Benecke’s original view of Wirnt as an imitator of Hartmann and Wolfram expressed in the introduction to his editio princeps of 1819 was to become the common opinion.114 Benecke’s view was even supported ostensibly by Wirnt’s praise of Wolfram as one whose verses had never been surpassed by any layman. However, this apparently unconditional praise of Wolfram brings up a consequential anomaly which has received little critical attention up to this point. Although the ultimate provenance of what Wolfram himself termed his ‘crooked’ style115 is still a matter of unresolved scholarly debate, it is clear that he favoured registers remote from the currently accepted norms of poetic usage. Even if Gottfried von Strassburg’s proverbial reference to the author who ‘invented wild stories’ and whose writing (in contradistinction to the pellucid verses of Hartmann) was unclear and erratic (Tristan lines 4638–90) is not an ad hominem critique of Wolfram, Rudolf von Ems couches his (named) criticism of Wolfram in remarkably similar terms, describing Hartmann and Wolfram as separate branches of the ‘tree’ represented by their twelfth-century predecessor, Heinrich von Veldeke.116 Hence if Wirnt had meant to give Wolfram a bona fide plaudit for his aesthetic felicities, this would have been a minority verdict according to most contemporary arbiters and one which, furthermore, would have been contrary to Wirnt’s own stylistic standards (which largely conform

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116

Anticipating critical developments more than a century after his time, Pfeiffer pointed out that the claimed verbal similarities with Wolfram might have been a case of involuntary recollection (‘unwillkürliche Erinnerung’) and concluded, ‘Für eine freiere, selbständige Entwicklung unserer einheimischen Poesie waere dies [sc. narratorial improvisation] gewiss der beste Weg gewesen und auch den einzelnen Dichtern selbst mancher besondere Vortheil daraus erwachsen’ (Wigalois, ‘Vorrede’, p. XV). Benecke wrote of Wirnt as ‘der treueste widerschein seines älteren zeitgenossen, Hartmann’s’ (Wigalois, der Ritter mit dem Rade, ‘Vorbericht’, p. XV), whilst Lachmann in an annotation to his and Benecke’s edition of Iwein wrote that Wirnt ‘in einem grossen theil seiner erzählung Hartmann nachahmt. Während er schrieb, erschienen die ersten bücher des Parzivals; daher er gegen das ende in der ersten bewunderung (Z. 6345) mehr von Wolfram entlehnte’ (Iwein, eine Erzählung von Hartmann von Aue, mit Anmerkungen von Georg Friedrich Benecke und Karl Lachmann [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1843], p. 413). For a representative example of the positivist critical trend which followed in the wake of these adjudications, see Heinrich Meisner, ‘Wirnts von Gravenberg Verhältnis zu seinen Vorbildern’, Germania 20 (1875), pp. 421–32. ‘Mîn tiutsche ist eteswâ doch sô krump,/ Er mac mir lîhte sîn ze tump,/ Den ichs niht gâhes bescheide:/ Dâ sûme wir uns beide’ (Willehalm, ed. Werner Schröder with translation by Dieter Kartschoke [Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1989], section 237, lines 11–14). In Parzival we encounter elliptical or periphrastic syntax, circumlocution, the use of the apo koinou construction and various forms of unusual word order (hyperbaton). Wolfram seems to express a delight in obscurity when he writes in prefatory remarks to Parzival (possibly as a riposte to strictures already levelled at him), that his fleet metaphors will outstrip the wits of the less quick-witted in his audience: ‘Diz vliegende bîspel/ ist tumben liuten gar ze snel,/ sine mugens niht erdenken:/ wand ez kan vor in wenken/ rehte alsam ein schellec hase’ (Parzival, ed. Karl Lachmann, 6th edition, with modern German translation by Dieter Kühn and Commentary by Eberhard Nellmann [Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1994], section 1, lines 15–19). Rudolf von Ems wrote: ‘Mit wilden âventiuren/ kund er [sc. Wolfram] die kunst wol stiuren,/ Des gap sîn âventiure/ Der kurzwîle stiure’ (Alexander, ed. Victor Junk [Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1928], lines 3135–8).

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with the norms of the Dichtersprache established by Heinrich von Veldeke and Hartmannn).117 To be sure, imitation of both the style and content of Wolfram’s oeuvre was later to gain a notable exponent in Albrecht’s Der Jüngere Titurel, the latter employing an esoteric idiom matching Wolfram’s ‘wilder’ locutions with which to incorporate the uncompleted Titurel into his unitary Grail opus;118 but this analogy is not appropriate to Wirnt whose style bears no relation either to the so-called trobar clus or to any other recherché variety with which Wolfram’s poetic idiom has been linked.119 Hence it is possible that Wirnt’s praise of Wolfram (assuming it was not simply a pro forma obeisance), contained an element of ironic zwîvellop, an ambivalence which may, in view of Wirnt’s ideological prepossessions, have also characterised his view of the content of Wolfram’s work. It was not until considerably later in the thirteenth century that the author of Parzival was accorded unchallenged authority and the honorific ‘her’ which have accompanied his reputation since that time.120 Heinrich von dem Türlin had few fears about conducting his literary feud with Wolfram’s character of Parzival,121 and Wirnt’s single reference to the character of Parzival is to the coercive sexual encounter with Jeschute during his untutored youth (where we are told that Parzival assaulted the unfortunate woman, removing her ring from her finger and wresting a kiss from her, so causing her untold grief at a later time – an allusion to the jealous revenge-taking of her

117

118 119

120

121

Benecke long ago drew attention to the solid instinct which saved Wirnt from the errors of ‘Wolframian mannerism’ (‘Vor den Fehlern der Wolframschen Manier wurde Wirnt, bey aller seiner Achtung für Wolfram, durch ein sehr richtiges Gefühl bewahrt. Er war ein zu gebildeter Mann und ein zu fleißiger Künstler, als daß ein solches Muster ihn hätte blenden können’, Wigalois, pp. xv–xvi). See further Neil Thomas, ‘Wolfram von Eschenbach: modes of narrative presentation’, in A Companion to Wolfram von Eschenbach, ed. Will Hasty (New York: Camden House, 1999), pp. 223–41. See Linda Parshall, The Art of Narration in Wolfram’s ‘Parzival’ and Albrecht’s ‘Jüngerer Titurel’, Anglo-Germanica series 2 (Cambridge: CUP, 1981). Earlier studies of Wolfram’s style posited some influence upon him of the Provençal trobar clus – an ornate style used to express an author’s ‘awareness of a division in the audience between wise and foolish [and] the technique of gradually unfolding meaning through symbols or the complex interweaving of thoughts, to reveal difficult truths and to arrive at clear thinking’ (Linda Paterson, Troubadours and Eloquence [Oxford: Clarendon, 1975], p. 207). ‘Wolfram von Eschenbach, so groß sein ständisches und auch sein schriftstellerisches Selbstbewußtsen sein mochte, war, als er den Parzival schrieb, ein literarischer Debütant, ein Unbekannter unter den Meistern des Schreibens und Diktierens, ein Anfänger – wenn auch von starker und ursprünglicher Begabung’ (Herbert Kolb, Munsalvaesche. Studien zum Kyotproblem [Munich: Eidos, 1963], p. 192). On the evolution of Wolfram’s (increasingly fictionalised) reputation see Josef Götz, ‘Die Entwicklung des Wolframbildes von Bodmer bis zum Tode Lachmanns in der germanistischen und schönen Literatur’ (dissertation, University of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1936); Claudia Wasielewski-Knecht, Studien zur Parzival-Rezeption in Epos und Drama des 18–20 Jahrhunderts (Berne: Lang, 1993); Hedda Ragotzky, Studien zur Wolfram-Rezeption. Die Entstehung und Verwandlung der Wolfram-Rolle in der deutschen Literatur des 13. Jahrhunderts, Studien zur Poetik und Geschichte der Literatur 20 (Bonn, Cologne, Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1971), and Bernd Schirok, ParzivalRezeption im Mittelalter, Erträge der Forschung 174 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982). See Ralph Read, ‘Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Krône and Wolfram’s Parzival’, Modern Language Quarterly 35 (1974), pp. 129–39.

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lover, Orilus).122 There is no reference to Parzival’s later moral triumphs (unlike the situation in Diu Crône where, despite much obloquy, there is one reference to Parzival’s moral rehabilitation),123 hence Wirnt’s initial, negative portraiture is implicitly allowed to stand. The reason for Heinrich’s prejudiced lectio facilior of the character of Parzival as a coward who had not ‘dared’ approach the Grail is not difficult to discern since in Diu Crône the ‘grail’ is depicted largely as an Arthurian trophy to be won in a quasi-military quest.124 Wirnt on the other hand can have had little interest in lauding a purely secular ideal of knighthood since he emphasises his hero’s pious inspiration throughout the sequence where he pits his spiritual strength against the demonic forces of Roaz. It is more likely that Wirnt’s prejudice arose from a different quarter, namely, that the subtleties of the Wolframian conception of ‘a young man both ignorant and noble’125 held little appeal for an author harbouring reactionary political convictions. Although the stages of the story of the parents, knightly proving and spiritual mission followed by an ecumenical form of kingship seem in formal terms to be based on the main narrative phases of Parzival,126 any story is amenable to being transformed in the process of being told anew and fresh narrative patterns can be created having little in common with their original sources of inspiration.127 In Wirnt’s case, the rewriting of motifs within a fresh ideological context makes his romance appear (to borrow a phrase once used to rescue the Nibelungenlied from the depredations of pre-War source scholarship) ‘a normal piece of literature’,128 a reconceptualisation demanding to be analysed in its own terms rather

122 123

124

125 126

127

128

Wigalois, lines 6325–37. On Parzival’s rehabilitation from his sin see Diu Crône, ed. G. H. F. Scholl, lines 24607–15. (Here Kei is made to opine of Parzival that his later noble deeds were sufficient to atone for his childish misdeeds in wandering forth from his mother in fool’s garb and causing Jeschute’s suffering.) Cf. Werner Schröder, ‘Zur Literaturverarbeitung durch Heinrich von dem Türlin in seinem Gawein-Roman, Diu Crône’, ZfDA 121 (1992), pp. 131–74: ‘Den Gral und seine Geheimnisse hat er nicht ergründet, er hat ihn liquidiert; er wollte niemals des grales herre wesen’ (p. 171). In Diu Crône the only ‘Grail premise’ is that a knight ‘ervarn solte diese grôze âventiure’ (line 29517). The verb ‘ervarn’ (‘get to know about’) might imply that the task is largely cognitive and that the hero must merely find out ‘waz [. . .] daz wunder bediute’ (lines 29436–7). But even this the cognitive task is rendered nugatory since Gawein has already been informed (by the Grail messenger, Manbur) about how and when to ask the Question. Hence the decisive issue is not the asking but the qualities of courage and valour shown by Gawein in attaining the Grail in the first place. ‘knappe tump unde wert’ (Parzival, section 126, line 19). ‘The heroes of both novels set out as young and handsome strangers in search of fame. They have a succession of teachers and a series of adventures which prepare them for important positions. Wolfram’s hero begins as a completely naïve and unlearned youth who misunderstands the instruction he belatedly receives, mistakes the goal for which he is being prepared, and must learn through many painful experiences. [. . .] Wirnt’s hero, on the other hand, from birth on has has the best of instruction, makes no serious mistakes, and always moves unerringly in the direction in which he is fated to go’ ( J. W. Thomas, Wigalois. The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, Introduction, pp. 37–8). On creative rewritings and the large shifts in narrative perspective entailed by these innovations see Elspeth Kennedy, ‘The re-writing and re-reading of a text: the evolution of the Prose Lancelot’, in The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance. Essays on Arthurian Prose Romances in Honour of Cedric Pickford, ed. Alison Adams (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 1–9. Mary Thorp, ‘The recent study of the Nibelungenlied’, JEGP 52 (1953), pp. 32–49.

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than as a ‘calque’ from a hallowed predecessor.129 In what follows I shall explore the possibility that Wirnt’s treatment of the four major phases of his narrative (Vorgeschichte, initial proving, spiritual mission, kingship) may have sprung from a homiletic urge to revise aspects of Wolframian ethics and/or give them a more clearly programmatic form.

129

A point which appears to have been perspicuous to late nineteenth-century scholars such as Gaston Paris and William H. Schofield who were largely working outside the positivist tradition which was in the ascendent in Germany at the time. Schofield for instance wrote of Wirnt: ‘He is no mere translator. He purposes to work in his own opinions and feels no necessity of following closely the story which he is using to serve his purpose. It is possibly to this individuality and to the conversational element [sc. the narratorial asides] which he introduces into the poem that it owes the wide popularity attested by the frequent mention of the poem in other works, the numerous manuscripts, and the existence of “Volksbücher” in other languages as well as German, treating the same subject’ (Studies on Libeaus Desconus, p. 223).

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2 Knights of Fortune

L’en ne doit Crestiën de Troies, Ce m’est vis, par raison blasmer, Qui sot dou roi Artu conter, De sa cort et de sa mesniee Qui tant fu loee et prisiee, Et qui les fez des autres conte Et oncques de lui (sc. Gauvain) ne tint conte. Trop ert preudon a oblïer.1 (I believe it fair to criticise Chétien de Troyes who, although he was adept at telling stories of King Arthur and his much-vaunted company of knights – and indeed told stories about a host of such knights – never told one about him [sc. Gauvain]. But that knight is too valorous to be forgotten.)

In the following discussion the frequent invocations of Fortuna’s talismans are construed as the narratorial attempt to forge a moral link between the protagonist and his legendary father, Gawein, through the technique of associating both knights with the (purportedly) supernatural tokens of the goddess. The evocations of the (upper-case) ‘Saelde’ (Lady Fortune as a personified deity) and of lower-case ‘saelde’ (good fortune in a general sense) are largely instrumental to this purpose of underscoring the father-son bond. It will be shown that relatively less interest is shown in depicting Wigalois as acting under the tutelage of the goddess of the Ancients than there is in establishing symbolically a parity of chivalric standard between father and son – this ensuring Wigalois more success in the knightly arena than the dubious boons of the traditionally ‘two-faced’ Lady Fortune.

Fortuna’s Emissary Whilst Le Bel Inconnu begins in mediis rebus with an account of Guinglain’s youth (retrospectively augmented by flashbacks to Gauvain’s biography), Wirnt von Gravenberg (possibly influenced by Wolfram’s methods in the story of Gahmuret and Herzeloyde), prefaces his story with a short narrative concerning his hero’s parents. This Vorgeschichte, albeit brief and with few organic links to the main story,2 serves to establish the importance of the figure of Gawein from 1

2

Le Chevalier à l’Epée, in Two Old French Gauvain Romances, ed. R. C. Johnston and D. D. R. Owen (Edinburgh and London: Scottish Academic Press, 1972), lines 18–25. (For the crux in line 18 see Johnston and Owen’s note, pp. 91–2.) ‘Das Ganze [macht] durch die Einbeziehung der Vatersuche mit der damit verbundenen fabelhaften Vorgeschichte einen sehr verwirrenden Eindruck und der Dichter verrennt sich

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the outset. Although aspects of the narrative do not show Gawein in an exemplary light (the motif of Iwein’s forsaking of Laudine supplies an all-too close analogy to Gawein’s leaving of Florie), Wirnt’s frequent apologias for his deuteragonist and his attempted ‘bowdlerisations’ of morally dubious features of his conduct indicate the desire to mount a stout defence of the hero’s father.3 Underneath a medley of traditions informing the account of Gawein’s liaison with Florie there lies a variant of the abduction motif occurring in Yvain/Iwein, Lanval, Gauriel von Muntabel, Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrete and many other romances and lais where chosen mortals are taken to an alien counterworld, there to be wed to a supernatural consort. Such elements of faery lore in the story of the parents include for instance the inaccessibility of the Otherworld and the notion of a ‘time-warp’ according to which it takes Gawein but twelve days to reach Florie’s realm with Joram as his guide but six months to return to Camelot when unaccompanied (lines 1128–30).4 The early acceptance in the older, Celtic mythological stratum thought by many to undergird the courtly romances of an ‘open border’ between the mortal world and the otherworld would have been less congenial to audiences whose world view had been touched by Christianity, and Ulrich Füetrer and the author of the Yiddish Artushof gloss the Joram action unequivocally as a threat from a hostile realm. In a chapter heading Ulrich summarises the Joram action as being about how that emissary abducted Gawein (‘wie Floreis [= Wirnt’s Joram] züe Karidol cham vnnd sein zellt züe velld auf schlüeg vnnd Gabonen gefanngen mit im hin vüert’).5 In Der Artushof Arthur offers the Joram figure half his kingdom (the same forfeit which Gunther offers Siegfried as a means of forestalling his aggressions in the Nibelungenlied) in return for the sparing of Gabein’s life.6 Like other intruder figures such as Sir Bertilak de Hautdesert in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Gansguoter in Diu Crône, Joram seems a person of ‘bewildering contradiction’,7 yet Wirnt’s understanding of this figure of ‘the Other’

3

4

5 6

7

manchmal in den vielen von einander grundverschiedenen motivischen Elementen’ (Anthony van der Lee, Zum literarischen Motiv der Vatersuche, p. 155). Cf. the judgement of L. P. Johnson: ‘Gawein [. . .] wird jetzt befördert. Der ewige Trauzeuge und Frauenheld, der bisher nur im Parzival hatte heiraten dürfen, darf jetzt nicht nur heiraten, sondern – noch ohne davon zu wissen – auch Vater und Mentor eines Romanhelden, eben Wigalois’, werden. Diese Richtung in Gawans Karriere wird in Heinrichs Crône weiter geführt, wo er zum ersten Mal der unangefochtene Hauptheld eines Romans ist’ (Die höfische Literatur der Blütezeit, II, p. 368). Of the many studies devoted to the mythological foundations of the courtly romances may be mentioned Gustav Ehrismann, ‘Märchen im höfischen Epos’, Beiträge 30 (1905), pp. 14–54; Hulda H. Braches, Jenseitsmotive und ihre Verritterlichung in der deutschen Literatur des Hochmittelalters (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1961); Dagmar O’Rian-Raedel, Untersuchungen zur mythischen Struktur der mittelhochdeutschen Artusepen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1978); Gerhard Giesa, Märchenstrukturen und Archetypen in den Artusepen Hartmanns von Aue, GAG 466 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1987). Wigoleis, ed. Hilgers, p. 1. After defeating Gabein, the ‘Joram’ figure addresses Arthur: ‘got gisegn eich, kenig un’ kenigin,/ ritr Gabein fir [⫽ führe] ich mit mir hin’/ do wurd der kenig do weinen ser/ un’ al, di do stundn um in her./ er sagt: ‘last in lebn/ ich wil eich mein halb kenigreich geben!’ (Der Artushof, ed. Landau, p. 13a, lines 40–5). See T. McAlindon, ‘Magic, Fate and Providence in Medieval Narrative and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Review of English Studies, new series, 16 (1965), pp. 121–39, 133. On intruder

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here seems to have been positive. He makes attempts to show the future protagonist’s great-uncle as one pursuing the laudable purpose of choosing the best knight for his niece from the Arthurian entourage.8 With an abundance of polite periphrasis he labours to assure Guinevere that he represents no threat to the Court’s honour, describing himself as a plenipotentiary of Fortuna (Diu Saelde): Als er die küniginne sach, vil gezogenlîche er dô sprach ‘ûf gnâde bin ich komen her; nu gewert mich, vrouwe, des ich ger, durch wîpîche güete: sô ist mîn gemüete geprîset immer mêre; nu enpfâhet durch iuwer êre mîn bet genaediclîche, daz iuch diu Saelde rîche.’ (sc. the girdle of Fortune) (lines 268–78) (As soon as he saw the Queen he addressed her most courteously: ‘I have come here in hopes of your favour, my Lady, and trust that you will grant me what I wish in your goodness. If such were to be the case I would be honoured ever after. Now please accede to my honourable request in good grace, a request forwarded to you by Fortuna herself.’)

References occurring both in Wigalois and Diu Crône together with a more distant reflex found in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight indicate that Gawein’s association with Fortuna must once have been well-known since all three texts associate Gawein with the possession of the goddess’s trophies. These mentions are found in their most elaborate form in Diu Crône where Fortune’s favour finds expression in a girdle fashioned by the goddess herself with the property of conferring happiness and immunity from combat injury upon its owners.9 Gawein’s main encounter with the goddess in Heinrich’s romance occurs when he gains Frou Saelde’s moated castle to receive an audience with her and to retrieve symbolic tokens of her favour for his Arthurian peers, but we are also told earlier in the same romance of what appears to be another tradition where Gawein filches that goddess’s boons from the knight Fimbeus.10 This earlier

8

9

10

figures see also Helen Cooper, ‘The Supernatural’, in A Companion to the Gawain Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 277–91. ‘Die Niederlage Gaweins bedeutet durchaus keine Herabsetzung; im Gegenteil zeugt die Beteuerung, dass es sonst niemals möglich war und dass Zauber angewendet werden muss, um Gawein zu besiegen, von einer besonderen Hochschätzung Gaweins.’ The exercise was merely a ‘Probekampf zur Ermittlung des besten Artusritters’ (Ute Schießl, ‘Die Gawangestalt des Wirnt von Gravenberc in seinem Wigalois’, pp. 14, 10). On the journey into the Otherworld as an initiation rite see Heide Göttner-Abendroth, Die Göttin und ihr Heros. Die matriarchalen Religionen in Mythos, Märchen und Dichtung (Munich: Verlag Frauenoffensive, 1984). This had been wrought by Lady Fortuna and given to her sister (Giramphiel) who had in turn passed it to her lover, Fimbeus, in order to protect him in battle. Gawein had once incurred the wrath of Fimbeus and Giramphiel by wresting from Fimbeus this magic belt encrusted with a miraculous jewel of sovereignty. Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, lines 6095–109.

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reference to Gawein’s snatching of Fortune’s favour is usually referred to as an instance of hysteron proteron, an order of events where the achieved goal appears to be narrated before the quest, but the reason that Heinrich appears to employ a reversed narrative sequence here may have been because he was drawing on two distinct versions of an already widely disseminated and therefore variously elaborated tradition. The ostensible contradiction may in fact show that the motif of Gawein’s association with the goddess was a popular one which had been related in various ways and in more than one account. A century and a half later the magical belt reappears on English territory in the form of the talismanic lace which Sir Bertilak’s wife offers Gawain as protection against her husband’s axe in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (although here the original association with the goddess Fortuna has been lost). It has been reasonably pointed out that since the German poems are unlikely to have been the source of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and must ultimately rest on antecedent French tradition, the most likely explanation for the triangular relationship between the English romance, Wigalois and Diu Crône is a common fund of French tradition dating back to the twelfth century.11 Given the prior knowledge of the narrative background which may have been available to many amongst Wirnt’s first audiences, the initial Gawein-Joram encounter indicates that Joram is here charged with linking Gawein with what many of Wirnt’s contemporaries may have regarded (in view of the plurality of already established traditions) as his manifest destiny as a Knight of Fortune.12 Joram’s kingdom, albeit distant (in a flashback Wigalois later remembers his mother having been a Syrian princess),13 is no sinister netherworld but a place of courtly joy under the putative aegis of a fortuna orientalis. Similarly, Gawein’s future bride, Florie, unlike the figures of Laudine in Iwein and Amurfina in Diu Crône (in both of whom the image of the imperious Celtic fée is preserved more faithfully) comports herself like a courtly princess who does not attempt to compel her spouse to remain by her side by fierce denunciation or by magical means.14 Consistent with the contemporary romance convention by which the hero’s forebears should be noble of birth and deportment, the hero’s great-uncle is no opponent of courtly civilisation (the part played by equivalent adversaries in analogous traditions). His polite mode of address marks him out as a ‘courtly’ figure rather than as an outsider in the mould of Chrétien’s Meleagant or the

11 12 13 14

R. S. Loomis, ‘More Celtic Elements in Gawain and the Green Knight’, JEGP XLII (1943), pp. 149–84. Cf. J. W. Thomas, Wigalois, The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel: ‘King Joram connects Gawein and diu saelde, which he considers to be the gift of God’ (Introduction, p. 31). See lines 5815–7. ‘Florie ist eine wunderschöne und streng gläubige höfische Dame mit allen denkbaren guten Eigenschaften, aber eine Fee ist sie nicht’ (Eberhard W. Funcke, ‘Morgain und ihre Schwestern. Zur Herkunft und Verwendung der Feenmotivik in der mittelhochdeutschen Epik’, Acta Germanica 18 (1985), pp. 1–64, 36–7). On the figure of the fée see also Rosemary Wallbank, ‘An Irish Fairy in Austria; Vrou Giramphiel and Lady Fortune in Diu Crône’, in Connections. Essays in Honour of Eda Sagarra on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday, ed. Peter Skrine, Rosemary E. Wallbank-Turner and Jonathan West (Stuttgart: Hans Dieter Heinz, 1993), pp. 285–96.

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axe-wielding Green Knight.15 As in the genre of the fairytale, the personality of the owner finds its extension in the silent language of symbols.16 Guinevere concludes that the visitor must be a great king because he possesses a belt of such marvellous talents: Si dûhte daz der selbe gast Wol möhte sîn ein rîcher künic; Er dûhte si biderbe unde vrümic Als ez wol an dem gürtel schein. (lines 341–4) (She thought the guest might be a very powerful king since the belt proclaimed him to be a very worthy knight indeed.)

The potentially compromising nature of the abduction story is offset by recourse to the device of the girdle as a means of retrieving the honour of both the father and the great-uncle. On the one hand, the notion that Joram might have had an unfair advantage against the flower of Arthurian chivalry is offset by the fact that he had not used the belt when trouncing a group of knights including Kei, Miljanz, Segremors and Didones before encountering Gawein. Following Gawein’s defeat, however, for which he did use the belt, Joram chivalrously concedes that this time he was able to triumph only because he had the advantage of the talismanic object: wan daz ir siglôs sit ersehen daz ist von sîner kraft geschehen. ichn zel mirz ze deheiner vrümicheit wand ir habt grôze manheit begangen allez iuwer leben. (lines 613–17) (The fact that you have lost against me is the result of the belt’s [magic] power. I do not account it any superior prowess on my part – for you have performed acts of supreme chivalry all your life.)

Joram’s words are reinforced by those of the narrator: Mir ist leit, daz ichz sagen sol daz dem herren Gâwein ie an dem strîte missegie; doch wil ich im des prîses jehen: im waere der lasters niht geschehen

15

16

‘Höfisches Sprechen bedeutet höfliches und unandringliches Sprechen, bedeutet Wahrung der Distanz, auch im sprachlichen Bereich’ (H. J. Bayer, Untersuchungen zum Sprachstil weltlicher Epen des deutschen Früh- und Hochmittelalters [Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1962], p. 161). In Wigalois Joram’s locutions are so diplomatic that Guinevere is obliged to ask him what he really means (lines 278–85), whilst even in Der Artushof the Joram (Floreis) figure, whilst not being depicted in such positive terms as in the Middle High German version, is nevertheless described as ‘der fremdi ritr mit adlichm sitn’ (ed. Landau, p. 12a, line 23). See Max Lüthi, Märchen, 4th edition (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971), pp. 29–30.

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wan durch den gürtel, den er truoc: der steine kraft in nider sluoc: dâ von der gast den sic gewan. Er waer sîn anders gar erlân (lines 562–70). (It grieves me to have to reveal that Gawein failed in this combat, for I salute him since this ignominy would never have occurred had it not been for the belt borne by his opponent. It was the power of the stoneencrusted girdle which defeated him and handed victory to his opponent. Otherwise Gawein would have been spared this reverse.)

The hero’s great-uncle is no Meleagant/Meljaganz and his mother no second Laudine since by way of narratorial modifications both become unexceptionable denizens of an idealised courtly world.17 The face-saving narratorial manoeuvres on Gawein’s behalf serve to establish the exemplary pedigree of the title hero and to make Gawein into a suitable yardstick by which his son’s conduct may be judged. In short, the account of the hero’s parents, despite some tensions between overlapping genetic strata, has been assimilated to the tradition of the literary Vorgeschichte familiar from the story of Gahmuret and Herzeloyde in Parzival or from that of Riwalin and Blanchefleur in Gottfried’s Tristan. When such an account is prefixed to a medieval romance it typically serves to foreshadow aspects of the son’s life in the main body of the work (the medieval notion of pre-charted roles being not dissimilar to modern, ‘hereditarian’ theories of character in genetic science). In this case, exploiting the metonymic connection between Gawein and the belt of Fortuna, Gawein’s son is described as the Knight of Fortune’s Wheel (‘der rîter mit dem rade’, line 5132).

The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel The hero’s cognomen is clearly meant as an honorific, but implicitly begs the question of what might have been thought to be the supposed benefits of being a protégé of a goddess famously alluded to by Chaucer in his Knight’s Tale in his reference to ‘Fortune and hire false wheel,/ That noon estaat assureth to be weel’. Chaucer’s trope had enjoyed a wide currency throughout the early Christian era due to the apparently indefeasible human need for a personification of the fickleness of fate. Claudian in his De Nuptis Honorii et Mariae (c. AD 400), Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy and Alain of Lille in his twelfthcentury Anticlaudianus (later taken over by Jean de Meun in The Romance of the Rose) all contain descriptions of Fortuna,18 Alain memorably allegorising her dwelling at the apex of a storm-tossed cliff under constant danger of tumbling down: the lands at the top of her cliff are described by him as a mixture 17

18

‘Das Feenreich Jorams und Flories verhält sich nicht antagonistisch zum höfischen Artusreich, es ist Ergänzung der Artuswelt durch eine andere Welt, keinesfalls aber konkurrierende Instanz mit konkurrierenden Verhältnissen, keine alternative gesellschaftliche Utopie mit anderen Ansprüchen an die Figuren’ (Stefan Fuchs, Hybride Helden, p. 213). On Fortune see Howard Rollins Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (London: Frank Cass, 1967); Christoph Cormeau, ‘Fortuna und andere Mächte im Artusroman’, and

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of fecundity and aridity, with two streams, one bitter, one sweet; now a flower-covered Arcadia wafted over by Zephyr, now a desolate heath blasted by Boreas. Despite her popularity well into the medieval period, however, the notorious fortuna instabilis was herself to fall victim to some ironic strokes of misfortune in the high and later Middle Ages which had the effect of weakening her sway. Dante, whose ‘systemisation of the cosmology of the otherworld seems to have ended the speculation of the medieval mind on the topic’,19 made Fortuna somewhat tautologous in the metaphysical scale of things by describing her as acting under God’s jurisdiction in her adjudication of events solely restricted to the terrestrial sphere. Such a conception was anticipated by Hartmann von Aue – whose depiction of ‘saelde’ is likewise not that of an autonomous deity but of a power originating with God.20 The sway of Fortuna was further weakened on German-speaking territory when her area of jurisdiction became conflated with that of an allegorical figure, Lady World (Frou Werlt).21 It was a speciality of the Germanophone world in the Middle Ages that the binary opposition perceived to exist between the terrestrial sphere and the spiritual domain was depicted in terms of this allegorical person, imagined as a lower deity than the Christian God for being concerned exclusively with the jurisdiction of events on earth. By an association of iconographic functions, representations of Fortuna became sufficiently similar to those of Lady World (whose sphere of influence was likewise restricted to the sublunary sphere) for both to become regarded as ‘allegorical doubles’ and to be termed twin sisters (‘Zwillingsschwestern’) by Hans Sachs.22 Hence the emblematic association of the eponymous hero with this ‘worldly’ goddess in Wigalois (where Saelde undergoes a further attenuation since she appears not in person as in Diu Crône but only in effigy in Joram’s castle)23 appears to carry little but an ironic implication that his knightly prowess will be more directly instrumental in gaining him his victories than the dubious benefits of the sadly faded deity. In Diu Crône, for instance, ‘fortune’ frequently has such a strong metonymic relationship with ‘knightly prowess’ that Gawein, ostensibly a protégé of Saelde/Fortuna, must in fact strike out on his own and

19 20

21

22 23

Walter Haug, ‘O Fortuna. Eine historisch-semantische Skizze zur Einführung’, in Fortuna Vitrea, series 1, ed. Walter Haug and Burghart Wachinger, Arbeiten zur literarischen Tradition zwischen dem 13. und 16. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1995), pp. 22–33 and 1–22. On medieval appropriations of the Fortuna figure see Tony Hunt, ‘The Christianisation of Fortune’, Nottingham French Studies 38 (1999), pp. 95–113. Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, ed. Eileen Gardner (New York: Italica Press, 1989), editorial introduction, p. xii. ‘Bei Hartmann ist die saelde als eine von Gott ausgehende höfische Gnade angesehen, neben der werdekeit oder vrümekeit eine Form göttlicher Einwirkung in die Welt des Höfischen’ (Heidi Wildt, ‘Das Menschen- und Gottesbild Wirnts von Gravenberc in seinem Wigaloisroman’, p. 66). This figure appears to have originated as a personification rather like Gottfried von Strassburg’s ‘Minne’ (Lady Love) or Walter von der Vogelweide’s facetiously apostrophised ‘Frou Mâze’ (Lady Moderation). Marianne Skowronek, ‘Fortuna und Frau Welt. Zwei allegorische Doppelgängerinnen des Mittelalters’ (dissertation, University of Berlin, 1964). See lines 1036–52.

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become quite literally the engineer of his own (good) fortune.24 When Gawein arrests the motion of Fortuna’s notorious wheel and receives the goddess’s assurance of prosperity for the Arthurian Court, we might suppose that a signal benediction were taking place, but before he even departs her realm, Gawein encounters a form of volcanic storm which threatens to engulf him and against which Frou Saelde, despite her claimed benevolence, apparently has no protective powers, with the inevitable result that the knight is once again thrown back on his own devices of self-protection. Attempts in both Wigalois and Diu Crône to stylise Fortuna as a fortuna stabilis might seem to represent the attempt to show the goddess as a form of guardian angel ancillary to Christian Providence in the same way that Hartmann through his invocation of ‘der höfische got’ implied a desire to co-opt the Christian God as a metaphysical support for the ambitions of courtly society. However, despite numerous implicit claims to the contrary, Fortuna remains in essence the ‘twofaced’ fortuna anceps of Antiquity, powerless to bring enduring good fortune to the chivalric world, emerging finally not as a figure of towering transcendence but simply as a fée (gotinne) writ large.25 The faded mythological associations of vocabulary related to Saelde were further underscored by a recent lexical study of references to the related terms ‘gelücke’, ‘heil’ and ‘saelde’ occurring in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet as well as in Wigalois and Diu Crône. In the course of that analysis Nicola McLelland concluded that the terms had forfeited so much of their original meaning that ‘saelde may in practice boil down to little more than than a courtly version of luck’.26 Her findings provide a corrective to the analysis of J. W. Thomas according to which ‘we are to assume not that the young Wigalois is simply an invincible youth like Ulrich’s Lanzelet. Rather, he is the protégé of Dame Fortune, who strengthens and protects him through his entire probationary journey by means of the magic belt.’27 This contention fails to be borne out by the text where the 24

25

26

27

Or faber fortunae suae in the ancient phrase. Frou Saelde’s supposed supernatural authority is in fact fatally subverted by the circular logic of the dictum of Terence undergirding that romance: ‘Fortune favours the brave’ ( fortes fortuna adiuvat). See F.-P. Knapp, ‘Virtus und Fortuna in der Krone: Zur Herkunft der ethischen Grundthese Heinrichs von dem Türlin’, ZfdA 106 (1977), pp. 253–65. The term gotinne has sometimes been erroneously glossed as the equivalent in meaning of modern German Göttin, but it is more likely that ‘gotinne’ here simply means fée (as elsewhere in Middle High German literature, where the terms fei and gotinne are used interchangeably). Morgan the Fay (Famurgan) is called gotinne in Hartmann’s Erec (line 5161). On this point see Eberhard W. Funcke, ‘Morgain und ihre Schwestern. Zur Herkunft und Verwendung der Feenmotivik in der mittelhochdeutschen Epik’, p. 25. Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s ‘Lanzelet’. Narrative Style and Entertainment, pp. 200–33, 203. Sometimes the notion of Fortuna could be used in a mildly facetious way. When Gawein first sees Florie, it is evident to him that her physical endowments are the result of some very special ministrations of Saelde: ‘Michn triegen dann die sinne mîn,/ si möhte wol under ir hemde sîn/ ein sô schoene crêatiure,/ [. . .] Diu Saelde hêt ir gesworn/ ze belîben mit ir staete/ immer under ir waete’ (Wigalois, lines 934–5, 941–3). Willy Sanders (Glück. Zur Herkunft und Bedeutungsentwicklung eines mittelalterlichen Schicksalsbegriffes) Niederdeutsche Studien 13 (Cologne and Graz: Böhlau, 1965), discusses the polyvalence of (good) fortune and related terms: ‘Bald erscheint es [sc. gelücke] als transzendent waltendes Schicksal, bald als blasser Glücksbegriff heutigen Verständnisses, bald im Gewande der mittelalterlichen Fortuna mit dem Rad’ (p. 1). Wigalois, The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, Introduction, p. 32. Benecke in the introduction to his editio princeps had written of the supernatural assistance offered by the belt but Saran’s

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magic belt is not adverted to or thematised in the first (Nereja) sequence of proving adventures, as Thomas himself appears to concede when he writes that ‘diu saelde and diu saelicheit are used as a leitmotif in general statements, as when the narrator speaks of the saelicheit of good women and prays that God may give them saelde’ (p. 32). In reality, once the magical properties of Fortune’s belt have been invoked to launch the narrative in Wigalois, it is not its magic power which is foregrounded but its metaphorical properties as a ‘a symbol of knightly fortune and valour’28 passed from Gawein to his son (it is transferred to Wigalois by his mother when Gawein leaves the belt behind in his wife’s realm). This conception of the symbols of Fortune having become little more than Arthurian trophies is reinforced when the Lady Beleare recollects having once seen not the Wheel of Fortune but (as she interprets it) ‘the golden Round Table’ (‘guldîn tavelrunde’, line 5613) as Gawein’s emblem before she noticed it on Wigalois’s shield (it is this which enables her to tell the son’s identity).29 The sense of an ambiguity of the sign30 and of the belt/wheel motifs as little more than pieces of Arthurian heraldry comes to the fore once again when Wigalois is told by one of his foremost knightly adversaries, Hojir von Mannesvelt, that many knights ride to the colours of Fortuna: he (Hojir) would need more information than that provided by the commonplace emblem of the wheel in order to identify his opponent: da vüert vil manic man daz rat der nimmer kumt an iuwer stat an geburt und an manheit. dar umb waere ez mir leit und wesse gerne iuwern namen (lines 3107–11) (Many knights bear the wheel [of Fortune] who are far below you in terms of birth and chivalric standard; therefore I would be most frustrated were I not to be able to know your name.)

Hojir’s understanding of the Wheel of Fortune motif as little more than a badge of knightly office indicates at the very least that the protagonist can not be the deity’s unique protégé since the notion that Wigalois might be in receipt of the goddess’s special ministrations is flatly contradicted by Hojir’s report of many knights fighting in her colours. Hence the belt and the wheel decoration, largely emptied of their mythological significance and having taken on the de facto status of family

28 29 30

conclusion was more accurate when he adjudged the Joram/magic belt story a device to give the protagonist a suitable family background: ‘Die Joramgeschichte ist in der tat sehr lose mit der erziehung verflochten worden. Joram verschwindet [. . .] spurlos und greift nirgends wieder in die handlung ein, obwohl man es nach Gaweins ausbleiben erwartet. Ebenso ist der zaubergürtel, nachdem er seinen zweck erfüllt hat, zu nichts mehr nütze: er hat Gaweins besiegung ermöglicht [. . .] Wigalois braucht ihn aber nicht’ (‘Über Wirnt von Gravenberg und den Wigalois’, p. 329). For similar judgements see Jutta Eming, Funktionswandel des Wunderbaren, pp. 195–7 Stefan Fuchs, Hybride Helden, p. 152. ‘ein Symbol für ritterliche saelde und Sieghaftigkeit’ (Wehrli, ‘Wigalois’, p. 231). See lines 5552–643. Achim Jaeger has pointed to ‘die zahlreichen Bezugsmöglichkeiten des Rades im Roman, die Überlagerungen und Uneindeutigkeiten, die spielerisch überblendet werden’ (Ein jüdischer Artusritter, p. 235).

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heirlooms, do not appear so much to designate Wigalois as ‘The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel’ as ‘the son of Arthur’s second-in-command’. The supposed symbols of Fortune in fact serve to strengthen the son’s moral link with the Arthurian world of his father in a way which complements Wirnt’s idiosyncratic treatment of his hero as a supposed Fair Unknown who in reality knows much about his father and his origins. It is the closeness of the family bond which is underscored by these symbolic associations, a bond which essentially transforms Wigalois into a knight desiring not merely to find but also to emulate his famous father. A consequential difference between Wigalois and other works within the European Fair Unknown cycle is the emphasis already placed during the son’s youth on the moral links between the father and a son who already at his supposed ‘questing’ stage really stands in statu pupillarii, as he here explains to his mother: ich wil benamen hinnen varn, in mîner jugent erwerben daz daz man mich von rehte baz erkenne danne ein andern man, als mîn vater hât getân (lines 1294–8) (I will go forth to ensure that whilst I am still young people will acknowledge me before all other knights – just as my father was able to achieve in his time.)

Wigalois is not involved in a bona fide quest for his ‘identity’ (art) in the manner of Parzival31 since he is a young man already in confident possession of a set of principles and beliefs built up ‘according to his father’s precepts’.32 These he has ready to hand to parry Florie’s entreaties that he stay with her rather than go out into the world to prove himself:33 er sprach, ‘liebiu muoter, wie sol mîn nam werden erkant ichn rîte ûz in andriu lant, als mîn vater her în tet? ir sult lâzen iuwer bet’ (lines 1350–4) (Wigalois spoke: ‘Dear mother, how is my name to become known unless I ride off into other lands as my father did? You should stop your entreaties’.)

Strengthening the strong father-son bond are literary echoes of Gawein’s legendary biography in the career of the son. Similarities between Wigalois’s early

31

32 33

On the various understandings of what we now term ‘identity’ in medieval romance see the contributions to The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance, ed. Philippa Hardman (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002). ‘nâch sînes vater lêre’ (line 3019). Cf. also the phrase: ‘Sînen zorn begunde er anden/ als in sîn vater lêrte’ (lines 3555–6). ‘Das Vorbild seines Vaters, “der ie in rîters êren schein” (V. 1306), dient als Erklärung und Rechtfertigung für seinen Drang nach Kampf und Bewährung’ (Stefan Fuchs, Hybride Helden, p. 118).

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adventures under the onslaught of Nereja’s hostile diatribes and those of Wolfram’s Gawan in the company of the the implacable Orgeluse34 indicate that Wigalois must, like his father, deploy his rhetorical skills as a courtier in order to achieve a modus vivendi with his particular damoiselle maledisaunte. His challenge, like that of his father in Parzival, resides as much in his capacity to conciliate the messenger, Nereja, as in a formal demonstration of prowess at arms. Rhetorical skills were regarded as an important acquisition for the well-bred knight, and the testing maiden in Malory’s Fair Unknown story, The Tale of Sir Gareth, sorely tries her companion with her barbs until she perceives his true worth, explaining that only such a humiliating form of testing can prove the presence of noble blood: ‘O Jesu, marvel have I’, said the damosel, ‘what manner a man ye be, for it may never be otherwise but that ye be comen of a noble blood, for so foul ne shamefully did never woman rule a knight as I have done you, and ever courteously ye have suffered me, and that came never but of a gentle blood.’35

A further echo of his father’s fictional career is to be found in the similarity of the hero’s (supposed) anonymity with that of his father in other romance traditions. Such is the case in the fragments of ‘Les Enfances Gauvain’36 where Gauvain is obliged to rise from anonymous beginnings to make a name for himself in both literal and figurative senses, and in its Latin cognate, De Ortu Walwanii, nepotis Arturi37 where his cognomen remains puer sine nomine until he proves his valour (at which time an epistle from imperial Rome establishes his name, Walwanius, and his identity as Arthur’s nephew).38 There is also a notable equivalence of ethical level between the paternal and filial sets of engagements which is common to the romances of the European Fair Unknown tetralogy. In Wigalois, as in the early adventures in the Middle English Libeaus Desconus, ‘action [. . .] more often exists for its own sake – or, at best, as proof of the hero’s physical strength – than to exemplify any chivalric ideal,’39 and a number of

34 35 36 37

38

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This parallel was first pointed out by Jessie L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Gawain (London: Nutt, 1897), p. 56, n. 2. Le Morte D’Arthur, 2 volumes, ed. Janet Cowen (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) I, Book 7, chapter 11 (p. 251). ‘Les Enfances Gauvain. Fragments d’un poème perdu’, ed. Paul Meyer, Romania 39 (1910), pp. 1–32. The Latin romance has traditionally been dated c. 1175–1200, although recently a date of ‘after 1222’ has been mooted (Helen Nicholson, ‘Following the path of the Lionheart: the De Ortu Walwanii and the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi’, Medium Aevum 69 (2000), pp. 21–33, 29). For a brief summary of the Latin romance see the appendix to this volume. The Latin romance is not usually discussed under the Fair Unknown rubric, but Siân Echard has recently pointed to the similarity of the Latin poem with that tradition (chapter on De Ortu Walwanii in her Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 36 (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), pp. 131–58, especially 149). For the text see The Rise of Gawain, Nephew of Arthur/De Ortu Walwanii, nepotis Arturi, ed. and translated by Mildred Leake Day (New York: Garland, 1984). Chapter on ‘Libeaus Desconus’ by Maldwyn Mills in The Arthur of the English. The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature, ed. W. R. J. Barron (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), pp. 124–9, 126. For a recent treatment of this theme in the German context see Will Hasty, Art of Arms. Studies of Aggression and Dominance in Medieval German Court Poetry (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002).

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critics have pointed to a decided lack of moral rigorism in Wigalois’s initial exploits with his female tester.40 For Gawein as for other fictional peers, a pragmatic defence of individual êre, that form of peer-group approval not connected to internal standards of absolute ethical integrity in the modern sense (since the medieval conception of ‘honour’ might include actions which moderns would feel most dishonourable such as, most famously, Isolde’s attempted assassination of Brangaene lest she should tell of Isolde’s sexual ‘dishonour’),41 represented an unquestioned chivalric goal. Older studies of Gawein’s legendary ‘reputation’ were wont to accentuate the benign aspects of his conduct but alongside sterling qualities of prowess combined with human sensitivity went less salubrious features. In Chrétien’s Perceval the charge of knightly homicide levelled at Gauvain is never satisfactorily resolved.42 Similarly cloudy is the account of the same accusation in Parzival. Whereas in Chrétien’s version Guigambresil accuses Gauvain of having killed his lord without the proper preliminary challenge (lines 4759–761), there is an additional implication in Parzival that Gawan unchivalrously feigned friendship with a ‘Judas kiss’ in order to take his victim, Kingrisin, off guard (section 321, lines 10–15). Gawan’s rather hesitant response to this charge (his brother, Beacurs and Arthur intervene to rebut the charge before Gawan speaks a word: see section 322, line 15 to section 323, line 12) does little to dispel the suspicion of guilt. Although Wolfram eventually blinded the homicide motif by making another knight (Ekhunat) responsible for the murder, the unheralded narratorial innovation does little to address earlier doubts.43 Even in Diu Crône, which arguably presents the most positive depiction of Gawein in medieval verse, Gawein is said to have committed a sexual assault (discovered by the first test of

40

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42 43

With regard to the first sequence of exploits, Wehrli noted: ‘Wir wagen hier überall nicht plane Deutungen zu geben, aber müssen feststellen, dass die Vorgänge moralisch wie sachlich kaum sehr schlüssig sind und zu wenig harmlose Fabelei, als dass man nicht einen Schlüssel wünschte’ (‘Wigalois’, in Max Wehrli, Formen Mittelalterlicher Erzählung [Zurich: Atlantis, 1969], pp. 223–41, 235). On the morally dubious nature of some of the early exploits see also Jutta Eming, ‘Aktion und Reflexion. Zum Problem der Konfliktbewältigung im Wigalois am Beispiel der Namurs-Episode’, in Spannungen und Konflikte menschlichen Zusammenlebens in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalter, Bristoler Colloquium 1993, ed. Kurt Gärtner, Ingrid Kasten and Frank Shaw (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996), pp. 91–101. Gert Kaiser even went so far as to state that Wigalois’s initial adventures were ‘mitnichten alle artuswürdig’ (‘Der Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberc. Zur Bedeutung des Territorialisierungsprozesses für die “höfisch-ritterliche” Literatur des 13. Jahrhunderts’, Euphorion 69 [1975], pp. 410–43, 412). For an adjudication on the view that the ‘typical’ fictional knight responded more to ‘situative Gegebenheiten’ than to moral imperatives see Alan Robertshaw, ‘Ambiguity and Morality in Iwein’, in Hartmann von Aue. Changing Perspectives, London Hartmann Symposium 1988, ed. Tomothy McFarland and Silvia Ranawake (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988), pp. 111–28. See Friedrich Maurer, ‘Die Ehre im Menschenbild der deutschen Dichtung’, in his collection of essays, Dichtung und Sprache des Mittelalters, 2nd edition (Berne: Francke, 1971), pp. 406–20; George F. Jones, Honor in German Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), and now Kristine K. Sneeringer, Honor, Love and Isolde in Gottfried’s ‘Tristan’, Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature 61 (New York: Lang, 2002), especially pp. 11–52, for further examples. On this point see Keith Busby, Perceval (Le Conte du Graal), Critical Guides to French Texts 98 (London: Grant and Cutler, 1993), p. 83. On this point see Bonnie Buettner, ‘Gawan in Wolfram’s Parzival’ (dissertation, Cornell University, 1984), pp. 32–5.

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virtue), caused the death (by accident, Gawein claims) of the knight Dahamorht and is compelled to take over the quest for the Grail from Dahamorht’s brother as a penance for his transgression.44 Literary posterity must have accounted the charges of murder and sexual assault as much a part of Gawein’s legendary reputation as his more benign attributes, especially after the worst aspects of that reputation were instrumentalised in the Lancelot-Grail cycle where Gauvain fails in his quest for the Grail and compounds the omission by killing a number of knights along the way (functioning there as a negative foil to Galahad and the ideal of the ‘chevalerie celestiel’). The sense that the son is attempting to match the martial standard of his father rather than to achieve an anachronistically high ethical standard in his first challenges is revealed in the narrator’s somewhat bland response to Wigalois’s (albeit inadvertent)45 killing of a potential host to which the otherwise moralistic narrrator simply refers in neutral terms as an ‘unfortunate occurrence’.46 The deed is said to have only the practical disadvantage that it deprives the pair of a place to sleep for the night (they are forced to sleep in the open air rather than at the slain knight’s castle). It is subsequently for prudential reasons alone that in Wigalois’s second challenge (the defence of a maiden against two rapacious giants) he is careful to spare the life of the second malefactor in order that the giant may live to escort the maiden back to Camelot.47 Similarly, his shows of ‘courtesy’ in his dealings with the messenger are the somewhat Machiavellian means to his end of winning the favour of his unwilling companion, as is shown in the incident where Wigalois takes it upon himself to steal a little hunting dog to give as a bribe to Nereja (contrasting with the equivalent passage in the French version where the messenger, Hélie, steals it for herself).48 Although in his second sequence of challenges the son must be able to draw on reserves of spiritual inspiration unknown to his father’s legendary biography, Gawein’s speciality of being able to win êre in the sense of ‘the plaudits of the world’ plays a prime part in the son’s initial formation. The importance of this father-son testing theme can be gauged by a comparison with the light romantic tone of Le Bel Inconnu where the female messenger swiftly forsakes her monitoring role,49 readily acknowledging the fitness of her

44

45 46 47 48

49

Further charges of knightly homicide arise in the First Continuation, Les Merveilles de Rigomer and in Escanor. See Keith Busby, ‘Diverging traditions of Gauvain in some of the later Old French verse romances’, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, 2 volumes, Faux Titre 37, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), II, pp. 93–109; Ute Schießl, ‘Die Gawangestalt im Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberc’, pp. 156–74. ‘âne sînen danc’ (line 1999). ‘ungeschiht’ (line 2029). ‘Dâ entweich der edel rîter in./ Daz tet er niwan durch den sin/ daz er in slüege ân sînen schaden:/ sô kunde er in ze hûse laden’ (lines 2127–30). The gift of a little brachet (bräkelîn) was a common ‘bargaining tool’ since such animals were popular with court ladies, as is illustrated by the dog Petitcriu in Gottfried’s Tristan (whose little bell Isolde removes as an act of solidarity with her beleaguered lover so as not to be gladdened by its sound). ‘Es wird also im Wigalois mit bewusster kunst der bei Renaut nur anfangs benutzte gedanke durchgeführt: die episoden sollen den helden als geeignet erweisen, das gefährliche abenteuer von Korentin zu bestehen’ (Saran, ‘Über Wirnt von Gravenberg und den Wigalois’, p. 315).

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companion and early on attempting to dissuade him from one challenge in case it might cost him his life:50 Vasal, esgardés que je voi, Or ne venés plus aprés moi; je voi la outre un chevalier trestot armé sor un destrier. Se plus volés venir, sans faille, ja vos rendra dure bataille. Se tu plus viens, ço ert folie: ja serra ta vie fenie. Se tu vels en avant aler, je te di bien n’en pués torner que tu ja ne soies ocis, Jo te di bien tot a devis (Le Bel Inconnu, ed. Karen Fresco, lines 369–80) (Vassal, look at what I see and stop following me because on the other side is a fully armed knight on his war horse. If you will advance further he will give you a very hard fight. It would be folly to proceed further since it would be the death of you. If you [still] insist on going on I tell you straightaway and without any pretence that you will be slaughtered.)

With Hélie’s empathy may be contrasted Nereja’s laconic indifference (cf. lines 2046–53) and refusal to be impressed by the young knight, however meritorious his actions.51 Where Guinglain and Hélie in Le Bel Inconnu are linked by a quickly developing bond of amity, and Gawan and Orgeluse in Parzival by an erotic attachment, the figure of Nereja is an unemotional cipher, her colourless character taking on by default the abstract status of an allegorical representative of the judgement of the knight’s peers.52 Consistent with this lack of a sharply delineated ‘character’ is the somewhat soulless, tidily propositional form in which she delivers her ultimatum to her companion: nu habt ir iu daz vür geleit daz ir den lîp verliesen welt od rîterlîche als ein helt

50

51 52

This occurs in the incident where two giants are about to rape an innocent maiden, at which point Hélie counsels her companion, ‘Ne t’i conbat pas, mes fuions’ (line 743). See Le Bel Inconnu, ed. Fresco, lines 705–744. As Antoinette Fierz-Monnier pointed out with reference to Hélie’s warning, ‘Quiers tu donc aventures?’ (line 656), Hélie’s concern for her young charge ‘zeigt sich auch stilistisch darin, dass sie dem Ritter plötzlich ein “DU” entgegenschleudert und ihn wie ein unartiges Kind maßregelt. Es scheint, dass hier der sonst im Altfranzösischen ziemlich wahllose Wechsel zwischen “Sie” und “Du” dazu benützt wird, um die Heftigkeit der Auseinandersetzung zu unterstreichen’ (‘Initiation und Wandlung. Zur Geschichte des altfranzösischen Romans im 12. Jahrhundert von Chrétien de Troyes zu Renart de Beaujeu’ (dissertation, Universities of Zurich/Berne, 1951), p. 131). ‘swaz er manheit begie/ die wolde si geprîsen nie’ (lines 2189–90). As Stefan Fuchs noted, when, in the course of trying to impress Nereja of his worth, the hero sends a malefactor on parole (sicherheit) to return an abducted maiden to the Arthurian Court, ‘[wird] der Beobachterfunktion der Botin die beurteilende Instanz des Artushofes nun explizit an die Seite gestellt, was den Eindruck einer Bewährungssituation verstärkt’ (Hybride Helden, p. 127).

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der werlte lop erringen; under den zwei dingen muoz iu morgen einz geschehen. (lines 3620–25) (Now you have undertaken either to forfeit your life or to gain the world’s plaudits in true knightly fashion. One of these alternatives must be enacted tomorrow.)

Since the moral force of the untutored cadet theme is all but blinded in Wigalois, the hero’s initial exploits are not concerned with unprompted discoveries of hidden talents, and Wigalois’s early adventures may be better understood as the story of how Gawein’s son fulfils his paternal legacy than as a bona fide contribution to the Fair Unknown tradition. Both Ulrich Füetrer in his Wigoleis and the author of Der Artushof refer to Gawein as his son’s chivalric tutor (‘Gabon, sein zuchte maister’, Wigoleis, ed. Hilgers, stanza 48; ‘zucht meinstr’, Artushof, ed. Landau, p. 30a, line 39). This formulation appears to echo Wolfram’s description of Gurnemanz as Parzival’s tutor in knightly etiquette (‘der houbetman der wâren zuht’, Parzival, ed. Lachmann, section 162, line 23) and implicitly to assign Gawein an equivalent position in the moral structure of the romance as that occupied by Gurnemanz vis-à-vis Parzival. These allusions to Parzival’s knightly mentor, Gurnemanz (rather than to Trevrizent, his spiritual guide) suggest an understanding on the part of the two adapters that Wigalois at this initial stage has no need of any mentor other than his own father. It is only Wigalois’s subsequent loss of the belt with which he and his father are metonymically linked that heralds a new stage in the son’s biography requiring him to go beyond Gawein’s customary limits. Wirnt now ascribes some symbolic value to Fortune’s talismans in order to inform a larger rhetorical argument demonstrating that her boons in tandem with his father’s precepts remain effective only up to a certain threshold of the protagonist’s experience. ‘Knightly good fortune’ (saelde) represents a merely transitional stage of his biography. After Wigalois loses the belt of Fortune (having fallen into a faint after his dragon fight and succumbed to the depredations of a marauding fisherwoman), his reaction suggests that a more enduring Christian inspiration is required in order for him to be able to perform his redemptive mission: Des begunde er got genâde sagen, dar under tougenlîche klagen den gürtel und sîn îsengwant. Er gedâhte ‘nu sol ich zehant gegen der âventiure varn; wâ mit sol ich mich bewarn sît ich den gürtel han verlorn den ich ze trôste hêt erkorn zallen mînen dingen? Noch muoz mir gelingen zer selben âventiure; sin ist nie sô ungehiure ichn welle dâ tot geligen, od mit der gotes kraft gesigen.’ (lines 5990–6005)

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(So he thanked God but secretly mourned the loss of the belt and his armour. He thought, ‘I will meet my challenge without delay [but] how shall I defend myself since I have lost the belt which I always chose as my aid in all my straits? Yet I will prevail in this adventure, and, however terrifying it may turn out to be, I will triumph with God’s aid – or die in the attempt.)

This issue of knightly versus more directly Christian inspiration will be addressed in the following chapter where the relative moral stature of father and son is analysed. The son’s theatre of combat when facing the devil’s disciple, Roaz, is clearly a spiritual one for which the father’s skills and accomplishments (confined as they were in contemporary literary tradition to the knightly arena) would have afforded scant preparation. Nevertheless, the narrator makes efforts – against the grain of his material – to induct Gawein into the more spiritual world of his son by allowing him a rehabilitation from some of his more worldly excesses. In this way, I shall argue, Wirnt succeeds in transforming some of the less positive features of Gawein’s legendary characteristics witnessed in earlier sections of Wigalois in order to facilitate an eventual melding of the proper virtues of father and son.

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3 Saint and Sinner

In all cultures there is the story of the person who passes beyond the portal of death and returns with a message for the living, to rescue its shadowy captives or to learn its secrets [. . .] As to Dante’s Divine Comedy, so many precursors were found and championed over the years that one might imagine that Dante needed little besides scissors and paste to construct his poetic journey.1 From the beginning the poetic imagination has inhabited a middle earth. Above it is the sky with whatever it reveals or conceals: below it is a mysterious place of birth and death from whence animals and plants proceed, and to which they return. There are therefore four primary narrative movements in literature. There are, first, the descent from a higher world; second, the descent to a lower world; third, the ascent from a lower world; and, fourth, the ascent to a higher world. All stories in literature are complications of, or metaphorical derivations from, these four narrative radicals.2

The Hero’s descensus ‘Saelde’ in the reduced sense of ‘knightly good fortune’ established in the usage of Wirnt, Heinrich von dem Türlin and Ulrich von Zatzikhoven plays a symbolic role (albeit a somewhat circular, tautologous one) whilst the protagonist is establishing parity with his father, but for his spiritual challenges he requires greater resources than the habitual skills of a man-at-arms. In the infernal realms awaiting him lurk adversaries different in kind from the bizarre creations we encounter in the works of Der Stricker, Der Pleier and other ‘post-classical’ authors (a factor not widely acknowledged in discussions of Wigalois).3 These monsters are taken not from the routine personnel of the matière de Bretagne sequences but from Christian apocalyptic and that large corpus of traditions which has been termed ‘The Divine Comedy before Dante’.4 Amongst numerous grotesque adversaries surrounded by a particularly sulphurous aura (who would have counted in contemporary terms as descendants of the race of Cain)5 1 2 3 4 5

Carol Zeleski, Otherworld Journeys. Accounts of Near-death Experiences in Medieval and Modern Times (New York, Oxford: OUP, 1987), pp. 3–4. Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture, p. 97. See for instance Walter Haug’s influential ‘Paradigmatische Poesie. Der spätere deutsche Artusroman auf dem Weg zu einer “nacklassischen” Ästhetik’, DVLG 54 (1980), pp. 204–31. See Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, translated by Janos M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth (Cambridge: CUP, 1988), pp. 104–52. See John B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Harvard: Harvard UP, 1981) and Richard K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages. A Study of Medieval

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are a devilish dragon, Pfetan (the eternal representative of existential evil), a centaur, the heathen necromancer, Roaz – a proto-Faustian character in league with the devil,6 the amazonian Ruel, dubbed ‘the devil’s consort’,7 a figure which later centuries would have termed a ‘witch’,8 and Karrioz , whose mother is said to have been a wild woman – historically identifiable with Ruel herself in the manner of Beowulf and his dam.9 (Something of the logic of matriarchal evil reappears in the Jewish versions where the mother of ‘Luzifer’ [i.e. Wirnt’s Roaz] is likewise depicted as being an even more devilish figure than her son.)10 Against such forces of cosmic evil the protagonist must undergo the kinds of acute metaphysical trials which later inspired Heinrich von dem Türlin to create his own phantasmal ‘wonder’ sequences in Diu Crône.11 Christian traditions involving a descent into the unseen realms developed alongside apocalyptic traditions in late Antiquity and flourished up to the time of the Renaissance in the Visionary genre, a form of writing retaining essentially the same range of motifs from the Dialogues of Gregory the Great to Bede and Hincmar of Reims down to the immediate precursors of Dante and Hieronymus Bosch. The enduring influence of this form can even be traced to the modern era when, although undoubtedly suffering a decline after the Reformation, purported self-reports of this kind were never entirely banished from Western consciousness, making a ‘comeback’ in the context of evangelical/spiritualist movements in the nineteenth century and in that surrounding ‘near-death experiences’ in the twentieth century.12 In the medieval period the best known example of the genre in the Germanspeaking world was the Vision of Tundalus (1149) which narrates the conversion undergone by the sinner, Tundalus, after his soul is led by an angel through

6

7 8

9

10

11

12

Apocalypticism in Art and Literature (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1981). In the case of the ‘wild woman’, Ruel, there is probably also a Germanic substrate element: see under ‘(rûhe) Else’ in George T. Gillespie, A Catalogue of Persons named in German Heroic Literature 700–1600 including Named Animals and Objects and Ethnic Names (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973). ‘Er [sc. Roaz] hât durch sînen zouberlist/ beidiu sêle unde leben einem tievel gegeben:/ der tuot durch in wunders vil;/ er vüeget im allez daz er wil;/ alsô gevuocter im daz lant’ (lines 3656–61). ‘des tievels trût’ (line 6452). ‘The wild woman is [. . .] a libidinous hag and it would seem entirely appropriate to use the term used for centuries for her kind by calling her a “witch”’ (Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages [Harvard: Harvard UP, 1952], p. 34). Although not introduced as the offspring of Ruel, it is notable that Ruel’s late husband had been called Feroz and that Wirnt uses the ‘z’ suffix as a patronymic elsewhere with the characters Leodarz and his son, Bejolarz (see lines 8716–17). ‘Es gereicht zu keiner geringen bestärkung der teuflischen natur Grendels in Beovulf [sic], dass ihm zur seite seine mutter steht, noch riesenhafter aufgefasst als er selbst, dass sie seinen tod rächen will, und erst durch ihre besiegung die heldenthat vollendet wird’ (Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, three volumes, revised by E. H. Meyer [Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1878], II, p. 841). For the peculiar nature of these visionary sequences see Ulrich Wyss, ‘Wunderketten in der Crône’, in Die Mittelalterliche Literatur in Kärnten, ed. A. Cella and P. Krämer, Wiener Arbeiten zur germanischen Altertumskunde und Philologie 16 (Vienna: Halosar, 1981), pp. 269–91, and Johannes Keller, ‘Diu Crône’ Heinrichs von dem Türlin, Wunderketten, Gral und Tod (Berne: Lang, 1997). See Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Mittelalterliche Vision und moderne Sterbeforschung’, in Psychologie in der Mediävistik, ed. J. Kühnel, H.-D. Mück, Ursula and Ulrich Müller, GAG 431 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1985), pp. 9–45.

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Purgatory and Hell to Heaven.13 Descriptions of this kind have ancient roots, the desire to go beyond the periphery of mortal habitation having prompted the mythic imagination to produce a vast store of eschatological tales in which a lone quester passes beyond the portal of the terrestrial world in search of resolutions accessible only in the world beyond. Although many scholars have seen a large Celtic substratum underlying the Otherworld dimension of the Arthurian romances, there is much overlapping of Celtic with Germanic and Classical themes and with Judaeo-Christian legends14 as well as with traditions which, having arisen independently in many cultures, may claim the status of mythic universals. In the ancient world, the most famous examples are Gilgamesh’s quest for the secret of eternal life, Odysseus’s encounter with the dead seer, Tiresias, and Aeneas’s encounter with his father in the Underworld, the latter known to medieval audiences through vernacular adaptations of Vergil’s Aeneid. A descensus or, in its Greek form, katabasis, was commonly judged necessary before the performance of a great task.15 Aeneas’s father, Anchises, speaking with his son in the realm of the Shades, encourages his son’s endeavours by prophesying to him the founding of Rome by a future scion, Romulus. In the gloomy ambience of the netherworld, apotropaic gifts used to ward off evil forces were thought an important possession, Vergil’s sybil giving Aeneas the celebrated golden bough and a special herb to fortify him against the stench of Pluto’s realm (where he encounters the infernal personnel of Charon, Cerberus and Rhadamanthus together with all the company of abandoned souls). Aspects of Wigalois’s descent to Lar’s mortuary kingdom of Korntin were probably influenced by Heinrich von Veldeke’s German version of the Aeneid. Wirnt at any rate writes as if some version of Vergil’s epic were known to his readership in the scene where a Persian princess has read out to her from a ‘buoch’ (line 2714) the story described in abbreviated terms as being about how Aeneas escaped from the ruins of Troy, how he was was welcomed by Dido and about his deeds after forsaking her (which Wirnt expects his audience to have heard related).16 There are further echoes where Elamie asks him to stay with her, but Wigalois, like ‘pius Aeneas’, says he must proceed to greater obligations awaiting him (lines 3153–68)

13

14

15 16

See Nigel Palmer, ‘Visio Tnugdali’. The German and Dutch Translations and their Circulation in the Later Middle Ages, MTU 76 (Munich and Zurich: Artemis, 1982). For the extensive geographical distribution of the vernacular versions see the diagrams on pp. 370–1 and on the reception of the genre see pp. 376–81. For conspectuses of the genre in the modern vernaculars see Eileen Gardner, Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, and Peter Dinzelbacher, Mittelalterliche Visionsliteratur. Eine Anthologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989). Cf. Cormeau, ‘Die entmythisierten Reste keltischer Genese sind zu einem guten Maß durch christliche Jenseits- und Dämonenvorstellungen aufgefüllt und remythisiert’ (‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’, p. 86). For these motifs in the medieval context see Ernst Dick, ‘Katabasis and the Grail epic: Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival’, Res Publica Litterarum 1 (1978), pp. 57–87. ‘wie Troje zervuort waere/ und wie jaemerlîche/ Ênêas der rîche/ sich danne stal mit sînem her/ vor den Kriechen ûf daz mer,/ wie in vrouwe Dîdô enpfie/ und wiez im dar nach ergie,/ als ez iu ofte ist geseit’ (lines 2715–22). On medieval appropriations of Vergil see Hans Fromm, ‘Die Unterwelt des Eneas’, in Philologie als Kulturwissenschaft. Festschrift für Karl Stackmann, ed. L. Grenzmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1987), pp. 71–89, and Hugh Sacker, ‘Heinrich von Veldeke’s conception of the Aeneid’, GLL 10 (1957), pp. 210–18.

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and when Wigalois is endowed with large quantities of (Christian) apotropaic.17 Amongst these gifts (each adapted to the medieval rather than to the classical context) figure a special spear (glävie, line 4748), a form of relic evoking the celebrated Longinus lance, proverbially claimed to have inspired the first Crusaders when it was discovered in Antioch in 1098;18 a sacred letter containing an abundance of prayers and Christian formulae which is wrapped round his sword by a priest19 and a wafer given him by Larie.20 These pious props are signs proclaiming that the theatre of combat has changed from a martial to a spiritual one.21 Within the latter conceptual framework a blighted realm counted as evidence of divine punishment (affecting the innocent as well as the guilty parties who were the Almighty’s proper target).22 In the case of Wigalois, the hero’s ‘great adventure’ (as opposed to his probationary challenges) concerns a voyage beyond the bourne of death itself (‘in den tôt’).23 Although Cormeau held that the references to death should be interpreted metaphorically and glossed merely as ‘Todesrisiko’ (‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’, p. 62 and n. 17), this does not fit the concrete spatialisation described here. Whether the time of Purgatory was earthly or eschatological was a matter of Scholastic debate in the period 1150–1300, and Jacques Le Goff argued that the doctrine of Purgatory was preminently an intellectual development of the twelfth century; yet the scenes involving Lar and his troupe of lost souls in Wigalois show that there was already a popular notion of Purgatory conceived in terrestrial terms (or else that purgatorial conditions might be apprehendable through a breach in the normal space-time continuum).24

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18

19 20

21

22

23 24

These are the common props of many narrative traditions dealing with a mortal’s passage from the terrestrial realm into an Otherworld. For the medieval tradition see D. D. R. Owen, The Vision of Hell. Infernal Journeys in Medieval French Literature (Edinburgh and London: Scottish Academic Press, 1970); The ‘Songe d’Enfer’ of Raoul de Houdenc, ed. Madelyn Timmel Mihm, Beihefte zur ZfrPh 190 (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1978), Introduction, and Jutta Eming, Funktionswandel des Wunderbaren, pp. 188–9. Its supposed protective value derived from its associations with the Crucifixion (where the Roman centurion, Longinus, was popularly supposed to have terminated Christ’s sufferings with the lance), making it emblematic of Christ’s redemption of mankind. See entry ‘Longinussegen’ in Bächtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens V, columns 1327–47. These were called Schwertbriefe or Himmelsbriefe in Germany. See W. R. Jones, ‘The Heavenly Letter in Medieval England’, Medievalia et Humanistica, new series, 6 (1975), pp. 163–78. ‘Das gesegnete Brot diente als Ersatz für die Kommunion und galt als höchster Besitz des Ritters, der diese heilige Stärkung auf dem Schlachtfeld den Todwunden reichte oder sich selbst reichen liess’ (Friedrich Wentzlaff-Eggebert, Kreuzzugsdichtung des Mittelalters [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960], p. 4). The Host is not a conventional lady’s gift. In the more secular atmosphere of the analogous passage in Le Chevalier du Papegau the lady gives her champion the conventional guerdon of a piece of silk (ed. Ferdinand Heuckenkamp, pp. 63–4). That it would have been consistent with medieval theological prepossessions to accept the premise that God might have visited his punishments on a whole people was noted by Wildt: ‘Als Drohung für den Menschen, der Unrecht tut, wird auf Gottes Strafgerechtigkeit hingewiesen, die sich dem Dichter besonders darin zeigt, dass Gott über die Menschen wegen ihres Ungehorsams und Unglaubens die glücklosen, schlimmen Zeitumstände der Gegenwart zur Strafe verhängt hat’ (Heidi Wildt, ‘Das Gottes- und Menschenbild’, p. 224). Cf. also the precise description ‘gelîch dem tode gar’ (line 1764). On the medieval tendency to attribute objective forms to concepts and ideas see Hiltrud K. Knoll, ‘Studien zur realen und außerrealen Welt im deuschen Artusroman (Erec, Iwein,

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According to different strands of popular thought in medieval Europe there were a number of terrestrial entrances to Purgatory (including such varied locations as the mouth of Etna, the cave of Lough Deargh in Ireland (‘Saint Patrick’s Purgatory’ on Station Island) or the ‘vale perilous’ in the kingdom of Prester John). In the corresponding French account, Le Chevalier du Papegau, when Arthur looks at the old king, he is impressed by his flame-like hue, a sign of his purgatorial state.25 Similarly, in Wigalois, Lar’s spectral troupe of knights languish in purgatorial flames, as is illustrated when Lar breathes fire and when the shaft of Wigalois’s lance ignites when it makes contact with Lar’s ghostly retinue.26 In these infernal regions he is set to face Roaz, a former retainer of the king, who, rather like a demonised version of Shakespeare’s Claudius with Old Hamlet, had murdered King Lar of Korntin before the latter had had time to receive absolution. The king and his retinue thenceforth are left to languish in a state of limbo awaiting the future ministrations of their deliverer. In contrast to authorised teaching according to which the souls of the dead proceeded to a particular judgement (being assigned by God forthwith to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory),27 it was widely believed throughout the medieval and Early Modern periods that for a period after death the dead remained in the vicinity of their bodies, prone to haunt the locations and the persons they had known when alive.28 Whilst it might be commonly agreed today that the dead have no existence other than that which the living imagine for them, many would once have ‘accepted the existence and power of supernatural beings who were generally invisible but always nearby’,29 and ghosts, lesser demons and the

25 26

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Lanzelet, Wigalois)’ (dissertation, University of Bonn, 1966). On the Early Modern decline of the belief in evil as an external force see D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964). On the dogmatic formulation of the doctrine of Hell in the twelfth century see Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). Aron Gurevich on the other hand noted that Bede’s ‘locus in quo examinandae et castigandae sunt animae’ already communicates the essence of purgatory as effectively as the later lexicalisation, purgatorium, and counselled that ‘the process of the “birth” of purgatory must also be examined within the history of medieval popular culture, and not only in the context of the culture of intellectuals’ (Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, p. 143, n. 85 and p. 149). For references to the notion of purgatory already existing in the Patristic tradition see Herbert Kolb, Munsalvaeasche. Studien zum Kyotproblem (Munich: Eidos, 1963), pp. 108–9, and Rudolf Simek, Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages. The Physical World before Columbus, trans. Angela Hall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993). ‘car il la veoit si vermeille qu’il sembloit qu’elle fust embrasee’ (ed. Heuckenkamp, p. 64). The name ‘brinnenselen’ was given to one of the Runkelstein scenes: see R. S. and L. H. Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (New York: The American Modern Language Monographs series 9, 1938), plate 179. The pains of Hell and Purgatory were identical with the crucial difference that in the latter state they had to be borne only ‘for a certain time’. See Hans-Dietrich Altendorf, ‘Die Entstehung des theologischen Höllenbildes in der alten Kirche’, in Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer. Das Jenseits im Mittelalter, Exhibition of the Swiss National Museum (Zurich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1994), pp. 27–31, and on remissions from Purgatory, Marcus Landau, Hölle und Fegfeuer in Volksglaube, Dichtung und Kirchenlehre (Heidelberg: Winter, 1909), especially pp. 180–1. Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages. The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 1–2. Cf. The Place of the Dead. Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), editorial introduction, p. 7.

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devil himself were imagined as having a corporeal existence. In the event Wigalois encounters the spectral king in the form of a ‘guiding beast’ (an animal form with a number of ancient folkloric antecedents but here transposed to the medieval context of one undergoing a purgatorial penance).30 In this wraith-like form, Lar and his troupe of deceased knights are also reminiscent of vernacular traditions of the phantom forms of unconfessed dead wandering the earth in the train of the ‘Wild Hunt’ (exercitus furiosus, processio nocturna). Having suffered ‘one of the worst medieval nightmares’31 in the form of an unheralded death, Lar and his murdered men find themselves in a limbo (hence the application to the King of his appellative to signal his immaterial condition – his other name is Jorel). As is the case with Hamlet’s father, God grants Lar a periodic respite from purgatorial torments for his charitable acts when he was alive (lines 4663–88). Fortunately for him, his saviour, unlike young Hamlet, is no student of Wittenberg with paralysing doubts as to whether his interlocutor might be ‘a spirit of health or goblin damned’, and in obedience to a popular piece of metaphysical logic to which many in pre-Reformation Europe would have accorded their imaginative assent,32 Wigalois agrees to the ghost’s summons to avenge his wrong. In romances portraying a spiritual or moral trial a distinction is typically made between the realm of the court and the metaphysical/eschatological realm whose threshold the hero must cross to face the Other in some guise, and distinctive narrative markers are commonly employed to point up the ontological division. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (arguably a more bona fide recreation of the spiritual quest genre than Diu Crône despite the fact that, like Wigalois, it lacks the grail motif proper),33 the eponymous hero’s mid-winter journey ‘with only God for company’ beyond the Wirral into a disorientating landscape of the soul announces a new threshold of experience having less to do with ‘batayl bare’ (as Arthur’s courtiers anticipate) than with a quest for absolute personal

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32

33

This is a folkloric belief of great antiquity. ‘In such stories, the fundamental situation demanded the services of a particular hero, predestined to the task, for the disenchantment of a mortal or fée under a spell, or for his or her deliverance. Sometimes the animal guide relies, for its own restoration to human form, upon the dissolution of a spell which can be removed only by the valour and skill of the hero which it guides’ (A. C. Brodeur, ‘The Grateful Lion’, PMLA 39 [1924], pp. 485–524, 519). See also Lutz Röhrich, Sage, second edition, SM 55 (Stuttgart: Meztler, 1971), p. 42. Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2001), p. 231. The unconfessed Old Hamlet (whose legend provides a folkloric analogue to that of Lar) famously defines himself as ‘Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,/ Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,/ No reckoning made, but sent to my account/ With all my imperfections on my head’ (Act 1, scene 5, lines 76–9). ‘Der Tote braucht für seine Erlösung die Hilfe der Lebenden. Dies scheint ein ganz wesentlicher Zug der Totensagen zu sein: das Aufeinandergewiesensein von Lebenden und Toten [. . .] Die meisten Totensagen sind auch Rechtssagen; sie sind Selbstaussagen des Volkes nicht nur über seine Glaubensvorstellungen, sondern auch über seine ethischrechtlichen Anschauungen’ (Lutz Röhrich, Sage, pp. 13, 14). On this point see Alain Renoir, ‘Gawain and Parzival’, Studia Neophilologica 31 (1958), pp. 155–8, W. R. J. Barron, ‘Chrétien de Troyes and the Gawain poet: Master and pupil or twin temperaments?’ in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly and Keith Busby, II, pp. 255–84, and Ad Putter, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995).

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integrity in the eyes of his maker (trawthe). When the English Gawain reaches the Green Chapel we are told that this uncanny place is where ‘the devil tells his matins’. Whilst the English poet signals the change in the theatre of combat with a light touch, Wirnt’s evocations of the uncanny yield a veritable inventory of signs. There are mentions of the pale moon,34 awful prophecies,35 disembodied voices portending death and disaster,36 sulphurous mists37 and other manifestations of the ‘numinous’ which have been assigned to the same apprehension of the mysterium tremendum which reemerges centuries later in the products of German Schauerromantik:38 Its antecedent stage is ‘daemonic dread’ with its queer perversion, a sort of abortive offshoot, the dread of ghosts. It first begins to stir in the feeling of something uncanny, eerie or weird. It is this feeling which, emerging in the mind of primeval man, forms the starting-point for the entire religious development in history. ‘Daemons’ and ‘gods’ alike spring from this root and all the products of mythological apperception or fantasy are nothing but different modes in which it has been objectified.39

Ernst Dick observed (overlooking the clear priority of Wigalois) that Diu Crône was ‘the first piece of fantastic narrative in German literature [. . .] Should someone object that I make the Crône sound like a Gothic novel, I can only say that we are, after all, dealing with a work of the Gothic period.’40 Of the eighteenth-century German Gothic novel it has been claimed that, despite its many, incidental absurdities, it ‘freed the primal material of dreams and terrors back into fiction’,41 showing that, when an empirically explicable world is confronted by an apparently irrational and inexplicable one, the protagonist must delve beneath his rational veneer to an archaic core of his personality in quest of the protections offered by religion and the ‘apotropaic of folk wisdom’.42 In Wirnt’s romance such unfamiliar terrain (which also, mutatis mutandis, suggests something of a landscape of the soul rather than a cartographically comprehensible region)

34 35 36 37 38

39 40

41

42

See lines 7504–6. Cf. the warning issued by the steward that he would never approach the infernal Glois, whatever the reward (lines 4337ff.). Cf. lines 6910ff. See lines 6808ff . On proto-Romantic and/or ‘Gothic’ elements see Wehrli, ‘Wigalois’, especially p. 227. Friedrich Neumann too had written of ‘ein Kernabenteuer [. . .] das an märchenhafter Jenseitigkeit die Grenzen des Wahrscheinlichen in ungewöhnlichen Abläufen überschreitet: das Ganze Ausgeburt einer Phantasie, die für neuzeitliche Leser an das Ungesunde streift’ (‘Wann verfasste Wirnt den Wigalois?’, p. 31). Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Cambridge: CUP, 1952), p. 14. ‘Tradition and Emancipation: the generic aspect of Heinrich’s Crône’, in Genres in Medieval German Literature, ed. Hubert Heinen and Ingeborg Henderson, GAG 439 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1986), pp. 74–92, 92. Gillian Beer, section on The Gothic Revival in The Romance, The Critical Idiom 10 (London: Methuen, 1970), pp. 55–8, 57. See also Gerhard Haas, ‘Struktur und Funktion der phantastischen Literatur’, WW 28 (1978), pp. 340–56. Hans Richard Brittnacher, Ästhetik des Horrors. Gespenster, Vampire, Monster, Teufel und künstliche Menschen in der phantastischen Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), pp. 320, 327.

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makes progress anything but straightforward. At the Arthurian court Wigalois had appeared to have found his life’s compass, his path continuing straightforwardly throughout his exploits in the company of Nereja. Although that unsympathetic messenger rides out ahead of him into the far distance, he is able to find his way back to her even over pathless tracts of land.43 The path to Roaz’s realm, on the other hand, throws him into doubt as to which direction to take, even though the road ahead is clearly marked and described as being ‘wol gebant’; for now we are given to understand that the barriers to easy progress stem from unseen, demonic forces threatening the knight’s normal capacity to find his way unerringly over a path which, notwithstanding the prior instructions of the old king in his capacity of psychopomp, proves to be pitted with obstacles recalcitrant to human agency which challenge his normal powers of orientation.44 Hence, at an ostensibly unnavigable river with a ‘sword bridge’, he can be saved only by a divine intervention. This sense of dependence on God’s mercy is unknown to the analogous sequence in Le Chevalier du Papegau. It is not known for certain whether this French sequence, although chronologically later than the German analogue, preserves an earlier version of the tradition more faithfully here (Cormeau considered the alternative possibility that Wigalois might have provided the model for the French work),45 but however this matter of historical priorities may be, it seems clear that the French account, with its heavy dependence on adventurous incident and fabliau elements (such as the occasion when its hero, Arthur himself, violently assaults a woman),46 is considerably freer of the moral/religious agenda which informs Wirnt’s treatment of similar material. When in the French romance we encounter the same impassable bridge and cutting wheel said to be ‘faicte par enchantement, pour garder le passage au mareschal’47 (the ‘mareschal’ corresponding to the German Roaz), the ‘magic’ turns out to work on a mechanical

43

44 45

46

47

‘sus vuorens âne strâze/ unz er die juncfrouwen vant;/ diu begunde sâ zehant/ ûf ir wec rîten/ sine wolde sîn niht bîten’ (lines 2170–4). On spatial details in this sequence see Ernst Trachsler, Der Weg im Mittelhochdeutschen Artusroman, Studien zur Germanistik, Anglistik und Komparatistik 50 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1979), pp. 121–35. ‘sîn manic gemüete vuocte im daz/ er die strâze übersach’ (lines 6254–5). ‘Wenn hier die Möglichkeit einer umgekehrten Tauschbeziehung, ein sehr verbreiteter deutscher Versroman als Quelle für einen späteren französischen Prosaroman, diskutiert wird, ist zu berücksichtigen, daß dieser Fall nur eine Art sekundäre Aneignung, eine Rückspiegelung der literarischen Ausstrahlung wäre. Kein fremder Stoff würde neu in die französische Literatur eingeführt, sondern nur ein neues Romankonzept im Rahmen des heimischen Artusstoffes und mit Variationen geläufigen Motivmaterials importiert’ (‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’, p. 73). I am inclined to the belief that Papegau does preserve an earlier stratum of tradition unaffected by pious concerns but it must be conceded that the issue cannot be resolved definitively and that there is indirect support for Cormeau’s argument in the analogy of the Jewish adaptations of Wigalois which delete many Christian legendary motifs (such as the lance, Host and ‘heavenly letter’), making Widuwilt into ‘ein geradliniger Aufsteiger, ohne die Aura des Heilsbringers’ (Wulf-Otto Dreesen, ‘Wandlungen des Artusromans im Yiddischen’, in Westjiddisch. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit, ed. Astrid Starck [Aarau, Frankfurt am Main, Salzburg: Sauerländer, 1994], pp. 84–98, 92). Of Papegau it has been claimed that ‘its tone – uncourtly, knockabout – suggests affinities with fabliau or farce rather than with Arthurian romance’ (Jane Taylor, ‘The Parrot, the Knight and the Decline of Chivalry’, in Conjunctures. Medieval Studies in Honour of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994], pp. 529–44, 531). Le Chevalier du Papegau, ed. Heuckenkamp, p. 71.

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principle. In order for Arthur to pass, it is necessary only to search out the motive part of the wheel in a small aperture and then cut it through with the sword. In Wigalois, by contrast, the passage over the infernal bridge has clearly been influenced by Christian conceptions48 and is made possible only by a prayer of petition. In order to underscore the hero’s powerlessness yet more, Wigalois is made to fall into an exhausted faint before that prayer is answered (at which point Christ is said to cause the asphyxiating vapours to coagulate in the running water, so arresting the motion of the sword-studded wheel).49 In a further episode represented in a somewhat different way in the French analogue, the German hero is bound fast by a ‘wild woman’ (Ruel), of whose actions we are told: Als er waere gebunden, Sô truoc in diu tiuvelîn Under ir starken armen hin. Swie starc der rîter waere Und swie wîten maere Waer sîn grôziu manheit, Diu selbe vrouwe ungemeit Truoc in hin als ein sac. ‘ôwê, daz ich disen tac ie gelebte!’ sprach der degen. Nû ist mîn kraft gar gelegen Waz touc mir mîn manheit? Ditz ist ein jaemerlîchez leit!’ (lines 6378–89) (Once bound the she-devil bore him away in her strong arms. However strong the knight was and however widely renowned his valour, this grim woman carried him off like a sack. ‘Alas that I ever lived to witness this day!’ said that warrior. Now my strength has deserted me. What use now my ‘prowess’?’ This is a lamentable predicament!’)

In the same encounter as it is described in Le Chevalier du Papegau, the horse itself is said to have scared off the femme saulvage by its neighing and bucking: Et lors sailli par derrier luy une femme saulvage, si ne l’aperceut oncques devant ce qu’elle l’ot embracé entres ses bras, que, se ne fuseent ses armes, elle l’eust mort, et mort l’eust sans faille se ne fust le destrier qui hennist et se mist a croler de force quant il senti celle malle chose, qu’elle en ot ung pou de paour, si qu’elle ovry ung peu ses bras. Et lors le Chevalier du Papegau la gecta a terre quant il se

48

49

There is a long, narrow bridge in the German vernacular translations of the Vision of Tundalus (cf. Tondolus der Ritter ed. Nigel F. Palmer, Kleine deutsche Prosadenkmäler des Mittelalters 13 [Munich: Fink, 1980], lines 218–23). Patch thought that the most immediate source was the fourth redaction of the Visio Sancti Pauli where there is a wheel of fire ‘in quo est rota ignea habens mille orbitas. Mille vicibus uno die ab angelo tartareo volvitur, et in unaquaque vice mille anime cruciantur in ea.’ See Howard R. Patch, The Other World according to Descriptions in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1950) p. 126, and also the tormenting wheel turned by a horned demon in a French fifteenth-century painting in D. D. R. Owen, The Vision of Hell, plate one. See Wigalois, lines 6714–926.

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senti ung peu lachié d’elle, et quant il fut a terre, il a traitte l’espee et se delivra d’elle, puis est monté au destrier et s’en va sa droite voie grant aleure.50 (Then there jumped up behind him a wild woman whom he did not notice until she had gripped him between her arms. If it had not been for his weapons she would have killed him, and he would definitely have met his end had not his horse begun to neigh and rear up violently when it sensed this evil, with the result that the woman loosened her grip in her fear. And then the Knight of the Parrot threw her to the ground once he felt himself free of her dominion; and once he got his bearings he was able to draw his sword to free himself of her, after which he got on his horse and rode off on his proper course at speed.)

The same amazon is also, we are at first told, scared off by the horse in the German version (she mistakes it for the sound of the dragon) but as if such a contingent event were offensive to Wirnt’s theodicean notions,51 he promptly supplies the gloss that God had interceded on Wigalois’s behalf by answering his prayer for release: Mit dîner kraft enbinde mich, daz mir mînen jungen lîp iht beneme ein solch wîp diu der helle zaeme. ... herre got, erhoere mich!’ in dirre bet sô lôste sich diu starke wide dâ er mit gebunden was nâch diebes sit. (lines 6497–500, 6504–7) (‘Release me through your great power so that I shall not be rapt away as a mere youth by a woman whose proper abode is hell itself [. . .] Lord God, listen to my prayer!’ With this prayer the strong ropes with which he was bound as if he had been a common thief were loosened.)

Despite the abundance of narrative markers indicating that Wigalois is to undergo a mortal trial, the obstacles he encounters are all finally negotiable since he has God’s constant support and, in contradistinction to Tundalus and other sinful protagonists, there is no sense that he need be purified by God’s reproving ministrations. The hero already embodies achieved perfection, hence the theme which is central to the Tundalus and Perceval/Parzival traditions, namely, that the hero’s spiritual journey be undertaken as a labour of penitence and self-searching, is not represented in Wirnt’s text.52 Wigalois had given prior

50 51

52

Le Chevalier du Papegau, ed. Heuckenkamp, p. 72, lines 6–12. Heuckenkamp reasonably pointed out that ‘das Gebet des Helden ist von ganz secundärer Bedeutung und kann wohl Zuthat sein, denn im Wesentlichen wird Wigalois durch das Pferd, nicht durch Gebet gerettet, und zur Befreiung von einem Weidengeflecht braucht es kein göttliches Wunder’ (Le Chevalier du Papegau, ‘Vorwort’, p. LII). Nereja had early on stated categorically that only God could be of any help to a hero on this particular mission: ‘swer si wolde erwerben [sc. the mission]/ daz der dâ müese ersterben/ ezn wolde got dan understên;/ ân den mohtez niht ergên’ (lines 2457–60). Cf. Ernst Trachsler, Der Weg im Mittelhochdeutschen Artusroman: ‘Weder das väterliche Leitbild noch der magische Gürtel, sondern Gott entscheidet in letzter Instanz über den Erfolg der Fahrt’ (p. 122).

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demonstration of his superlative moral standard through the ‘rock of virtue’ motif on which testing object (a variant of the ‘Siege Perilous’) he is able to sit since his heart was from the start ‘free of any villainy’.53 In a more conventional use of the Siege Perilous motif such as is found in the Didot Perceval, although Alain Le Gros receives a divine message that his son (Perceval) will be successful in the future Grail quest, Perceval’s hubris is punished when he decides to take his place prematurely on the Siege Perilous, causing the seat to split, and a voice to reprove him for his temerity.54 By contrast, the motif of the spiritual test is positioned initially in Wigalois rather than as the moral consummation of the protagonist’s career, the prolepsis making further development of his moral character unnecessary. That Wigalois is indeed a ‘predestined’ hero is revealed in the hero’s ‘specular’55 interview with the old King before he faces the dragon, for here Lar foretells the time when, in his contest with that representation of the evil principle, the hero will be deprived of his habitual powers: Du erslehst den wurm, daz ist wâr; Du verliusest ab von im sô gar Dîne kraft daz dir nie mê Von deheinem strîte geschach sô wê. (lines 4777–80) (You will slay the dragon, that much is true, but you will lose your powers more disastrously than you have ever experienced in any previous encounter.)

Despite some obeisances to the theme of a temptation to despair of God’s purposes with him (the sin of desperatio),56 the hero’s providentialist convictions remain unbroken and he continues to place his trust in the interventions of the God of miracles. Like Hartmann’s Lord Heinrich after his conversion to ‘a new goodness’ and consequential acquisition of new faith, he ‘leaves everything to God’, refusing to be intimidated by superstitious portents or old wives’ tales: Dehein ungeloube in müete In dem hûse noch ûf dem wege; Er liez ez allez an gotes pflege, Swaz im des morgens wider life Od swie vil diu krâ gerief

53 54

55

56

‘sîn herze was âne mein/ und ledic aller bôsheit’ (lines 1492–3). See The Didot Perceval according to the Manuscripts of Modena and Paris, ed. William Roach, (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1941) and for a discussion of this point The Romance of ‘Perceval’ in Prose, translated by Dell Skeels (Seattle: Washington UP, 1961), Introduction. This, in the term given currency recently by Donald Maddox, is a pointed encounter with the purveyor of an unanticipated disclosure where typically another family member, a hermit or else a disembodied (divine) voice advances illuminating information on the protagonist’s birth or on the import of his errantry, often impelling him to ‘reframe’ his life on the basis of the information given (Fictions of Identity in Medieval France, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 43 [Cambridge, New York, Oakleigh: Cambridge UP, 2001]). See especially the chapter ‘The specular encounter in Arthurian romance’, pp. 83–130. The protagonist offers up to God ‘mîn vil zwîvellîchez leben’ (line 6857). Cf. also lines 6459, 6476–81, 6828.

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Swie vil der mûsaere umbe gevluoc, Der ungeloube in niht betruoc, Wand er dâ niht ûf ahte. Wir hân nu manger slahte Bôsheit und gelouben, Dâ mit wir uns rouben Aller unser saelicheit: Ez ist vil mangem manne leit Swen im ein wîp daz swert gît; Daz lie der rîter âne nît; Ern ahte dar ûf niht ein hâr, Ez waere gelogen ode wâr; Er hêt in gotes gnâde ergeben Beidiu sêle unde leben. Swaz im des morgens wider gie, Dazn gevlôch der rîter nie, Wan guoten glouben hêt er ie. (lines 6182–203) (He was not troubled by any doubt either at the castle or on the road. He left everything in God’s hands. Whatever he encountered that morning, whether it was a crow calling or an encircling hawk, he was never led astray by doubt since he gave such things little heed. There are various evils and superstitions with which we contrive to spoil our own happiness. Many a man is troubled when he receives a sword from a woman, but this left Wigalois unperturbed. He did not care a jot whether there was anything to this belief or whether it was simply made up since he had commended both his body and soul to God’s keeping. He did not shy away from anything he encountered that morning since his faith was unshaken.)

References to Christian piety were as a rule somewhat nominal in the verse romances, to judge from invocations of the deity occurring in Hartmann’s Arthurian works or in that of Heinrich von dem Türlin, and most post-classical romances do not foreground religious subjects (with the exception of Der Jüngere Titurel).57 Wirnt, by contrast, takes pains to show the continuous operation of God’s hand and to indicate that none of Wigalois’s victories in this second sequence of challenges is won solely by knightly valour. As in the ‘pre-courtly’ traditions, many of whose theological conceptions appear to persist in Wigalois, Wirnt strives to ‘raise the level of conflict from the merely physical to something approaching a symbolic struggle for the human soul’.58 Wigalois’s possession of

57

58

Pickering concluded that whilst for most writers of Arthurian romance the hero’s Christianity is a merely formal observance, certain writers attempted to do justice to what he termed the Boethian and Augustinian schemes in order to portray an ideal world in which the claims of knighthood and those of the Christian faith are, at any rate tentatively, reconciled (F. P. Pickering, ‘Notes on Fate and Fortune (for Germanisten)’, in Medieval German Studies presented to Frederick Norman, no editor [London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1965], pp. 1–15). See also Pickering, Augustinus oder Boethius? Geschichtsschreibung und epische Dichtung im Mittelalter-und in der Neuzeit I, Philologische Studien und Quellen 39 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1967). I have taken the formulation from Rodney Fisher, Studies in the Demonic in Selected Middle High German Epics, GAG 132 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1974), p. 224.

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a whole arsenal of material and magico-religious weaponry becomes less important to him than the goal to which that weaponry is consecrated. Hence when he loses the belt of Fortuna he appeals to God’s aid directly without having recourse to holy objects (lines 5990–6005). Unlike the protagonist of the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, who does not realise that the girdle (that legendary cognate of the magic belt occurring in Wigalois) is a moral snare, Wigalois acknowledges the irrelevance of the girdle and that none of his victories would have been possible without God’s aid.59 By analogy with the Gawein figure who confronts his apocalyptic visions in Diu Crône, he is a miles christianus whose constantia is tried in order to show him as a ‘secular saint’,60 for his an older ideal of Christian heroism which can be traced as far back as to the Ludwigslied.61 The Roaz sequence is not an attempt to yield (redundant) proof of Wigalois’s spiritual standard; rather is it an exemplification of the biblical thesis that ‘all who trust God like Abraham shall be saved’.62 Wigalois’s defeat of Roaz is comparable with his legendary father’s defeat of Clinschor in that neither protagonist allows himself to be deflected by debilitating doubts.63 There is no suggestion of hubris or of the kind of resistance to the divine will which characterises Parzival’s hostile attitude to his Maker after his denunciation by Cundrie. What we witness in Wigalois is more analogous to a successful trial of faith such as that of the heroine of Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris transposed to a chivalric context.64 The result is a ‘lengthy and explicit contest between demonic magic and divine providence [which] can be found in Arthurian romance only in Wigalois’.65 There has, to be sure, been a notable attempt to find traces of the ‘classical’ binary model based on the sin-and-redemption pattern,66 using the argument that Wigalois’s reverse when prostrated by the dragon and his consequent faint (by a further analogy with that of Iwein) shows God punishing him for his presumption (superbia). In favour of that argument it has been noted that the knight expresses a sense of being the recipient of divine wrath: mit jâmer wart er ermant der schoenen magt Lârien. ‘owê’ begunde er schrîen,

59 60 61

62 63

64

65 66

‘Swaz ich hân gestriten ie/daz tet ich âne meisterschaft,/ bärlich mit dÎner kraft’ (lines 7119–21). Cf also lines 6500, 8770–1. Jillings, Diu Crône, p. 107. ‘Das bei vielerlei Anlässen sich zeigende Wunderwirken Gottes erinnert an eine der Hauptfunktionen Gottes in der frühhöfischen Dichtung’ (Heidi Wildt, ‘Das Gottes- und Menschenbild’, p. 224). Galatians 3:6–9. ‘Gawan repräsentiert auf Schastel Marveil wiederum die christliche Ritterwelt ohne Schwanken und beinahe instinktiv’ (Georg Keferstein, ‘Die Gawanhandlung in Wolframs Parzival’, GRM 25 [1937], pp. 256–74, 274). Cf. Wigalois’s prayer, ‘lâ dîn genâde und dîn gebot/ an mir schînen: daz êret dich’ (lines 6495–6) with Iphigenie’s prayer to the Greek gods ‘Rettet mich/ und rettet euer Bild in meiner Seele’ (Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris, Act 4, scene 5). James A. Schultz, The Shape of the Round Table, p. 15. ‘Seine Verfehlung besteht darin, Gott eine untergeordnete Rolle im höfischen Wertekanon zugewiesen zu haben. Wigalois hat zu lernen, Gott als oberstes Prinzip anzuerkennen und sich Gottes Führung vorbehaltlos anzuvertrauen’ (Ingeborg Henderson, ‘Selbstentfremdung im Wigalois’, Colloquia Germanica 13 [1980], pp. 35–46, 44 ).

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‘daz ich ie wart geborn! nu hân ich guot und sin verlorn; dar zuo lîd ich den gotes zorn.’ (lines 5852–7) (He was afflicted by sadness for the beautiful maiden, Larie. ‘Woe’, he began his lament, ‘that I was ever born! Now I have lost both my possessions and my reason. More than that: I must also suffer God’s displeasure.’)

But this argument overlooks the fact that such subjective feelings of sinfulness and of being punished by God (which in any case here arise largely from Wigalois’s concussion after being felled by the dragon) are experienced in the same romance by the virtuous King Lar. According to contemporary, selfconfirming notions of divine Providence, to suffer a serious reverse led many to the subjective conviction of being sinful (in some way hitherto unrevealed to the sufferer). If the wicked man encountered adversity this was a punishment from God. If a godly man was smitten then he was being tested and tried. The correct reaction on the part of a believer afflicted by ill fortune was therefore to search her/himself in order either to discover the moral defect which had provoked God’s wrath, or to eliminate the complacency which had led the Almighty to try him.67 The ghost of Hamlet’s father can describe himself as ‘doomed for a certain time to walk the night,/ And for the day confined to fast in fires/ Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature/ are burnt and purged away’ (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5, lines 9–13), but these words do not imply that the honoured father was bidding fair to rival Claudius as the villain of Shakespeare’s piece; rather do they put in evidence his God-fearing humility in the face of a universal moral weakness no mere mortal can escape. Similarly, although Lar refers to himself as a stricken or lost soul (‘armiu sêle’, line 4665) his own penance is, after ten years, on the point of expiry,68 so that effectively Wigalois is required to redeem Lar’s fallen men rather than the king himself, who has in the meantime become morally whole: sô sprach diu sêle [sc. Lar] ‘nu gêt mir zuo diu zît daz ich unz morgen vruo in dem hûse brinnen sol; dar nâch ist mir immer wol. ich hân gebüezet zehen jâr; dar nâch bin ich ledic gar mîner sünden die ich ie getet

67

68

The theological point as it pertains to medieval literature has already been widely studied with regard to Hartmann’s Der Arme Heinrich: see Rolf Endres, ‘Heinrichs hôchvart’, Euphorion 61 (1967), pp. 267–95, and Christoph Cormeau, Hartmanns von Aue ‘Armer Heinrich’ und ‘Gregorius.’ Studien zur Interpretation mit dem Blick auf die Theologie zur Zeit Hartmanns (Munich: Beck, 1966). Similarly in the adaptation of Heinrich von dem Türlin, the altherre, the old Grail King of Diu Crône, languishes in a fiery limbo from which he is allowed remissions as a sign of his virtuous conduct.

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du solt, helt, mit dîm gebet gedenken der vil armen schar diu vor mir in daz hûs var, wan diu ist leider unerlôst; du bist ir helfe und ir trôst’ (lines 4815–26) (Then the spectre of the king uttered these words: ‘The time when I must be consumed by flames within the walls of my own castle will draw to a close on the morrow. After that I shall enjoy perpetual felicity, for I have done penance for ten years, after which I am to have immunity from all the sins of my past. Sir Knight, you must remember in your prayers the mournful troupe who go before me into the castle, for they are unfortunately not redeemed. You are their help and consolation.’)

The messenger, Nereja, reports of Lar that he was a virtuous king who never forgot his dependence on God: Dâ wart mîn lieber herre erslagen; Den sol diu werlt immer klagen: An im was manheit und jugent, Sterke, wîsheit unde tugent; Mit disen dingen minnet er ie Die werlt und vergaz doch nie Sîn der imz gegeben hêt in des gewalt diu werlt stêt dem diente mîn lieber herre und minnete in alsô verre mit almuosen und mit messen daz ims diu liute wessen. Ich wil iu sagen wes er pflac: ern liez nie deheinen tac ern teilte selbe mit sîner hant; Swaz er armer liute vant, die beriet der tugentrîche man. des sol in got geniezen lân, wand er im ie was undertân. (lines 3732–50) (Then my dear lord was slain – an action which his peers must always mourn. He possessed courage and youthful vigour, strength, wisdom and prowess. With all these advantages he was always an enthusiastic participant in the things of this world but he never forgot the One to whom he owed all and by whose power the world is sustained. My dear lord loved Him and dispensed alms and attended masses in such a way that his love for God was revealed to all his peers. I will tell you of his ways: this virtuous man did not let a day go by when he did not supply any poor people that he found with bounty. For this God should reward him, for Lar was always His faithful servant.)

According to one belief about the saints and other just men and women after their deaths, such virtuous persons would at first occupy an earthly paradise and then be transferred to Heaven after the Day of Judgement. Hence the

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meadow (anger) where Lar is permitted respite may be regarded as an ‘antizipiertes Paradies’.69 Similarly, the deceased king in Le Chevalier du Papegau can say: ‘Je suis en ung bel lieu, et seray tant que ser la prophecie Merlin achevee, et puis si seray en ung aultre moult plus bel lieu et plus deliciëux, tant que damedieu rendra la guerredon a ses amys, ou ilz avront tant de gloyre que nul ne le pouroit conter’ (ed. Heuckenkamp, p. 65) (‘I am in a beautiful place and will remain here until Merlin’s prophecy is fulfilled, at which time I will be in an another, even more delightful abode inasmuch as the Lord God rewards his own. There His chosen ones will enjoy such glories as could never be counted.’)

Like old Hamlet, Lar belongs to what in seventeenth-century England was termed ‘the middle state of souls’, not irretrievably lost but as a child of Original Sin obliged to be purged of such (venial) faults as he had incurred. Similarly to the deceased king, Wigalois commits no grave sin of omission or commission. Unlike Parzival who on his first visit to the Grail Castle is blinkered by thoughts of knightly vainglory (comically girding on two swords because he fails to understand that a spiritual rather than a chivalric response is required of him), and Lancelot who has to be reproved by a divine voice for reposing more trust in his sword than in his Maker,70 Wigalois has no need of divine sermons against the hubris of purely secular projects, hence there is no need for a bipartition of the narrative requiring him to overcome any sin committed by him in the first ‘half’ of the work.71 On the contrary, the distinguishing feature of Wigalois’s descensus is that it bears specifically Christological features as a descensus ad inferos on the pattern of Christ’s Harrowing of Hell. As with many apocryphal writings, the motive for representing this redemptive act on the part of Christ was the need to fill a cognitive gap for those who in this case were perplexed by the period of Christ’s descent into Hades between Good Friday and Easter Day (1 Peter 3:19). The account of Christ’s rescue of Adam and other patriarchs from hell between his death and resurrection was an attempt to correct a theological aporia. New Testament canon has it that through the fall of Adam, a debt had been incurred that no ordinary man could annul, but that Jesus Christ chose to cancel the moral debt of all humankind by dying

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Ernst Trachsler, Der Weg im Mittelhochdeutschen Artusroman, p. 129, n. 68. ‘Einsi come Lancelot ot trete l’espee, si regarde contremont et voit venir une main toute enflamee qui le feri si durement par mi le braz que l’espee li vola de la main. Lors oï une voiz qui li dist: “Ha! Hons de povre foi et de mauvese creance, por quoi te fies tu plus en ta main que en ton Criator?”’ (La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. A. Pauphilet [Paris: Champion, 1972], p. 253). Cf. Walter Haug’s analysis of the narrative structure of Wigalois: ‘Die Zweiteilung der Handlung bleibt äusserlich; die Episoden sind linear-additiv auf das eine Ziel, den Kampf mit Roaz, hingeordnet’ (‘Paradigmatische Poesie. Der spätere Deutsche Artusroman auf dem Weg zu einer “nacklassischen” Ästhetik’, DVLG 54 [1980], pp. 204–31, 210). On the limited applicability of the ‘doppelter Cursus’ schema see Elisabeth Schmid, ‘Weg mit dem Doppelweg. Wider eine Selbstverständlichkei der germanistischen Artusforschung’ and Friedrich Wolfzettel, ‘Doppelweg und Biographie’, in Erzählstrukturen der Artusliteratur. Forschungsgeschichte und neue Ansätze, ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999), pp. 69–85 and 119–41.

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in human form. But nothing is said about Adam’s confinement in hell, Christ’s intervention representing the attempt to fill this perceived scriptural lacuna and bring justice to him and the other Patriarchs unjustly languishing in their infernal captivity. Hence ‘the central message of the Gospel of Nicodemus is that, for followers of Christ, Hades is annulled’.72 This ancient theme, it has been argued, had been latent in Chrétien’s Le Chevalier de la Charrete where Lancelot’s rescue of the queen from a king claiming to be the ruler of a netherworld may, it has been claimed, represent a ‘diffuse parody’ of Christ’s redemptive act,73 but in Wigalois a considerably more explicit typological link is supplied by Lar’s surviving subjects in their equation of Wigalois’s impending liberation with Christ’s intervention on behalf of the virtuous deceased: der mange sêle erlôste ûz der helle mit sîner kraft und der âne meisterschaft die werlt alle werden hiez und der den vâlant verstiez von dem himelrîche durch daz er im gelîche wolde setzen sînen stuoler warf in in der helle pfuol: alsô müez vallen von sîner hant der heidenische vâlant der mangen rîter hât erslagen! got sol im niht mê vertragen sînen vil grôzen übermuot und sînen gwalt den er tuot. (lines 3990–4002) (He who redeemed many souls from Hell and caused the world to be created by His sole dominion, thrusting the devil from Heaven down to the marl of Hell for plotting to rival the Most High – may that other, heathen devil who has murdered so many knights meet the same fate. For God will not countenance the degree of arrogance and violence which he has shown.)

72

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Alan E. Bernstein, The Formation of Hell. Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds (London: UCL Press, 1993), especially pp. 272–83, 282. On the theme in Arthurian tradition see Erich Köhler, Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der höfischen Epik. Studien zur Form der frühen Artus- und Graldichtung, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 97, 2nd edition (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1970), especially p. 95. For the text of the Gospel of Nicodemus see The Apocryphal New Testament. A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation, ed. J. K. Elliott (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 164–204, especially 187–90. D. D. R. Owen, ‘Profanity and its purpose in Chrétien’s Cligès and Lancelot’, in Arthurian Romance. Seven Essays, ed. D. D. R. Owen (Edinburgh and London: Scottish Academic Press, 1970), pp. 37–48. Le Chevalier de la Charrete presents further images of resurrection and messianic salvation when Lancelot rescues captives from the land ‘don nul ne retorne’ (Meleagant’s realm of Gorre) in the course of which he comes across a strange graveyard whose tombs bear the inscription that the person who raises the slab unaided will free all the captives in that land from their mortal state.

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The distinctively Christ-like dimension of Wigalois’s challenge is evident from a comparison of Wirnt’s romance with the late medieval Daz Jad von Wirtemberg.74 Here a young man spies a troupe of souls under whose armour burn purgatorial flames akin to the nocturnal fires and lamentations of Korntin castle. A spectral lady from within the group of unfortunates gives the youth a message to be delivered to her lover (in his normal habitation on earth) beseeching his aid. The apostrophised knight and the lady’s lover perform this task by joining a Crusade in hope of alleviating the purgatorial torments of the lady and her fellow sufferers (participation in a Crusade having been a common form of intercession for the departed). In Wigalois, on the other hand, the intercession is stylised as a knightly intervention.75 Throughout Wigalois’s second sequence of challenges ‘adventure’ receives a Christian unction76 and the ‘orthodox’ method of interceding for the dead is usurped by the notion of what has been termed the ‘chevalier messianique’.77 Although a degree of heresy might have attached to the idea of a high-born adventurer assuming the role of the Universal Saviour and exercising this rather ‘muscular’ form of Christian intervention,78 in this case Wirnt did at least have the warrant of iconographic and scriptural authority in representations of Christ breaking down Hell’s gates, placing His foot on Satan’s neck and fetters on his neck and arms, and thereafter casting him backwards into Hell.79 That Wigalois’s intervention uses a chivalric method to pursue an intercessionary purpose seems also to have been accepted without demur in the reception of the romance, an index of which occurs when Ulrich Füetrer’s Lar figure points to the metaphysical foundation of the hero’s armed intervention: Pitt got für unns mit vleisse, Das sich wenndt vnnser not, Dy pein unnd unnser weysse! Der für unns laid am fronen crewtz den tod, Dem alle helff stet gar ze seiner hennde, Des parmung vnns genadet hat, So das vnnser not heint nympt gar ein ende. (Füeterer’s Wigoleis, ed. Hilgers, stanza 170)

74 75

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77 78

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In Erzählungen aus altdeutschen Handschriften, ed. Adalbert von Keller (Stuttgart: Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 1855), pp. 80–92. Köhler writes of the ‘Hadesfahrt eines verritterlichten Aeneas’ (Ideal und Wirklichkeit, p. 95). On the medieval preference for stylising spiritual struggle in martial terms see Hans-Dieter Mauritz, Der Ritter im magischen Reich. Märchenelemente im französischen Abenteuerroman des 12. und. 13. Jahrhunderts, Europäische Hochschulschriften, series 13, volume 23 (Berne: Lang, 1974). Wehrli wrote of the attempt made in this sequence ‘die Artugeschichte zu taufen’ (‘Wigalois’, p. 139), whilst Fuchs pointed to the two levels of coherence: ‘Gwigalois kämpft im Auftrag der Gesellschaft gegen Mächte, die diese Gesellschaft von außen drohen bzw. in der Gewalt haben [. . .] wiewohl das Motiv der gewaltsamen Usurpation historische Wirklichkeit zugleich immer noch zitiert’ (Hybride Helden, p. 142). Jean Frappier, ‘Le Gral et la Chevalerie’, Romania 75 (1954), pp. 165–210. ‘Elle [l’Eglise] avait pourtant des raisons de rester très réservée. Des lignages vertigineux pourvus d’un privilège de sainteté, un chevalier-Messie, une paraliturgie sans clergé se déroulant dans un mystérieux château féodal, il n’y avait rien là qu’elle pût juger digne d’être encouragé’ (Frappier, ‘Le Gral et la Chevalerie’, p. 201). For the motif of Christ’s battle with Satan in the visual arts, see George Henderson, Early Medieval (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 87, plate 1.

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(Pray to God on our behalf with all your power so as to avert our destitution, torments and trials. [Pray to] Him who suffered death for us on Holy Cross and from whom all help is to be petitioned and whose mercy [might] spare us so that our sufferings shall come to an end this day.)

The Father’s Rehabilitation The hero’s messianic, ‘saintly’ moral status80 distinguishes Wigalois from the ‘classical’ pattern of a protagonists’s sin-and-rehabilitation found in Parzival and in Hartmann’s romances. The problematic dimension of Wirnt’s material appears to reside not in the protagonist himself but in his fictional father, whose desertion of Florie is so similar to the more famous desertion committed by his knightly peer, Hartmann’s Iwein,81 that, had his conduct remained at this moral standard, his suitability as a role model for or even as a knightly associate of the son would have been seriously undermined. Gawein’s problematic sexuality in Wigalois appears to have derived from an extensive epic background supplying a subtextual dynamic in a wide variety of medieval texts such as L’Âtre Périlleux,82 Meraugis de Portlesguez, Gliglois and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where the Gawein figure attracts considerable narratorial raillery for his sexual foibles. In Meraugis de Portlesguez his philandering leads to his having to promise that he will not stay two successive nights in the same castle lest he compromise the good name of its maidens and ladies. In Gliglois the hero’s overweening sexual amour propre fails to impress the heroine who decides to bestow her favour upon Gauvain’s page, the eponymous hero, whose respectful amour de loin is ultimately rewarded.83 Meanwhile, in the Gawan section of Parzival, Wolfram’s narrator appears to have some sport with his deuteragonist, affecting incredulity that such a knight as Gawan could have summoned up the reserves of well-nigh preternatural patience which contain him from forcing the haughty Orgeluse to submit to his sexual will.84

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The term is used here in the sense of ‘as in one of the saints’ lives (vitae)’: ‘Der Held [. . .] bekommt deutliche Züge des Legendenheiligen, gar christushafte Züge verliehen [. . .] Die Mission gilt es denn auch im eigentlichen Sinne passiv-leidend zu “bestehen”, weniger aktiv zu erfüllen’ (Fuchs, Hybride Helden, p. 146). Wigalois ‘steht gleichsam selbst außerhalb einer Verhaltensproblematik’ (p. 171). It will be recalled that, shortly after Gawein’s betrothal to Florie, his homesickness for the world of knights impels him to return to Karidol, he purportedly forgetting that it will not be possible to re-enter his wife’s enchanted abode without Fortuna’s girdle or else having Joram as his guide. Tiring in turn of the knightly round with his Arthurian peers, he is unable to regain his erstwhile home, and so remains cut off from his wife and future son. See Neil Thomas, ‘Gauvain’s Guilt in L’Âtre Périlleux’, Reading Medieval Studies 23 (1997), pp. 107–19. Gliglois. A French Arthurian Romance of the Thirteenth Century, ed. C. H. Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1932). See Parzival, sections 601, lines 11ff and 604, 4ff. On the humour of the Gawan sequence see Neil Thomas, ‘Sense and Structure in the Gawan adventures of Wolfram’s Parzival’, MLR 76 (1981), pp. 848–56, and Sebastian Coxon, ‘Der Ritter und die Fährmannstochter. Zum schwankhaften Erzählen in Wolframs Parzival’, in Wolfram Studien XVII, Eichstätter Kolloquium 2000, ed. Wolfgang Haubrichs, Eckart C. Lutz, Klaus Ridder (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2002), pp. 114–35.

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These ribald imputations appear to have been persistent and to have accompanied him in his passage to the Anglophone world where his reputation for ‘luf-talkynge’ in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight provides an indispensable moral logic to the Temptation scenes.85 Against the terms of the tradition that the Green Knight had simply been sent by Morgan to ‘reave the wits’ of Guinevere, the Middle English adaptor (or his source, acting on knowledge of the protagonist’s ‘reputation’) reconceptualises the romance morally as a test of Gawain’s individual conscience.86 Even in the partisan Diu Crône (which makes of Gawein the Grail quester), that knight commits an unspecified form of sexual harassment.87 Yet whilst Heinrich von dem Türlin leaves vague the nature and extent of the harassment (it appears to have been verbal rather than physical, as in Gliglois),88 the (relatively more serious) physical assault mentioned in Wigalois is foregrounded and cited as the reason for Gawein’s failure at the rock of virtue: ezn was dâ vor nie geschehen daz ie iemen würde ersehen ûf demselben steine, niwan der künic [al] eine: der was âne wandel gar. her Gâwein der reichte dar mit der hant, und niht baz; ich sagiu wie er verworhte daz er dem steine niht moht komen, als ichz ofte hân vernomen: eine maget wol getân die greif er über ir willen an, sô daz si weinde unde schrê. deheiner slahte untugent mê er von sîner kintheit nie unz an sînen tôt begie; diu selbe in zuo dem steine niht lie. (lines 1501–17) (Never before had it happened that anybody [besides Wigalois] had been seen upon this stone except for the king (who was without fault). 85

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Maldwyn Mills, ‘Christian significance and romance tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, in Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), pp. 85–105. See Ad Putter, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance. Gawein’s failure in the first of the two chastity tests in Diu Crône has been described as a ‘Zugeständnis an ein bereits zumindest ansatzweise existierendes negatives Gaweinbild’ (Christine Kasper, ‘Von miesen Rittern und sündhaften Frauen und solchen, die besser waren’: Tugend- und Keuschheitsproben in der mittelalterlichen Literatur vornehmlich des deutschen Sprachraums, GAG 547 [Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1995], p. 593). ‘Uber di tavel saz ein degen/ Artvs dem chünig engegen,/ Daz was mein herre Gawein,/ an dem nie tadel erschein/ An muot noh an leibe,/ wan daz er sich von weibe/ Uber reht genaden vermaz/ dar an er seinr wirde vergaz’ (Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, lines 1994–2001). On this blemish (which the verb ‘vermezzen’ appears to equate with Gauvain’s type of ‘amour-vanité’ in Gliglois) see Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, pp. 117–19, and Marshall Severy Grant, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the quest for the Grail: Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, the First Continuation, Diu Krone and the Perlesvaus’ (unpublished dissertation, Yale University 1991), pp. 100 and 99, n. 154.

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Sir Gawein was able to touch it with his hand, but he could do no better than that. I will tell you how he forfeited his right to approach the stone (as I have often heard tell). He once grabbed a beautiful maiden against her will, so causing her to shout out and scream. He committed no other offence for the rest of his life, but it was this which disallowed his approach to the stone.)

Although narratorial legerdemain is deployed in order to save Gawein’s face with his brother knights over the abduction incident so as to make his shaming reverse invisible to his peers,89 the problematical issue of his desertion of the protagonist’s mother is ultimately not sufficiently justified either by narratorial special pleading or by the discreet veil which Wirnt places over Gawein’s conduct, for narratorial apologias appear more than a little specious: Dô er mit vrâge daz bevant daz niemen mohte in daz lant vor den hôhen bergen komen, als er die wârheit hêt vernomen, dô tet er als der biderbe man, der sich des wol getroesten kan swes er niht gehaben mac. Swer ie guoter sinne pflac, Der habe ouch noch denselben sit: Dâ vristet er sîn êre mit. (lines 1203–12). (When he found out by questioning that nobody could gain entrance into the land before the high mountains he did as the chivalrous man does who consoles himself with not having what he wants. Any person of good sense would do the same thing and so preserve his honour.)

The flimsiness of this rationalisation and Gawein’s failure to make amends for his unheralded departure are factors which could hardly have been disregarded by audiences acquainted with the desertion described in Iwein, or with the forsaking of Belakane by the hero’s father in Parzival90 or with numerous cognate traditions in world literature for which there were known to be conciliatory sequels.91 In the Dutch Morien, for instance, the eponymous hero, who is here the 89

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The magic belt is said to have prevented the other knights from witnessing Gawein’s defeat, the whole story being blamed on the supposedly dubious information furnished by Wirnt’s habitual scapegoat, the squire (lines 562–98). ‘Mit dem Auftauchen seines Sohnes Feirefiz im fünfzehnten Buch wird die Schuld des Vaters [Gahmuret] offensichtlich. Der Gescheckte ist ausdrücklich mit dem Ziel ins Abendland gereist, den Vater zur Verantwortung zu ziehen – nämlich für das Versagen gegenüber der Mutter, die dann aus Liebe zu ihm starb’ (Alfred Raucheisen, Orient und Abendland. Ethischmoralische Aspekte in Wolframs Epen ‘Parzival’ und ‘Willehalm’, Bremer Beiträge zur Literaturund Ideengeschichte 17 (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, New York: Lang, 1997), p. 90. The universal dimension was long ago recognised by Philipot: ‘Le cadre du Chevalier au Lion n’est pas autre chose que l’éternelle aventure, si souvent racontée par Marie de France, du mortel aimé d’une fée, et vivant auprès d’elle une vie de délices, puis, saisi par la même nostalgie qu’Ulysse chez Calypso, Tannhäuser chez Vénus, la quittant pour revivre la vie des hommes, rompant la foi jurée, arrivant enfin, après bien des traverses, à conquérir le pardon de sa dame immortelle’ (E. Philipot, ‘Un épisode d’Érec et Énide: La Joie de la Cour: Mabon l’Enchanteur’, Romania 25 [1896], pp. 258–94, 264).

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issue of a fleeting liaison between Perceval’s brother, Agloval, and a Moorish princess, angrily tracks down his father when he reaches adulthood, reproaches him with having deserted his mother, and insists that Agloval restore his mother and himself to their rightful inheritance by marrying the forsaken mother (who in this version still lives). To audiences acquainted with such traditions it must have appeared that Gawein’s real conflict is side-stepped and the knight’s credibility inadequately sustained by the narrator’s non-sequitur of praising his stoicism in resigning himself to not being able to rejoin his wife in her distant land. The equivalent situation where Lunete announces that Iwein has lost Laudine’s favour leads that hero to consequential loss of wits and breakdown. For the hero of an Arthurian romance the excuse seems particularly lame.92 The real reason for Gawein’s desertion, which resides in his desire for errantry,93 seems to have been all-too transparent to the author of the seventeenthcentury Artushof (a text which follows Wirnt fairly closely whilst omitting the whole of the final, Lion section). Here Gabein, knowing his wife to be pregnant, nevertheless insists on returning to the Arthurian Court. In answer to his wife’s question about what they should call their offspring he responds ‘As you wish’ (‘wi du wilt’) – a conspicuously unfeeling response94 which carries its resonance through to the very last text of the Wirntian reception, the Historie oder moralische erzehlung von Riter Gabein of 1789. Here we are told that Widuwilt is motivated to find his father by the desire to mend his mother’s broken heart: Widuwilt war in seinem sibenzehnst jahr als er sich fast entschlos den jamr seinr muter nicht lengr an zu sehn, und grosen verlangn ghabt seinem vatr ritr Gabein ouf zu suhchn, er sagte zu seinem gros vater, [. . .] ‘ich hofe ds der himel mir ds glik gebin werde meine trost-lose mutr zu erfreien’.95 (Widuwilt was in his seventeenth year when he made the firm decision not to have to witness his mother’s distress any longer and, since he harboured a great longing to seek his father, the knight Gabein, he said to his grandfather, ‘I hope that Heaven will give me the good fortune to be able to relieve the sadness of my inconsolable mother’.)

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Cf. the judgement of Ernst Trachsler, ‘Diese Empfehlung, auf Unmögliches zu verzichten und so seine êre zu bewahren, mutet im Rahmen des Artusromans eher deplaciert an. Wigalois jedenfalls richtet sein Handeln nie nach dieser Maxime. Es zeichnet den auserwählten Ritter aus, dass er, wie der Märchenheld, “unbegehbare” Wege zu begehen wagt’ (Der Weg im mittelhochdeutschen Artusroman, p. 106). The motive for his departure is in fact little different from that of Iwein, which is simply, as it has been put, that ‘der Wunsch nach Aventiure ist stärker als Flories Bitte zu bleiben’ (Ute Klein, Initialmotivik in der Erzählkunst des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts, GAG 563 [Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991], p. 43). Leo Landau, Arthurian Legends or the Hebrew-German Rhymed Version of the Legend of King Arthur, p. 21a, line 32. Achim Jaeger has recently pointed to this symptom of ‘Unaufmerksamkeit, ja Gleichgültigkeit Gaveins in familiären Angelegenheiten’ (Ein jüdischer Artusritter, p. 247). See also on this point Carola L. Gottzmann, ‘Wirnts von Gravenberc Wigalois. Zur Klassifizierung sogenannter epigonaler Artusdichtung’, ABäG 14 (1979), pp. 87–136, especially 122. Leo Landau, Arthurian Legends, pp. 135–47, 144.

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This clear-sighted reception (the formative stages of which can clearly have taken little heed of Wirnt’s obfuscations) indicates that a more substantial moral rehabilitation of Gawein may have been required by contemporary audiences. Their views could hardly be cynically brushed aside by a narrator who, unlike Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, clearly did not wish to give succour to the practice of serial monogamy/bigamy indulged in by Ulrich’s ‘woman-happy’ (wîpsaelig) protagonist. Numerous homiletic asides indicate that Wirnt’s moralistic narrator did not regard the dereliction of emotional obligations as a venial peccadillo; rather does his contention that ‘all good things in life come from the presence of women’96 together with frequent eulogies to noblewomen (and a corrresponding anathematization of abuses committed against them) indicate the importance he attached to good relations between the sexes. Assaults on noblewomen, whilst being all too common in the narrator’s time, are presented as foreign to the chivalric ideal generated by the text. Since this ideal is located imaginatively in the ‘Arthurian’ era, the denizens of the imagined time display standards of chivalrous conduct towards women considerably higher than those of the narator’s own time, as the following description of a female travelling solo demonstrates: eine juncvrouwen al eine sâhen si vür sich rîten. bî den selben zîten was gewonlich, si waere arm ode rîch, daz si wol mohte durch ir muot rîten swar si dûhte guot, unbesprochen und âne leit. daz was dô gewonheit, swâ man deheine rîten sach, daz ir niemen niht ensprach. nu ist diu werlt valschaft und ist âne meisterschaft beidiu liute unde lant (lines 2355–69)97 (They witnessed a lone maiden riding in front of them. At this time it was customary, irrespective of whether she might have been rich or poor, for a female rider to be able to go wherever she desired, unharassed and without harm to her person. It was the custom not to accost any female seen out riding, [whereas] now the world has become corrupt, the people and the whole land bereft of proper direction.)

The moralist narrator of a romance once curiously grouped with Lanzelet (and wrongly assigned in numberless literary histories to the genre of the ‘courtly Unterhaltungsroman’) was not willing, like Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, to dispense with an ‘edificatory agenda’.98 In his attempts to show Gawein in a morally acceptable light, however, he was hampered by the fact that any formal attempt

96 97 98

‘Wan swaz diu werlt vreude hât/ diu komt uns von den wîben’ (lines 2097–8). For similar sentiments see lines 2388–94, 5408–12, 9696–715. Nicola McClelland, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s ‘Lanzelet.’ Narrative Style and Entertainment, p. 234.

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to problematise the issue of Florie’s desertion in the body of the text would have had the unfortunate effect of distorting narrative proportions relative to protagonist and deuteragonist. It was not therefore possible to rehabilitate Gawein by analogy with Iwein’s desertion of Laudine and that hero’s penitential journey of restitution. Hence much is made to depend on Gawein’s self-denying ordinance of abjuring knighthood upon hearing of his wife’s death. This oath is made to suggest elliptically a process of contrition for once having too zealously pursued knightly goals at Florie’s expense: sô sprach her Gâwein der degen, ‘wan daz mîn vreude sî gelegen mit ir hiute vür disen tac der ich mit hôhem muote ie pflac. ichn wil konlîcher ê mit staete gepflegen nimmer mê, noch rîterschaft, michn twinges nôt. (lines 11380–6) (The bold Gawein said: ‘From this time forward my joy is no more on account of [the death of] her to whom I was always devoted. I will never again seek such a union, nor will I practise deeds of arms, unless compelled to do so by dire necessity’.)

These words have been glossed as heralding a dissolution of Gawein’s oath as a knight and yet the last short clause (‘michn twinges nôt’) appears to permit an important fall-back position where he will not give up all his knightly enterprises, only the more frivolous among them;99 for now he vows to be the disinterested champion of all ladies in need of a knight’s asssistance (an image of Gawein which aligns him with the more positive side of his literary reputation in the texts of the classic generation):100 durch mîner vrouwen êre ich wil allen wîben wesen holt und si liutern als ein golt mit worten swâ ich immer kan. ich wil ir aller dienestman und ir kempfe immer wesen. (lines 9672–7) (In honour of my late wife I will be chivalrous to each and every lady and let her radiance shine forth by dint of my words whenever I possibly can. I will forever place myself in ladies’ service in fighting for their interests.)

99

100

Against the critical notion that Gawein’s (seeming) abdication detracted from the courtly tone of the romance, Ute Schießl made the point ‘daß “rîterschaft” vor allem die spielerischunterhaltsame Seite des ritterlichen Lebens bezeichnet; nicht der ernsthafte Kampf zur Hilfeleistung und im Dienste anderer ist gemeint, denn gerade um seiner Gattin willen gelobt ja Gawein, “kempfe” der Damen zu sein (Z. 9672)’ (‘Die Gawangestalt’, p. 106). As well as with the initial image we gain of of Gawein in Wigalois itself where Gawein offers prudent counsels to Guinevere over the Joram incident.

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Gawein’s advice to his son not to let emotional volatility cloud his counsels101 linked with the directive not to forget his mother, Florie (lines 11554–6), has often been understood in terms of a ‘third education’102 dispensed for the benefit of his son, but the chastened words of the father cited above permit of another interpretation. That is, since Gawein, rather than the son, had been afflicted by the emotional lapses to which he adverts, his words appear to represent an oblique reflection of what Gawein is imagined as having learned about his own failings; and the son’s subsequent integration of his wife into his martial regimen suggests at least an attempt on Wirnt’s part (albeit one which did not convince all later recipients) at a symbolic corrective to his father’s erstwhile conduct in which chivalrous activity and emotional obligations are at least no longer presented as being mutually exclusive areas of his son’s life. These correctives go some way towards rehabilitating Gawein from the negative aspects of his legendary character. From Wace and Chrétien to Wolfram Gawein is Arthur’s nephew and first knight who stands out as a knight de mout grant sens but whose renowned gallantry towards the ladies and somewhat ‘burlesque’ adventures (such as those on the bucking bed in schastel marveil in Wolfram’s Parzival) have given rise to the impression of his being a somewhat lightweight foil to Parzival. At the same time there is, however, evidence in the German tradition of an attempt to rehabilitate Gawein (examples being Hartmann’s long excursus on his virtues which does not occur at the equivalent point in Chrétien’s Erec103 and Heinrich von dem Türlin’s choice of Gawein to be his Grail winner). Wirnt inserts a further note of gravitas in the course of the final campaign by having Gawein’s symbolic presence endorse the ‘chivalry topos’ according to which Love and Prowess are combined in the action to which Larie accompanies her husband. This ‘didacticising’ of the figure of Gawein appears to cohere with narratorial attempts to make the Arthurian personnel into moral exemplars (at whatever cost to their previous complexity)104 and, in the case of Gawein, into a ‘narratorial mouthpiece’105 capable of amplifying authorial asides. The change of heart imputed to Gawein in Wigalois is an implicit corrective to his performance in Hartmann’s Iwein (where Gawein advises Iwein to put his

101

102

103 104

105

‘Und lât niht verdringen/ die jugent iuwer sinne’ (lines 11535–6). It is (somewhat paradoxically) the hero’s father rather than Wigalois himself who falls into the behaviour pattern of the young, irresponsible males dubbed iuvenes by Georges Duby (‘Dans la France du NordOuest au XIIe siècle: les “jeunes” dans la société aristocratique’, Annales 19 [1964], pp. 835–46). On this reckoning he conventionally receives his first instruction in Florie’s domain and the second from Gawein when the latter is assigned to be his tutor when he first visits Arthur’s court. See Hartmann’s Erec, ed. Albert Leitzmann and Ludwig Wolff, ATB 39 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1972), lines 2720–51. Schießl for example noted that this tendency has the (unintended) consequence of somewhat decreasing Gawein’s attractiveness as a ‘free spirit’: ‘So hat Wirnt das an sich für eine mittelalterliche Romanfigur sehr umfassende Charakterbild der traditionellen Gawangestalt verengt und gewisse Charakteristika seinem eigenen Ideal der Lebensgestaltung entsprechend ausgedeutet. Weniger eine leichte und klare Atmosphäre, Humor, heitere Souveränität [. . .] umgeben Gawein und bestimmen sein Wesen im Wigalois, vielmehr trockene und eingleisige Moral, Lehrhaftigkeit, biedere Tüchtigkeit, schwerfälliger Ernst, Bedächtigkeit, fast Behäbigkeit’ (‘Die Gawangestalt’, p. 111). ‘Sprecher für seine Ethik’ (Schießl, ‘Die Gawangestalt’, p. 108).

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knightly obligations before his duty to his wife) and to his appearance in Parzival (characterised by a number of faintly ludicrous features). Notwithstanding Wirnt’s narratorial objections to sexual abuses against women, he shows a remarkable indulgence towards Gawein which distinguishes his treatment of that fallible figure from the tendentious treatment of many other French and German writers who used Gawein as a negative foil to their morally more exalted protagonists. When he encounters his long-lost son, Gawein’s gestures are depicted as those of a newly solicitous father to the once abandoned protagonist. In particular, the sharing of grief over Florie’s death by father and son (lines 11329–66) leads to a strengthening of the father-son bond and permits filial absolution of Gawein’s guilt.106 The clearest sign of his successfully achieved moral rehabilitation in his son’s eyes occurs when the latter sends out a written invitation to him to become his royal advisor: it was not merely by chance, we are told, that Gawein and the three other Arthurian knights turned up at the new king’s court: Daz was niht ein wunder War umb si [sc. the Arthurian knights] kômen in daz lant: Her Gwîgalois der hêt gesant Einen brief dem herren Gâwein. (lines 9613–16) (There was nothing miraculous about the reason for which they came to that land: Sir Wigalois had sent for Sir Gawein in a letter.)

Given the importance attached to both kinship links and to the role of the advisor figure in medieval literature,107 the son’s welcoming gesture would appear to suggest a filial vote of confidence, placing the definitive seal upon Gawein’s moral rehabilitation.

106

107

Gawein says to his son that he must be his sole source of happiness from that time forward (lines 9684–93). Cf. also the warm response of Larie to her new father-in-law when she calls him ‘väterlîn’ (line 9767). See Carl Lofmark, ‘The advisor’s guilt in courtly literature’, GLL 24 (1970–71), pp. 3–13, and Rosemarie Deist, Gender and Power. Counsellors and their Masters in Antiquity and Medieval Courtly Romance (Heidelberg: Winter, 2003), especially pp. 195–227.

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4 Realism and Realpolitik

All the numerous castles and palaces, the battles and adventures, of the courtly romances – especially of the Breton cycle – are things of fairyland: each time they appear before us as though sprung from the ground; their geographical relation to the known world, their sociological and economic foundations, remain unexplained. Even their ethical or symbolic significance can rarely be ascertained with anything approaching certainty. Has the adventure of the spring any hidden meaning? It is evidently one of those which the Knights of the Round Table are bound to undergo, yet an ethical justification for the combat with the knight of the magic spring is nowhere given.1 The world of Chrétien’s romances is not ‘real’ [. . .] The landscape of primeval forests peopled only by solitary knights, and of lonely castles with more than an aura of the supernatural about them, bears no more resemblance to twelfth-century France than does the political constitution of Arthur’s Court and the Kingdom of Britain to the England (or France) of Henry II. Even when real places are introduced and an echo of real contemporary events, in Cligès, we are given none of the particulars by which we could recognise the terrain of an overland journey to Constantinople or even Constantinople itself. The ‘realism’ of Chrétien, if that is the correct word for it, lies in his giving exterior form to an inner quest which is the real and evident subject of his romances.2

The contrast in tone between the hero’s infernal journey and his dedication of himself to the practical duties of kingship in the last section of the romance (whose 3800 lines comprise about a third of the total number) is conspicuous. In the following discussion I consider the possibility that the tone of pragmatic realism in this section (which is almost certainly a Wirntian innovation) may have contained an implied critique of Wolframian hyberbole in his vaulting but vague evocations of the Grail realm. The assimilative stance towards the non-Christian combatants displayed in Wigalois may in one sense be a working out of the Parzival/Feirefiz encounter in terms of practical ethics, but attention will be directed to the further possibility that Wirnt was anticipating something of the ecumenical ethics of Wolfram’s (anti-) Crusade epic, Willehalm.

1 2

Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard Trask (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1957), p. 14. Roderick Beaton, The Medieval Greek Romance, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), p. 26.

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The Last Battle The fulfilment of Wigalois’s ‘great adventure’ against Roaz is signalled in unambiguous terms: Hie ist diu âventiure geholt. wâ ist nu der minne solt, des wunsches âmie diu schoene Larie? hie lît ir vriunt, her Gwîgalois, den der milte Britanois, der künic Artûs , hât gesant zer âventiure, daz er daz lant solde erwerben und die maget. (lines 7904–12) (Now the adventure has been accomplished. Where then is Love’s reward, the beautiful Larie? Here is her beloved Sir Wigalois, whom the magnanimous King Arthur sent out on his quest in order to win the land and the maiden.)

It is on this joyous, hymeneal note that the later Jewish adaptations close, yet Wirnt’s version continues for almost four thousand further lines. The dearth of fabulous elements and the lack of any verifiable source for this narrative section have suggested to most readers an extemporised closure,3 the term âventiure (in the sense of a proving ground for individual knightly prowess) being explicitly rejected as a descriptor for the Lion engagement by the adversary himself.4 Furthermore, the realistic descriptions of time and place in the last 4000 lines5 bear little relation to the fantastical topography and supernatural time schemes found in earlier parts of the narrative. After the defeat of Roaz, more than six weeks elapse before the hero’s coronation, after which there occur twelve days’ festivities followed by twelve days’ preparations for the military campaign (lines 9347, 9797, 10139, 10720). After the six weeks of campaigning, the journey back to the Arthurian Court takes twelve days and the sojourn there a further seven days (lines 11393, 11480). During the siege of Namur, responsibility is delegated to numerous combatants in a massed action which takes place within a plausible time frame of six weeks (line 11047). Here the Arthurian knights (Erec, Lanzelet and Iwein) appear far removed from their wonted fictional profiles as knights errant as they are allocated practical military duties proper to the practice of siege warfare (Gawein being given the supreme post of honour as commanderin-chief of his son’s troops).6 After that campaign, such aspects of practical

3 4 5

6

See especially Wolfgang Mitgau, ‘Nachahmung und Selbständigkeit’. Cf. line 10182: ‘hie enist niht âventiure’. It is because of this generally verisimilitudinous backdrop that the geographical blunder of placing Namur on the coast stands out as an exceptional anomaly. Namur is here purportedly protected on one side by the sea (‘diu stat lac einhalp an dem mer;/ dâ was si sicher vor dem her’ [lines 10730–1]). Erec gives advice on strategy (lines 9994ff); both Iwein and Erec are made responsible for the safe escort of Larie (lines 10645ff).

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governance come to the fore as the making of the defeated city of Namur a dukedom under a regent, Moral, and the granting to the defeated citizens of their lives on condition that they accept Wigalois’s authority.7 This long sequel has traditionally presented something of a crux. To the adherents of the positivist school it was simply a gratuitous augmentation or ‘Nachgeschichte’. More recently, it has been argued that Wirnt could not have permitted himself the kind of unproblematic ending which, in a cultural context far removed from that of Wolfram and Hartmann, is considered appropriate to bring a satisfactory closure to the much later Widuwilt versions. To have simply ended with the hero’s nuptials would, it has been held, have counted in the high courtly era as a dereliction of duty (verligen) on the part of his newly crowned king.8 Yet the analogy with the ‘classical’ works of the Arthurian canon is problematic to the extent that the Lion campaign has nothing to do with a journey of vindication since no rehabilitation can reasonably be expected of a flawless hero. More convincing is the argument that ‘by employing literary forms more suited to the message of restoring the ideal of social order than to redefining a fictional hero’s individual moral and spiritual constitution, Wirnt contributes a new sense of social realism to the genre of the romance [. . .] To have one’s hero triumph not only in the adventures in the otherworld but in a conflict in the historical reality of courts, cities and kingdoms, is a new element in the romance world.’9 This contention is supported by the nature of the sequel which is not primarily concerned with the hero’s individual psychology but with his public contributions in the political arena. A further indication that the finale is the narrative space Wirnt appropriated to himself to strike out on new ground has been seen in the fact that in the course of the peace-making procedures which follow the battle, ‘the earlier tone of explicit condemnation of paganism seems to be all but forgotten’.10 This suggests a further freedom from source exploited to evoke a more tolerant atmosphere than was possible in the context of demonising the Mohammedan necromancer. Wirnt, in company with many contemporaries including, preeminently, Wolfram, exhibits throughout his work an admiration for non-Christian culture and people11 and the positive references accumulate after the defeat of Roaz’s

7 8

9

10 11

In a further real-political touch, Wigalois exacts thirty thousand gold marks from the citizenry in order to ensure the continued loyalty of his own soldiery (lines 11157ff). ‘Sein Autor [sc. Wirnt] und sein Publikum kennen die an Erec und Iwein entbrannte Diskussion, wie denn die Dynamik von Minnestreben und ritterlicher Aventiure mit der Statik höfisch-repräsentativer Ehe und Herrschaft zu vereinbaren sei. Wirnt von Gravenberg darf daher seinen Helden mit Hochzeit und Krönung zu keiner endgültigen Ruhe kommen lassen, sondern muß traditionsgerecht das prunkvolle Fest [. . .] rechtzeitig stören lassen durch einen Boten, der ritterliche Hilfeleistung gegen schweres Unrecht erbittet’ (Wulf-Otto Dreesen, ‘Wandlungen des Artusromans im Yiddischen’, p. 90). See also on this point Cornelia Dandaraw, ‘Wirnts von Gravenberc Wigalois’, pp. 72–4. Ernst S. Dick, ‘Wirnt von Gravenberg’, in Dictionary of Literary Biography 138: German Writers and Works of the High Middle Ages, ed. James Hardin and Will Hasty (Detroit, Washington, London: Gale Research, 1994), pp. 177–84, 183. Ingeborg Henderson, ‘Eschatological Imagery’, p. 108, n. 19. Siegfried Stein, Die Ungläubigen in der mittelhochdeutschen Literatur (repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963).

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widow, Japhite who, like Belakane (and the Gyburg of Wolfram’s Willehalm) is praised and her unfeigned quality of compassion deemed the equivalent of baptism.12 The heathen necromancer’s valour is admired (lines 7533ff) and even Roaz the man is not condemned on the grounds of his faith but because he is held to be a repository of evil (‘valsches slôz’, ‘untriuwen zil’, line 7625). Like Wolfram’s Clinschor and the Eliavres figure of the Caradoc section of the First Continuation13 Roaz chooses to be a practioner of arts hostile to the courtly world.14 Moral choice is as theoretically available to him as it is to Adan, the knight of his entourage who later becomes Wigalois’s ally and for whom, according to his own report, baptism is not the precondition of his virtue but its symbol. That is, on the eve of his baptismal ceremony, Adan says that he had always been inclined in his heart towards the One God, stating that, for him, the Christian faith had been, as it were, a truth of first inscription: ‘Swie gar ich sî ein heiden, von dem gedanke kom ich nie ichn minnet iedoch den got ie der uns geschuof von nihte’ (lines 8199–8202) (Although I am indeed a heathen, I never wavered from the conviction that I loved the God who created us from nothing [i.e the Christian God]).

A conciliatory thrust is implicit in Adan’s naming since the biblical Adam counts as the first man for Christians, Jews and Muslims, whilst an a priori refusal to judge people simply on grounds of creed, colour or any other arbitrary difference is most vividly expressed in the account of the red hair of one of Wigalois’s most formidable adversaries, Hojir von Mannesvelt. Many people see red hair as a sign of a false heart, we are told, but the narrator does not concur, taking the esteemed figure of Hojir as his proof: Im was der bart und daz hâr Beidui rôt, viurvar. Von den selben hoere ich sagen Daz si valschiu herze tragen; Des gelouben hân ich niht: Swie man den getriuwen siht,

12 13

14

‘wâre riuwe ist gewesen/ ir touf an ir ende’ (Wigalois, lines 8023–4). Eliavres tricks Ysave of Carahes by magic means into surrendering her body to him. Magicians in Arthurian tradition are portrayed in a wide variety of hues, being typically ambiguous, ‘liminal’ characters. This ambivalence is caught in the mixed ancestry of the most famous of their kind, Merlin, whose descent from an incubus and a nun made of him a union of (potential) opposites. See Stephen Maksymiuk, The Court Magician in Medieval German Romance, Mikrokosmos 44 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1996), especially pp. 119–29 for Roaz in Wigalois. Joachim Heinzle made the further point that Roaz (like other literary magicians) was in many respects depicted as a courtly knight stylised as fighting for his lady, Japhite, and suggests: ‘Vielleicht sollte an ihm gezeigt werden, dass das Höfische ohne Sinn ist, wenn es nicht auf Gott gründet. Der Roman knüpfte damit an das zentrale Problem der höfischen Literatur an’ (‘Über den Aufbau des Wigalois’, Euphorion 67 [1973], pp. 261–71, 270).

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In swelher varwe er schînet, Sîn herze sich doch pînet Ûf triuwe und ûf güete. Ob ein valscher blüete Als ein rôse dâ stêt, Ûz im doch niwan valschez gêt. swie sîn hâr ist getân, ist er ein getriuwer man, diu varwe im niht geschaden kann. (lines 2841–55) (His hair and beard were both flame red. Of people with such hair colour you hear tell that they are corrupt in their hearts, but I don’t believe that. The heart of any given man of honour, irrespective of hair colour, is inclined towards integrity and fellow-feeling. A dishonourable man may stand before you like a very paragon but only evil will issue from his heart; the character of the good man on the other hand cannot at all be affected by his hair colour.)

The criterion taken by Wirnt to judge his fellows appears to be a moral rather than confessional one since for him Christian ethical standards can be shared by Christians and non-Christians alike. Hence in the midst of a conciliatory atmosphere, the reconsecrated castle of Korntin becomes a place where sectarian boundaries and other rifts between persons are erased,15 and there is a lack of dogmatic zeal in what we are told of the ethics of practical Christianity undergirding the protagonist’s mission to renew Lar’s charitable works on behalf of the poor.16 In particular, the campaign against Lion (which has been likened to an [internal] Crusade, and even claimed to represent a literary stimulus to Crusading activity),17 is in fact not a crusade at all. The casus belli is the murder by the Western European Lion of Namur of the innocent King of Libya in order that he might procure Amire’s wife. The besieging army unites figures from both sides of the sectarian divide in a bipartisan civil action made on legal and ethical rather than on confessional grounds. The non-Christians Zaradech and Panschavar (brothers of Roaz’s widow, Japhite) are notable co-signatories to the formal declaration of hostilities: Die sint von der heiden schar Zwêne künige ûz Asiâ, Die wellent ir sper dâ Durch dînen schilt verstechen Und daz laster rechen

15

16 17

There appears to have been an attempt to foreground the conciliatory mood when we are told of the arrival of the Persian princess, Elamie, spurned by the hero in an earlier part of the narrative on the altar of his duty: ‘si [sc. Elamie] was ein maget, niht ein wîp/ und wolde des rîters lîp/ mit ir schoene hân/ der ir daz pfärt wider gewan’ (lines 9187–90). Cf. lines 3745–50, 11620–40 where the alms-giving of both Lar and Wigalois is described in terms similar enough to suggest a renovatio imperii on the part of the new king. Claudia Brinker, ‘ “Hie ist diu âventiure geholt!” Die Jenseitsreise im Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberg: Kreuzzugspropaganda und unterhaltsame Glaubenslehre?’ in Contemplata aliis tradere. Studien zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Spiritualität, ed. Claudia Brinker (Berne: Lang, 1995), pp. 87–110.

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Mit swerten an dînem lîbe, Daz du dem reinen wîbe Hâst erslagen ir lieben man, Der dir niht leides hêt getân. Zes küniges hôchzît wolder sîn; Nu hât diu untriuwe dîn Ir gewalt an im erzeiget. Dîn hôchvart wirt geneiget Und dîn gewalt verkêret (lines 10074–88)18 (Zaradech and Panschavar, both from heathen lands, being two kings from Asia, wish to drive their lances through your armour and take vengeance on you with their swords for your abomination when you slew the dear husband of that innocent woman who had done nothing to you but merely wished to attend the king’s wedding. Your treachery has been shown up by your violent act, but now your pride will be humbled and your violence turned against you.)

There is no diabolic conspiracy between Roaz and Lion who, although he makes one approving reference to that devil’s disciple, does so in the context of a piece of opportunistic flyting against Wigalois whose implication (that he, Lion, will not be defeated so easily as Roaz) is essentially all part of a fairly conventional oath of scorn for his opponent got up to impress Wigalois’s emissary. In this context the reference to the previous enemy constitutes little more than a ritualised piece of ‘psychological warfare’: si waenent des ich sî ez Roaz. deiswâr, ich trûwe verre baz mîn lant erweren und die stat. der rede wil ich dehein blat legen vür mînen munt. daz weiz ich wol und ist mir kunt daz er den helt mit zouber sluoc des hant vil mänlich ellen truoc. durch daz im dâ sô wol gelanc, sô wolder über mînen danc mîn lant mir an erstrîten. er sol noch lenger bîten mich dunket des, er sûme sich. sîn zorn unde sîn gerich ist mir als daz boeste hâr daz ie man von im geschar.

18

Bernd Schirok noted that ‘der Kriegszug gegen Lion schließlich als Gemeinschaftstat aller Ritter, der christlichen wie der heidnischen, dargestellt wird. Von daher wird deutlich, daß es nicht um eine grundsätzliche Auseinandersetzung zwischen Christen und Heiden geht. Im Gegenteil: rîterschaft und der Kampf gegen das Unrecht verbindet gerade beide Lager’ (‘Studien zur späten deutschen Artusepik’, 2 volumes, unpublished Habilitationsschrift, University of Freiburg im Breisgau 1977, I, p. 149). Wigalois’s messenger expressly draws attention to the non-Christian status of Japhite’s brothers ‘was doch wohl nur einem Christen gegenüber [sc. Lion] sinnvoll ist’ (I, p. 150, n. 32).

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daz soltu dînem herren sagen. swaz er prîses hie wil bejagen, den muoz er koufen tiure; hie enist niht âventiure! (lines 10163–81) (They [sc. my sworn enemies whom you represent] think that I am little different to Roaz, but the truth is that I am confident of being able to defend my land and citadel better than he. I will make no bones about it: I know perfectly well that Wigalois overcame that superbly brave warrior [Roaz] by magic means. That was what accounted for his success, but he would not be in the position to wrest my land away from me against my will. It seems to me that he will have to wait a very long time for that – there is no sign of him yet, it appears! The angry judgement he has delivered on me is of no consequence to me. Tell that to your master! Whatever glory he seeks here will be bought dear for there is no place for knightly heroics here.)

Lion’s ascription of Wigalois’s success here to supernatural aid seems little more than a formulaic use of the old Germanic ‘Hohnrede’. Ritual insults of that sort and vociferous self-promotion continued to play as great a part in high medieval culture as they did in earlier periods (as is evidenced in the ‘gab’ of the Chanson de Roland and Pèlerinage de Charlemagne).19 Lion’s goading insinuation that Wigalois must have used magic20 against Roaz articulates little more than the contention that, without some additional advantage, Wigalois could not possibly have prevailed over Roaz (with the implication that Wigalois is not man enough to meet him, Lion, on equal terms). The tone of quiet gravitas conferred by the realistic representations of temporal and spatial dimensions and augmented by a number of stately descriptions of courtly ceremonial21 stands out in sharp relief against the more high-flown tone surrounding Wolfram’s closure of Parzival with his invocation of a quasimythical form of kingship closely linked to the contemporary legend of Prester John. The attempt will be made in the next section to seek motives for Wirnt’s 19

20

21

‘Our own culture puts very strong emphasis on modest self-deprecation: it is in all circumstances wrong to speak of oneself highly and without qualification. This embargo is reinforced by such literary stereotypes as the “braggart soldier” of Spenser or Shakespeare, whose words mask his cowardice [. . .] But Beowulf ignores it’ (T. A. Shippey, Beowulf, Studies in English Literature 70 [London: Arnold, 1978], p. 8). On the requirement to give a good account of oneself verbally and numerous other continuities between the ‘pre-courtly’ and high courtly stages of cultural development see G. F. Jones, Honor in German Literature. Against the background of an age when the supernatural had by no means yet become the discredited cultural legacy which was to be its fate in later centuries, seeking magical advantage would not have been seen as the moral equivalent of making a pact with the devil. Medieval courts typically contained physicians, astrologers and ‘holy men’ valued for their advisory role. Even Frederick II (often condemned by clerics for his enlightened modes of thought) accorded the occult arts great respect and employed magical advisors at his court. See Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 1990) and Gabor Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power. The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, translated by Susan Singerman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). Many of these extended descriptions, which have the effect of retarding the pace of the narrative, may be compared with the once derided ‘Schneiderstrophen’ of the Nibelungenlied in that they serve to evoke a positive, ‘courtly’ atmosphere for the ideal of the protagonist’s kingship being evoked (for example lines 10342–719).

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choice of this minor presentational key,22 with special attention to the possibility that his radically different modus operandi might suggest a principled confrontation with the more highly coloured methods of Wolfram.

The Matter of Closure: Parzival and Wigalois The final depiction of Wigalois’s rule as an assimilative Christian theocracy in which Asiatic nobles are welcomed as equals may evidence some influence of Parzival’s tolerant form of kingship in which the Grail evangile is to be spread throughout the Orient. However, even assuming Wolfram’s finale to have provided the creative spark, both the material used by Wirnt and its characteristic treatment differ from anything found in Parzival, and critical attempts to equate the kingship of Wirnt’s hero with that of Wolfram23 overlook important differences between the two romances in their manner of closure. In order to facilitate the comparison, the more important of these differences will now be reviewed. The conclusion of Parzival is enigmatic, being open-ended in a number of important respects. The eponymous hero ‘reenters’ the story at the end of Book XIII (after the conclusion of the books devoted to Gawan’s challenges), takes his seat at the Round Table in Book XIV, inducts Feirefiz into the fellowship in Book XV and is announced as the Grail King elect by Cundrie. In the final book, on the other hand, he leaves the Round Table, taking only Feirefiz with him (although he is later joined at the Grail by his wife), and a number of anomalies appear to flow from this unheralded departure from his chivalrous peers. The choice of Feirefiz to go with him on his final redemptive visit to the Grail King is remarkable since the half-brother had previously played what might be termed a mere cameo role as the issue of Gahmuret’s liaison with the heathen princess, Belakane. Parzival’s willingness to induct him into the Arthurian fellowship is in itself a magnanimous gesture and one which may be thought to compensate Feirefiz for Gahmuret’s neglect during his formative years. But that Parzival should have chosen his half-brother rather than his chivalric confrère, Gawan, to be his companion at the Grail is not an intuitively obvious choice (the less so given the farcical circumstances of Feirefiz’s baptism where his lust for the Grail 22

23

Heuckenkamp long ago pointed out that the author of Le Chevalier du Papegau with his primary concern for ‘moving accident’ could have had little time for such an account simply because it was so ‘flat’: ‘Es ist ganz einleuchtend, dass der Verfasser der Prosa [sc. Papegau] diese nachschleppende, gar nicht mehr im Abenteuer-Stil gehaltene Schilderung von der Bestrafung Lions von Namur für den von ihm verfolgten Zweck verwerfen musste; denn der Verfasser der Prosa erstrebt ganz sichtlich das Ziel, bei möglichster Knappheit in Bezug auf Detailschilderung einen nach Kräften abwechslungsreichen Roman zu schreiben, in dem der Leser von einem erstaunlichen Abenteuer zum andern geführt wird’ (Le Chevalier du Papegau, ‘Vorwort’, p. 31). Wolfgang Mitgau was clearly using the analogy of Parzival as an interpretive key in his exegesis of Wigalois when he wrote, ‘Mit dem Absinken des Artushofes in die Bedeutungslosigkeit verliert auch Gawein den traditionellen Charakter als Vertreter des Hofes [. . .] An die Stelle des Artuskönigtums tritt das Königtum des Wigalois’ (Mitgau, ‘Nachahmung und Selbständigkeit’, p. 366). For a similar (in my view, misguided) opinion see Karin R. Gürttler, Künec Artûs der Guote: das Artusbild der höfischen Epik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Bonn: Bouvier, 1976), pp. 176–85.

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bearer far outweighs any notions of religious conviction).24 Yet however shallow and even comic are Feirefiz’s reasons for taking baptism (which in the eyes of some contemporaries would have been thought sufficient to annul the effect of the baptismal ceremony altogether),25 it is he and his legendary son, Prester John, together with their lineal succcessors, who in Wolfram’s genealogy are given the daunting challenge of spreading the Christian message throughout the Orient.26 Numerous other ‘alienation effects’ are to be found in Parzival, such as when the narrator disrupts the mood of pious solemnity built up in the starvation scene when Condwiramurs is besieged (where he implies that the castle dwellers’ starvation diet is more nutritious than his own fare: section 184, lines 27–185, 11) and in Trevrizent’s ascetic cell (where we are told that a falcon would turn its nose up at such miserable portions: section 487, lines 1–22). Cumulatively such intrusions convey the effect that Wolfram harboured an ironic attitude to his material.27 In addition to such gratuitous incongruities there is a further problem involving Parzival’s two sons, Kardeiz and Loherangrin, the first of whom receives his father’s ‘non-Grail’ territories, whilst Loherangrin (named with Parzival on the Grail tablet) succeeds to his father’s more spiritual domains. In this way Parzival’s Arthurian and Grail heritages are (matters of equity aside) accounted for satisfactorily, but it is less easy to see why Wolfram goes into so much detail about the way in which Loherangrin is to be led by a swan to marry a non-Grail queen on condition that she never ask who he is. For the predictably tragic sequel to this tantalising interdiction is that (after a successful marriage with several children) the poor woman’s curiosity gets the better of her – and the swan is obliged to take Loherangrin away from his wife and family (section 824, lines 1–826, 30). Although this story is given a formal link with the biography of Parzival (since the prohibition is claimed to have arisen because Anfortas’s sorrow in waiting for the Question leads Grail knights to

24

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Furthermore, according to the ‘rules’ of the Grail community, it was the Grail king alone who was to marry and not his retinue (unless those knights should be sent out to become kings of distant kingdoms): ‘Nach den Ausführungen Trevrizents im neunten Buch war das Liebesverbot in Munsalvaesche ein tragender Pfeiler der dortigen Gesellschaftsordnung. Indem Feirefiz sich ungestraft darüber hinwegsetzt und zum ersten Mal in der Geschichte des Grals eine nicht eigens von Gott angeordnete Leibesheirat dort vollzieht, stellt er die Weisheit der ganzen Ordnung in Frage’ (Joachim Bumke, ‘Parzival und Feirefiz – Priester Johannes – Loherangrin. Der offene Schluß des Parzival von Wolfram von Eschenbach’, DVLG 65 [1991], pp. 236–64, 242). The Jüngere Titurel has it that non-bona fide baptisms are invalid and in course of time lead to particularly harsh torments in hell for those who so dissimulate: ‘swer den touf alsus in valsch enpfahet, der hat wol drivalt peine zer helle,/ denn der toufe nie genahet’ ( ed. Wolf, I, section 125, lines 3–4). On this vertiginous final outcome of Feirefiz’s unpredictable biography Bumke comments: ‘In seinem Brief an Belakane hat Gahmuret den Glaubensgegensatz als Grund für seine einseitige Auflösung ihrer Ehe genannt (55, 24ff). Was damals als fadenscheiniger Vorwand erschien, bekommt am Ende der Dichtung eine heilsgeschichtliche Bedeutung’ (‘Der offene Schluß’, p. 245, n. 14). Bertau noted: ‘Wolfram verschmäht es nicht, Heiteres und Ernstes, Phantastisches und Realistisches, Förmliches und Spontanes unmittelbar nebeneinander zu stellen – eine Haltung, die einem Richard Wagner einbekanntermaßen unerträglich war für sein “Weihespiel” ’ (Karl Bertau, Deutsche Literatur im europäischen Mittelalter, 2 volumes [Munich: Beck, 1983], I, p. 1024).

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dislike questions altogether (section 818, lines 24–819, 8)) it is difficult not to infer a dystopian subtext from the fact that ‘Parzival’s good fortune does not extend to all the worthy characters [and] serves as a reminder that the world has not changed in any fundamental way’.28 As to Cundrie’s receipt of what has been termed a ‘news flash from Heaven’29 to the effect that Parzival, his wife and son Loherangrin are at last definitively called to the Grail and that Parzival should now direct the requisite question to Anfortas (section 781, lines 11–30), this opens up the large, theological crux of the relationship between Free Will and Grace in Wolfram’s romance. In Book V Sigune had said categorically that the Grail Castle could only be found accidentally (i.e. by dint of God’s Grace) rather than as the result of a conscious quest: Swer die suochet flîzeclîche Leider der envient ir niht. Vil liute manz doch werben siht. Ez muoz unwizzende geschehen, Swer immer sol diu burc gesehen. (Parzival, section 250, lines 26–30) (Whoever seeks the Grail by conscious effort will not find it. Many people have been known to fail in this way. Whoever reaches that Castle must do so without premeditation.)

This statement is supported by the words of Trevrizent who had said that nobody could hunt out (‘bejagen’) the Grail unless his name were known to Heaven (468, 12–14). It is also supported by Parzival himself in a paraphrase of Trevrizent’s words: Parzival sîn rede alsus huop an. En franzoys er zin allen sprach Als Trevrizent dort vorne jach, Daz den grâl ze keinen zîten Niemen möht erstrîten, Wan der von gote ist dar benant. (section 786, lines 2–7) (Parzival began his speech, addressing them all in French, to the effect that, as Trevrizent had stated, nobody could win the Grail at any time except for the one who had been designated by God.)

At odds with the above is Trevrizent’s surprise when, as he perceives, Parzival wins the Grail by fighting for it (‘erstrîten’, section 798, lines 24–29), Trevrizent supposing that Parzival has forced God to change the conditions by which the Grail can be won: Trevrizent ze Parzivâle sprach ‘groezer wunder selten ie geschach, 28

29

Annette Volfing, ‘Parzival and Willehalm: narrative continuity?’ in Wolfram’s ‘Willehalm’. Fifteen Essays, ed. Martin H. Jones and Timothy McFarland (New York: Camden House; Cambridge: D. S Brewer, 2002), pp. 45–59, 59. Parzival, translated by A. T. Hatto (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), ‘Introduction to a Second Reading’, p. 414.

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sît ir ab got erzürnet hât daz sîn endelôsiu Trinitât iwers willen werhaft ist [. . .]’ (section 798, lines 1–5) (Nothing was ever more miraculous than that your fury should have forced God to grant your will through his infinite Trinity.)

If Parzival were to be imagined as having forced God’s hand, then this would mean that Wolfram had introduced a provocative contradiction into the original tradition of how the Grail was to be achieved as it was enunciated by the old Grail king, Titurel. In Wolfram’s Titurel, the old King explains that the Grail had been brought down to him from on high by an angel with an unalterable ethical programme (‘al mîn orden’) attached.30 In the Jüngere Titurel, whose author claims to be representing Wolfram faithfully, this conception appears to be insisted on as Cundrie, the Grail messenger, advises Parzival not to seek out the Grail but simply to uphold his wonted standard of integrity until he should be called: Wis keusch und manheit pflegende und suoche niht des grales! wil dir diu selde wegende mit helfe sin, daz geschiht doch sunder twales, und werst an des lebermeres grunde: erwelt dich got zem grale, hey, wie gahens dich Kundrie funde!31 (Practise chastity and chivalry and do not seek out the Grail. If good fortune is to be inclined to help you, that will happen without delay. Even if you were at the bottom of the Red Sea, if God has once called you to the Grail, Kundrie would find you soon enough!)

The morally problematical implications of the conceptual contradiction in Wolfram’s version were well summarised by Hugh Sacker: Is there a sense in which Parzival wins the Grail in defiance of its conditions? Does his persistence force God’s hand and so alter the appearance of providence? Or is he simply rewarded, in a thoroughly traditional way, when he has submitted completely to the divine will? [. . .] It is not, however, certain that we should expect to be able to give a definite and universally agreed answer: that Wolfram’s work raises such problems does not necessarily mean that he answers them. They may possibly have to be regarded as mysteries which can be illuminated and discussed, but not finally resolved; and any proffered resolution may reflect more the preferences of the individual reader than the complexity of the problem itself.32

It may even of course be the case that these contradictions represent a deliberate attempt on Wolfram’s part to provoke his audiences into reflecting on these spiritual issues.33 At any rate, many readers have concluded from the welter of 30

31 32

Titurel and the Songs, text and translation by Marian Gibbs und Sidney M. Johnson, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, series A, volume 57 (New York: Garland, 1988), section 6, line 3. Albrechts Jüngerer Titurel, ed. Werner Wolf and Kurt Nyholm, volume III/2, strophe 5507. An Introduction to Wolfram’s ‘Parzival’, p. 167.

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intratextual exegeses that some mixture of predestination (Parzival is related to the Grail line through his mother), God’s Grace (‘benennen’) and Free Will (‘erstrîten’, ‘bejagen’) plays a part.34 Since the narrator gives us no omniscient adjudication on the matter and Parzival’s supposed mentor is granted no more authoritative voice than any of his peers in the closing stages of the work,35 it might be tempting to conclude with Trevrizent that the matter is in the last analysis a divine mystery emanating from the one whose mind cannot be known (section 797, lines 23–5). Against the background of this Wolframian conundrum and perhaps with some awareness of the sensibilities of those amongst Wolfram’s first audiences who might have thought that ‘the importance attached to Parzival’s fighting is at first sight hard to reconcile with the central religious concerns of the work’,36 Wigalois’s conquest of Roaz is performed not by unaided knightly exertions (strîten) but by unequivocal divine support (in Wolfram’s terms, benennen). Wirnt, by making of his protagonist a chosen soldier of Christ, issues an implicit adjudication on the question-begging theological issue of Parzival. As long as his protagonist maintains his faith in the face of mortal danger and manifold temptations to despair, God will protect him.37 Even the most grotesque terrors turn out to be probative rather than punitive and an expression of God’s loving kindness (according to the somewhat circular logic of medieval notions of Providence).38 In other words, however insurmountable his hurdles appear, Wigalois stands under constant divine protection, as these elaborations of the Ruel incident make clear: dô si daz swert gegen im swanc, dôn hêt er des deheinen (ge)danc daz er iht lenger solde leben,

33

34 35

36 37 38

‘Ähnlich widersprüchlich ist Trevrizents Stellungnahme zu der Frage, ob man den Gral erstrîten könne. Man hat den Eindruck, dass es Wolfram gerade auf diese Unklarheiten und Widersprüchlichkeiten ankam. Die Szene ist offenbar darauf angelegt, dass die Zuhörer das, was Trevrizent im neunten Buch gesagt hatte, mit dem vergleichen sollten, was er jetzt sagt, dass sie die Widersprüche bemerken und sich ihre Gedanken über Trevrizents Autorität machen sollten’ (Bumke, ‘Der offene Schluß’, p. 240, n. 4). Martin H. Jones, ‘Parzival’s fighting and his election to the Grail’, in Wolfram-Studien III, ed. Werner Schröder (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1975), pp. 52–71. Not only is Trevrizent surprised that Parzival can gain the Grail by persistence but also issues his famous ‘retraction’, reversing his previous statement that the neutral angels were pardoned by God (section 471, lines 23–5), now adopting the orthodox position of proclaiming them to be eternally damned (798, 6–22). As Bumke points out, at the end of the work ‘Trevrizents Lehrautorität ist erschüttert’ (‘Der offene Schluß’, p. 264). Martin H. Jones, ‘Parzival’s fighting and his election to the Grail’, p. 55. Cf. lines 6004–5, 6139–40, 6199ff. Contemporary penitentials and homilies frequently stated that ‘trials which serve to bring one closer to salvation are as much a gift from God as are the blessings of fame and fortune, and as such should be borne not only patiently, but with rejoicing’ (Shari Rachel Holmer, ‘Popular Religion and the Romances of Hartmann von Aue’, dissertation, University of Illinois [Ann Arbor MI: University Microfilms International, 1981], p. 18). Furthermore, when ‘supernatural’ events such as eclipses, thunderstorms, flood and drought were taken as symptoms of God’s testing, little incongruity would have been seen in the notion of a God who plagued his creatures. See Dennis Nineham, Christianity Medieval and Modern. A Study in Religious Change (London: SCM Press, 1993), especially pp. 231–5.

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hêt imz got niht gegeben. des gnâde ist niht gelîch; daz erzeiget er aller tägelîch. ... ditz was sînes gewaltes spil, daz er disem küenen man sînen trôst an gewan, den sîn herze ungerne liez; in ganzen zwîvel er in stiez, dâ von er sîne vreude lie. got der was genaedic ie; daz erzeigter an disem rîter hie. Dô er sus an dem tôde lac Und daz sîn leben zem tôde wac, Dô kom er im ze trôste; Sîn barmunge in erlôste Daz im dehein schade geschach Wan daz er vreise vor im sach. (lines 6465–70, 6476–89) (When she [sc. the wild woman, Ruel] swung the sword in his direction, he would have had little expectation that he would be able to survive any longer had he not been consoled by God – whose mercy is without parallel as we witness every day. [. . .] It was the operation of His power that took from this brave man the hope that his heart did not willingly forego and thrust him into total despair in such a way as to deprive him of all joy. [But] God was ever merciful, as was shown in the case of this knight. When he lay on the very brink of death with all his faculties in decline, God came to the rescue and by His Grace redeemed him in such a way that no more harm befell him other than the fact that he was forced to witness all those horrors before him.)

Wirnt’s effective adjudication in favour of a chosen knight in receipt of Providential guidance might seem to harmonise seamlessly with the narrator’s conservative views as expressed in his myriad asides against those of dubious pedigree aspiring to knightly rank, yet ultimately his position reveals itself to be more nuanced, for divine support is not simply vouchsafed to the protagonist (or to a small spiritual élite in the way with which we are familiar from the Lancelot-Grail cycle and the favouring there of the Galahad figure to the exclusion of other Arthurian knights). Wirnt’s apparent disinclination to think in ‘Calvinistic’ terms in regard to persons of accredited knightly status is exemplified in his treatment of Gawein. Having saved that knight’s face by glossing his breaches of faith as peccadilloes he has put behind him in his incautious youth, Wirnt gives a metaphorical encore to Wolfram’s neglected deuteragonist (and by the same token, to the other, accompanying Arthurian knights), thereby giving concrete shape to a harmonisation of Arthurian and spiritual elements which Wolfram fails to realise at the conclusion of Parzival. In Wigalois a place is found for the values of both son and father, the quintessentially Arthurian knight, in what appears to be a more practicable vision of ideal kingship than that implied by the Oriental marvels of a Grail realm whose political import remains tantalisingly opaque.

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Wirnt, to be sure, appears in one sense to have been as captivated by the wonders of the Orient as Wolfram, but despite his many evocations of the fabulous East, a romance which features the memorable scene of Arthur and Guinevere riding on an elephant39 surely contains no tendentious implication of an exotic society from which the flower of Western (Arthurian) chivalry is to be excluded. Such depictions are, rather, part and parcel of what has been accounted Wirnt’s penchant for Orientalising.40 The protagonist for instance belatedly recollects that his mother, Florie, was ‘a Syrian princess’.41 That the place of Wigalois’s birth was imagined as being ‘Syria’ (however vaguely this location might have been envisaged at the time), is supported by the Near Eastern provenance of his great-uncle’s name, Joram.42 Wigalois’s own land of Korntin which he takes over from Lar is in the Orient and another Oriental realm, Jeraphîn, is subject to it (lines 9057ff). Yet despite these evocations of an Oriental backdrop we are not invited to entertain the idea that the protagonist is a Feirefiz-type figure because he is the biological issue of a Syrian princess and Gawein.43 Wirnt’s Orientalia do not contribute to the substance of his closure in the way with which we are familiar from Wolfram whose Prester-John-asGrail-King story is exploited as a deus ex machina device with which to procure an ending44 (Chrétien’s Conte du Graal of course breaking off before revealing what the Grail and Grail kingship were to entail in the mind of the French author). This closure was one which Wolfram may have later come to see as having been somewhat facile since the evocation of an Oriental utopia involving a

39 40

41 42

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Lines 11421–6. ‘Fast alle Namen der Personen, die wunderbaren Tiere und Bauten [sind] dem orientalischmohammedanischen Vorstellungsbereich entnommen [. . .] Artushof und keltische Sagenwelt treten hier zurück hinter der orientalischen Fabelwelt’ (Günther Haasch, ‘Das Wunderbare im höfischen Artusroman. Ein Beitrag zur Motivgeschichte mittelalterlicher Epik und zur Klärung des Verhältnisses von Artusroman und Märchen’ [dissertation, University of Berlin, 1954], pp. 55–6). ‘Ob ich mich rehte ersinne/ sô was diu küneginne/ mîn muoter, von Syrîe/ diu süeze Flôrie’ (lines 5830–3). One biblical character with the name of Joram (II Kings 8:28) was a king of Israel who declared war on Hasael of Syria, whilst another Joram was a king of Judah (II Kings 8:21). On names see Frank W. Chandler, A Catalogue of Names in the German Court Epics. An Examination of the Literary Sources and Dissemination, together with Notes on the Etymologies of the More Important Names, revised by Martin H. Jones (London: King’s College, London, Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies publications, 1992). Saran saw the Oriental colouring essentially as a rhetorical strategy of captatio benevolentiae: ‘Es ist kaum zweifelhaft, dass dem verfasser von O [sc. Saran’s hypothetical ‘French original’] die verhältnisse der christlichen reiche des orients und ihre kämpfe mit den saracenen vorgeschwebt haben [. . .] Er fasste darum den originellen plan, den Artusroman aus seiner unbedingten sphäre mehr in das leben der zeit hineinzuverlegen, sich durch aufnahme von kreuzzugsmotiven die teilnahme der hörer zu sichern. Er lässt seinen helden aus dem orient stammen und wieder dahin zurückkehren’ (‘Über Wirnt von Gravenberg und den Wigalois’, pp. 367, 413). ‘Wird dem höfischen Artusroman im Parzival auch keine Absage erteilt, so ist doch nicht zu übersehen, dass sich die Handlung des Parzival weit mehr aus der Wunderlegende speist als aus der des höfischen Aventiureromans, der hier nur noch als überlieferte Form beibehalten ist’ was the judgement of Günther Haasch on Wolfram’s Grail realm (‘Das Wunderbare im höfischen Roman’, p. 37).

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succession of priest-kings all bearing the title of Prester John appears less a bona fide confrontation with the problems of his age than a form of intellectual evasion which would abdicate all political responsibility for the sinful West. Utopias commonly follow the fault lines of geographical ignorance, and many contemporaries of Wolfram and Wirnt would have thought that they ‘knew’ that there was a connection with the East and the Earthly Paradise (‘The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden’, Genesis 2:18). However, they did not know where precisely it existed, and the success of the Prester John legend of an apparently prelapsarian land owed much to the fact that it went beyond the cartographic ken of European men and women. Hence in the fourteenth century, after attempts to find Prester John and his kingdom in Asia had proved fruitless, the search was transferred to the interior of Africa, spurred on by the fact that there was an actual Christian kingdom there, the Nestorian kingdom of Abyssinia or Ethiopia.45 The same impulse can be seen at work even in the modern era where there has been a de facto translation of notions of an earthly paradise to the (relatively) unexplored land of Tibet by dint of James Hilton’s powerfully mythopoeic Lost Horizon (1933, German version Irgendwo in Tibet, 1937), a novel which made proverbial the concept of Shangri-La and which supplies a modern analogy to Prester John’s famous letter to the extent that it too offers its readers an implicit invitation to ‘opt out’ from the spiritual waste land of the West to a Tibetan nirvana.46 It may have been in order to soften the negative image of Grail knights complacently turning their backs on their Western brethren that the narrator of Der Jüngere Titurel interpolated into his story an account of how the Grail company, before departing for the Orient, used the Grail to bestow food and riches on the impoverished and starving citizenry of the town of Pittimont (later retitled ‘Grals’ as a token of thanks to the Grail company).47 Yet this interpolation on the part of Wolfram’s self-styled disciple seems little more than a sop with which Albrecht might have sought to salve his narratorial conscience for the rather escapist nature of the material bequeathed him by Wolfram. A more substantial moral corrective was provided by Wolfram himself in the form of the implicit ‘retraction’48 contained in Willehalm where the Oriental utopia associated with the fabled priest-king yields to a more searching engagement with the intractable sectarian dilemma of the age and where the device of a fairy-tale ending yields to a remarkably even-handed treatment of both warring camps.

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46

47 48

See Ulrich Knefelkamp, Die Suche nach dem Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes, dargestellt anhand von Reiseberichten und anderen ethnographischen Quellen des 12. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (Gelsenkirchen: Andreas Müller Verlag, 1986) and Rudolf Wittkower, ‘Marvels of the East. A study in the History of Monsters’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), pp. 159–97. See Albrecht Classen, ‘Hermann Hesses Glasperlenspiegel und James Hiltons Lost Horizon. Intertextuelle Beziehungen zweier utopischer Entwürfe aus den Zwischenkriegsjahren’, Studia Neophilologica 72 (2000), pp. 190–202. Ed. Wolf and Nyholm, volume III/2, strophes 6081–91. Horst Brunner, ‘ “Artus der wîse höfsche man”. Zur immanenten Historizität der Ritterwelt im Parzival Wolframs von Eschenbach’, in Germanistik in Erlangen. Hundert Jahre nach der

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Both Wolfram and Wirnt will have been composing in an era when the military defeats suffered in the later crusades were weakening the fanatical creed of the first wave of crusader zealots.49 Many European intellectuals were led by subsequent reverses to question the complacent old battle cry of ‘God Wills It’ (De le vult) and to entertain the possibility that the recovery of the holy places might be better accomplished by the use of Christ’s own methods of preaching than by the sword.50 The readiness to parley with the sectarian adversary was much aided by a growing experience of the foe as a pious and cultured people who, for their part, had much to contribute to Christian culture. Whilst Wolfram was issuing his literary self-criticism in the form of Willehalm, Wigalois will probably have have arisen at about the same time as (in part) an independent critique of Wolfram’s Grail utopia, representing Wirnt’s attempt to retrieve a clear ethical summons from his predecessor’s puzzling closure. If Wigalois was composed after Willehalm (i.e. post-1217) then of course Wirnt could have been influenced in these conceptions by Wolfram’s second, major work, but given the uncertainty of our present knowledge about the relative chronology of Wigalois and Willehalm, it is perhaps safer to conjecture that Wigalois will have arisen as a literary anticipation of the master’s self-criticism. The peaceful conversion issue, a subject we know to have been of interest to liberal contemporaries seeking a modus vivendi with Muslim adversaries, must have preoccupied Wolfram because the whole narrative frame which he placed about Chrétien’s incomplete romance was trained on this issue.51 Symbolically Feirefiz plays a major role since it is he who is chosen by his half-brother to accompany him on his redemptive visit to the old Grail King. The same conciliatory theme dominates Wirnt’s closure where an ideal Christian state fleshed out on the basis of Wolfram’s somewhat meagre hints is depicted. Here the idea of tolerance that Wolfram adumbrates symbolically through the figures of Feirefiz and Prester John (a theme which necessarily remained merely implicit in the uncompleted Willehalm) is glossed more literally when the eponymous hero, after having defeated the Muslim necromancer, Roaz, preaches to Roaz’s pagan subjects and leads them towards acceptance of the Christian faith through mass conversions. In the light of contemporary thinking, Wolfram’s image of the Christian knight standing side by side with his converted half-brother in the

49

50

51

Gründung des deutschen Seminars, ed. Dieter Peschel, Erlanger Forschungen 31 (Erlangen: Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1983), pp. 61–74, 72 (‘eine Art Selbstkritik des Parzival-Romanciers’). On crusaders’ motives see James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, Milwaukee and London: Wisconsin UP, 1969), and for the weakening of the ideal in its strong, bloodthirsty form Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading 1095–1274 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). Although precise dating is not possible, it appears that Wolfram would have been composing parts of his Parzival just after the abortive Fourth Crusade of 1204. The crusading ideal had been on the wane since the crusades of Barbarossa and Henry VI, and when the Pope exhorted Frederick II to undertake a fifth crusade in 1213, Pope and Emperor fell out (in 1227 Frederick was excommunicated for failing to fulfil his crusading obligations). See Holger Noltze, Gahmurets Orientfahrt. Kommentar zum ersten Buch von Wolframs ‘Parzival’, Würzburger Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie 13 (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1995), especially p. 241.

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Grail realm is suggestive of a rapprochement between East and West, yet the image remains rather veiled by the distracting imponderables of Wolfram’s open-ended text. The fine detail of Wigalois’s régime, on the other hand, suggests that some of the less concrete features of Wolfram’s Oriental vision may here have been translated into more comprehensible terms. In Wigalois too there are conversions to Christianity carried out by a person who is the ruler of a Christian kingdom in the Orient,52 but here the fabulous is reduced, and the more naturalistic details of Wirnt’s ending appear to have been improvised to illuminate the theme of how Arthurian knights might comport themselves in a narrative context far from the fabulous ambience of Wolfram’s romance world.53 Adan’s bona fide conversion to Christianity and the final battle line in which combatants on both sides of the medieval religious divide join forces to punish a miscreant for non-sectarian reasons present a better evocation of an ecumenical vision than that found in Parzival, where the somewhat gross depiction of Feirefiz’s baptism, motivated by his desire for the beauty of Repanse de Schoye rather than by spiritual impulses, tends to spoil the noble vision of Cross and Crescent united underlying these passages. Wirnt’s ecumenical finale is more convincing, and in that sense morally superior both to Parzival and to Willehalm which is marred not only by its incompleteness but also by the fact that its bold sentiments in favour of tolerance are undermined by a more fundamental interference from a French source which stylised Muslims as the enemy.54 In a genre where it was common for many incomplete or open-ended works to require ‘continuations’ or ‘elucidations’ Wigalois stands out as a work with a particularly well resolved conclusion.55 James Schultz has compared Gawein’s heading the troop division in Wigalois with Rüedeger’s organising of Dietrich’s troops in the Rabenschlacht, glossing Lion’s scornful gibe (to the effect that there is no place for conventional knightly heroics at Namur) in the following terms:

52

53

54

55

‘Der erfolg des abenteuers ist wiederaufrichtung eines christlichen königreiches im orient und gewinnung einer heidnischen grafschaft, deren ritter sich zum christentum bekehren. Wigalois wird damit herrscher eines christlichen-orientalischen reiches’ (Saran, ‘Über Wirnt von Gravenberg und den Wigalois’, p. 416). Cf. Christoph Cormeau, ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’: ‘Wirnt (wollte) den Verhaltensentwurf des Aventiureromans demonstrativ näher an die soziale Realität rücken, um seine Verbindlichkeit zu wahren’ (p. 38); Cormeau is followed by Frank Ringeler, Zur Konzeption der Protagonistenidentität im deutschen Artusroman um 1200. Aspekte einer Gattungspoetik (Frankfurt, Berlin, Berne: Lang, 2000), p. 223. The source, although not known, will have been similar to a version of the Old French Bataille d’Aliscans. On the subject of Stoffzwang, see Neil Thomas, ‘The ecumenical ideal in Wolfram von Eschenbach revisited’, ABäG 50 (1998), pp. 111–29. The French analogue, Le Bel Inconnu, by contrast, has an open ending which struck Maddox as being reminiscent of Gottfried’s uncompleted Tristan (where the conflict between free sexual self-expression and homage to society’s mores is left unresolved) or of the vassal torn between duties to his suzerain and his lady in the Occitan love lyric, a closure said by him to ‘perennialize the endless virtualities of an irremediably divided selfhood’ (Donald Maddox, Fictions of Identity in Medieval France, p. 109).

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Here, he [sc. Lion] means to say, the Arthurian heroes will not find that artificial kind of encounter they are used to. Indeed they do not; they find a fullscale battle [. . .] Let us not make Lion’s mistake and underestimate the flexibility of our heroes; nor should we join those scholars who prescribe generic restrictions that Arthurian authors clearly did not acknowledge. Battles are unusual in Arthurian romance and differ essentially from other kinds of Arthurian episode, yet they are liable to turn up nevertheless.56

In the course of the analysis presented above I have tried to suggest reasons why the final battle ‘turned up’ in this particular form in this particular romance, namely, as a more feasible demonstration of the ideal potential of a non-sectarian force of international Arthurian chivalry to mobilise in a just cause than might be anticipated from the somewhat nebulous evocations of the Grail order found in Wolfram’s Parzival.57 This must surely count as a superior imaginative accomplishment (pace the frequent criticisms of Wirnt’s ‘prosaic’ tone) to the conclusion of that other romance undertaking to represent Wolfram’s legacy, Albrecht’s Jüngerer Titurel, which, despite considerable material augmentations of Wolfram, has an ending scarcely less vague than that of Wolfram himself in that the time of redemption to which it alludes is projected into the uncertain future.58 By contrast, just as the matter-of-fact mode of presentation of the conclusion of the Nibelungenlied discourages an audience from soaring up in imagination to a metaphysical plane above the tragic realities to which the narrator wishes it to attend, so Wirnt’s disinclination to have any truck with the Grail is an indication that, as a moralist, he aspired to present patterns of conduct which might lead his listeners to emulation rather than (at best) to unfocused aspiration or (at worst) to an irresponsible form of intellectual evasion.

56 57

58

The Shape of the Round Table, p. 102. On the international nature of the force cf. Gawein’s words of praise and encouragement to his son: ‘sône gewan dehein künic nie/ in disem lande sô mangen helt/ dise rîter sint erwelt/ ûz mangem künicrîche’ (lines 9918–21). ‘Durch heilicheit des grales wuochs doch immer mere/ diu wirde Parcifales vil baz dann aller kunige wird und ere,/ wan si do jahen,wern si sin enpernde,/ so wer daz kunicriche an aller hohen werdicheit niht wernde’ (ed. Nyholm, volume III/2, strophe 6326). Cf. Alfred Ebenbauer’s verdict on the ‘abrupt’ and ‘disappointing’ final strophe: ‘Albrechts Erlösung liegt in utopischer Ferne’ (‘Albrecht: Jüngerer Titurel’, in Interpretationen. Mittelhochdeutsche Romane und Heldenepen, ed. Horst Brunner (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993), pp. 353–72, 366).

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5 Romance and Exemplum

Another form of romantic forms schemes or indulges expectations ‘essentially incongruous with the nature of man’ – schemes for retiring from society, and for promoting wisdom and nobility by new systems of education. Equally romantic, because they are unadapted to human nature, are the speculations of philosophers and philanthropists who believe in systems based on ‘equality of property and modes of life throughout society’. Until men have been stripped of their ambition, craft, avarice, stupidity, indolence and selfishness, these beautiful theories will be read as ‘romances’. The age of chivalry itself shows, in many of its practices [. . .] the same incongruity with the simplest principles of human nature.1

The author of Der Jüngere Titurel described his work as ‘nothing but a sermon’ (‘niht wan eine lere’),2 an expression which could as well be used in approximate terms to characterise Wirnt’s narratorial stance. Against the notion of Wigalois as a romance merely offering light relief (Unterhaltungsroman), I shall in this chapter consider how Wirnt shaped his romance as a sermon for his times by endorsing the historicity of King Arthur, the better to be able to draw on the fabled king’s authority as a role model with whom to link his title hero. I go on to suggest reasons why, despite the fact that his material shares many points of contact with the Grail narratives, Wirnt avoided the motif of the Grail, the notorious ambiguities of that polyvalent symbol being ill-adapted to articulate clearly formulated moral views. There being no precise analogy to Wirnt’s authorial role as both entertainer and pedagogue in near-contemporary German tradition (excluding the example of the much later Albrecht), I seek to illuminate his hybrid narratorial role by reference to that thirteenth-century romance in the French tradition which most closely parallels Wigalois in its working methods, namely, the anonymous Durmart Le Galois, a work which has been well described as a ‘mirror-for-princes written in the form of an Arthurian romance’.3

The Knight of King Arthur Wirnt’s frequent eulogies of the Arthurian ‘era’ he takes as his moral backdrop4 indicates that he, unlike Wolfram, viewed the fabled king as a primary locus of 1 2 3 4

Arthur Johnston, Enchanted Ground. The Study of Medieval Romance in the Eighteenth Century (London: University of London Athlone Press, 1964), p. 210. Ed. Werner Wolf, I, stanza 65. See Friedrich Wolfzettel, ‘Doppelweg und Biographie’, in Erzählstrukturen der Artusliteratur. Forschungsgeschichte und neue Ansätze, ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel, pp. 119–41, p. 138, n. 2. Cf. lines 2349–95, 2146–58 for examples of the laudatio temporis acti trope.

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chivalric value, available to be cited as a remote standard against which his contemporaries might be berated. There is no trace of reserve or irony in his praises as there is in Wolfram or already in the works of Chrétien de Troyes, whose ‘irony, and his generally unimpressive portraits of Arthur, suggest that already in the twelfth century there existed an amused scepticism about aspects of the Arthurian legend, one that, as inheritors of a more reverent tradition based on Malory’s Morte Darthur, we may be slower than the medieval public to perceive’.5 Even Heinrich von dem Türlin, despite his many tendentious attempts to ‘reArthurianise’ Wolfram’s Grail story, portrays Arthur as being overshadowed by the superior standard of his father, Uther.6 Hence in his Castle of Wonders sequence Heinrich is moved to depict new strength arising from past example, making symbolic attempts to reinvigorate Arthur’s reign by retrieving for it some of the prestige of Uther’s heroic age. Accordingly, part of Gawein’s liberation takes the form of retrieving rejuvenating flowers for Arthur’s mother, suggesting a symbolic resuscitation from her mortal state; the resurrection theme being further strengthened by the emergence of a second father-by-marriage for Arthur (Gansguoter) whose appearance compensates him for the loss of his natural father. Wirnt, on the other hand, makes no mention of a pre-Arthurian heroic age since for him the fellowship of the Round Table appears to have represented a timeless age – the result being that there are few hints of the ultimate tragedy of the developed legend which was known to Heinrich (a facet of the story which was in any case probably still evolving in pre-literary versions of the Prose Lancelot cycle when Wirnt was composing). Wirnt does not problematise the figure of Arthur or question his historicity, as the somewhat ambiguous exordium of Hartmann’s Iwein appears to do to judge from the distancing focalisation employed when references are made to Arthur as a king whose continued existence is merely claimed by his kinsmen (this a gibe at the ‘return’ myth of Avalon).7 On the contrary, Wirnt strives to establish the figure of Arthur as a king whose chivalric comparators include such well-authenticated historical exemplars as Charlemagne and Hojir von Mannesvelt, the early twelfth-century commander of troops in the German imperial party.8 The eponymous hero’s

5 6 7

8

Arthurian Women, ed. Thelma Fenster (London: Routledge, 2000), editorial Introduction, p. xxxvii. Die Krone, ed. Knapp and Niesner, lines 398–411. ‘künec Artûs der guote/ der mit rîters muote/ nâch lobe kunde strîten./ er hât bî sînen zîten/ gelebet alsô schône/ daz er der êren krône/ dô truoc und noch immer sîn name treit./ des habent die wârheit/ sîne lantliute:/ si jêhent er lebe noch hiute’ (Iwein, ed. G. F. Benecke and others with modern German translation by Thomas Cramer, 2nd edition [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974], lines 5–14). For a discussion of the truth-value of these lines see Hans Fromm, ‘Komik und Humor in der deutschen Dichtung des Mittelalters’, DVLG 36 (1962), pp. 321–39, especially 332–3. The historical person fought as an imperial general in the eleventh- and early twelfth-century battles between the Saxons and the Salian emperors, defeating the Saxons at Warnstedt in 1113. When the Emperor Henry V imposed a general imperial tax on the Anglo-Norman model, the Saxons again rebelled but this time the Emperor’s troops were defeated at Welfersholz (about 30 kilometres north-west of Halle) in the county of Mansfeld on 11 February 1115. Hojir/Hoyer fell at this battle and with him the Emperor’s hopes for control of Saxon lands. See Robert Holtzmann, ‘Sagengeschichtliches zur Schlacht am Welfersholz’, Sachsen und Anhalt. Jahrbuch der historischen Kommission für die Provinz Sachsen und für Anhalt 10 (1934), pp. 71–105,

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subjects are commended to obey the tenets of Carolingian law9 in a way scarcely distinguishable from that in which the narrator solicits an imaginative following for the idealised morals of a fictional Arthurian culture. There is little awareness of an epistemologically distinct world inhabited by Arthur, and the equation of the two kings indicates that the same ontological status was assigned to Arthur as it was to Charlemagne. Disregarding exact chronology and (modern) distinctions between history and fiction, Wirnt invokes the legendary Arthurian era to support his didactic ambitions, implicitly according Arthur a de facto historical identity. In this way he is able realise his pedagogic aims by appealing to the authority of a particularly charismatic role model. The partisan attitude to ‘Arthurian’ values is also reflected in narratorial attempts to make of Gawein as positive a paternal role model as his material will allow, whilst the conclusion of the work, where father and son work in unison, indicates that Wirnt’s hero is not required to become exercised by the issue of competing imperatives distracting from his father’s example. In contradistinction to Wolfram’s character of Parzival, Wigalois is given no extraordinary, matrilineal genealogy which destines him in future time to forsake the confines of the Arthurian sphere, and there is nothing of Parzival’s attempts to come to terms with the widely different imperatives issued by paternal and maternal legacies. Florie, although her legendary origins are undoubtedly supernatural, is in Wirnt’s depiction largely relegated to the status of a courtly princess,10 becoming here, like Guinevere elsewhere in Arthurian tradition, ‘a fairy who dwindled into a wife.’11 Florie’s fortunate abode, no longer in Wirnt’s treatment a threatening counterworld, associates her with the same familiar object of Fortuna’s girdle that becomes Gawein’s heraldic badge of identity and that provides the symbolic bond between her husband and her son.12 Wigalois is merely charged

9 10

11

12

Andreas Klare, ‘Überlegungen zur Literarisierung von historischen Personen am Beispiel des Hoyer von Mansfeld in Wirnts Wigalois’, Leuvense bijdragen 83 (1994), pp. 485–521, and Volker Honemann, ‘Wigalois’ Kampf mit dem Roten Ritter. Zum Verständnis der Hojir-Aventiure in Wirnts Wigalois’, in German Narrative Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Studies presented to Roy Wisbey on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Volker Honemann, Martin H. Jones, Adrian Stevens and David Wells (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), pp. 347–62. ‘Karles reht’ (line 9554). Achim Jaeger sees another Wirntian corrective in operation here: ‘Im Gegensatz zu Parzivals Mutter Herzeloyde bemüht sich Florie jedoch nicht, ihren Sohn grundsätzlich von seiner ritterlichen Bestimmung und Karriere fernzuhalten. Wirnt korrigiert in seinem Wigalois auf diese Weise das Bild vom jungen Ritter gegenüber dem Parzival. Der Sohn Gaweins entwickelt sich nicht zu einem “Muttersöhnchen”, obwohl er bis zu seinem zwölften Lebensjahr von seiner Mutter erzogen wurde’ (Ein jüdischer Artusritter, p. 250). Rosemary Wallbank, ‘An Irish Fairy in Austria’, p. 285. In Diu Crône Guinevere is claimed from Arthur by the supernatural wooer, Gasozein, who protests that the queen had been promised to him in the fairy domain before she was illicitly taken away by ‘night spirits’. ‘ouch was ein edele rubîn [the gem studding the belt gives it its supernatural power]/ durch sînen wünneclîchen schîn/ in den gürtel vor geleit;/ als si [sc. Florie] dehein swachez leit/ truobte in ir gemüete,/ sô benam des steines güete/ mit süezem schîne ir ungemach,/ sô si sîn varwe rehte ersach’ (lines 792–99). Cf. Fuchs: ‘Die Doppelung ritterlicher Erziehung [sc. by both his mother and father] gerät zu rein quantitativer “Überperfektionierung” des Helden; anders als im Falle der linkischen Knaben Parzival und Lanzelet treten mütterliche und väterliche Welt nicht in Konkurrenz, sie sind in der Person des Sohnes harmonisiert, ohne sich zu bekämpfen oder ergänzen zu müssen, sind prästabil harmonisiert und nicht konfliktuös – dieser Held profitiert maximal aus allen Lebensbereichen’ (Hybride Helden, p. 123).

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to demonstrate, in the terms used by his testing guide, Nereja, that he is capable of gaining ‘good fortune’ in the sense of the approbation of his chivalrous peers, a sentiment frequently endorsed by the narratorial voice.13 Hence although Wigalois makes sorties beyond the perimeter of the Arthurian world in the Roaz sequence, he is not a permanent quester for things lying beyond that world14 (as we witness in the tone of Realpolitik characterising the Lion campaign). No efforts are made finally to direct an audience’s aspirations towards a vaguely defined or purely metaphysical sphere of experience, and whilst it has long been recognised that the tone of Wigalois is more pious than that encountered in Hartmann’s romances,15 the outcome of the protagonist’s ‘great adventure’ and final battle still contrive to evoke Hartmannian notions of a tutelary ‘courtly God’ since Wirnt’s theological conceptions remain consistent with Hartmann’s pragmatic ‘belief in Christianity as a courtly asset’.16 As the saviour of Korntin the new king’s rule shows a distinguished spiritual standard but the ‘executive’ skills characterising his kingship are indications of a practical ability to carry out his obligations under the direction of a paternal advisor whose great common sense (‘molt grant sens’) is his proverbial strength in much contemporary tradition.17 Although Lar inducts Wigalois into an area of experience beyond his father’s world, he endorses the value of Gawein’s early tuition when, in the course of revealing to Wigalois the facts about his true paternity, he takes the son’s descent from Gawein as a benign omen for the impending challenge against Roaz.18 Thereafter, having exonerated Gawein of various blemishes in connection with his initial abduction and subsequent desertion of his wife, Wirnt introduces the contrition scene which triggers the major rehabilitation of character allowing Gawein to play a credible role by the side of the Christian king. The importance attributed to Gawein’s legacy becomes particularly evident in the final section 13 14 15

16

17

18

Cf. ‘wol in, der daz verdienen kan/ daz in diu werlt gerne siht/ und daz man im des besten giht!/ dem hât got saelden vil gegeben’ (lines 1262–5). Referring to the two ideal poles of the Arthurian court and the Grail, Guy Borgnet describes Wigalois as falling ‘à mi-chemin entre les deux utopies’ (‘Le pouvoir politique’, p. 41). ‘Das Herrscherbild im Wigalois hat ethischeren Charakter als in den meisten Artusepen. Auch das Verhältnis zu Gott, das gewöhnlich formelhaft dargestellt wird, ist hier vertieft’ (Lucie Sandrock, Das Herrscherideal in der erzählenden Dichtung des deutschen Mittelalters [Münster in Westfalia: Aschaffenburg, 1931], p. 50). The phrase is that of George Edward Harding, ‘Tradition and Creativity. Narrative Elements in Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois and Heinrich von dem Turlin’s Diu Crône’, p. 34. Heidi Wildt noted Wirnt’s conception of the ‘courtly God’ as being one whose ‘Kunstfertigkeit, seine Hinwendung zur ritterlichen Welt, besonders zur edlen, schönen Dame, sind Zugeständnisse an die spezifisch höfische Gottesschau [. . .] So kennt er [sc. Wirnt] die göttliche Gnade faktisch nur als eine hinzukommende in dem Sinn, dass sie den im Kern guten Menschen, das heißt den Idealmenschen höfisch-ritterlicher Prägung nach Wirnts Herzen, mit Heilskraft erfüllt und ihm das Leben erhält, damit er vor allem seine diesseitigen Ziele erreichen kann’ (‘Das Menschen- und Gottesbild des Wirnt von Gravenberc’, pp. 224–5). Mitgau (‘Bauformen des Erzählens’, p. 172), pointed out that not one of Erec, Iwein and Parzival receives advice from a father figure, whilst Keith Busby notes that at the basis of the father-son structure of the Fair Unknown complex lies the idea that the father represents the moral goal of the son’s search, so that Guinglain in the French version derives much of his identity from his relationship to his father (Gauvain in Old French Literature [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980], pp. 246–8). Lines 4791–9.

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where Gawein both slays Lion and instructs his son in the obligations of regal office (lines 11521–65). Finally, through his invention of the Gawein-WigaloisLifort Gawanides succession, Wirnt explicitly designates the progeny of Gawein, Arthur’s legendary nephew, as symbols of that strength and continuity which he pits against the social disintegration about which he expresses such vivid fears in his narratorial asides. It has been speculated that it might in fact have been more the realistic mode of representation favoured by Wirnt for the depiction of his protagonist’s kingship than any radically innovative ethos depicted in his text which caused critics to see Wigalois’s realm as being substantively different from that of Arthur.19 For the essential qualities of Wolfram’s second hero, Gawan, are integrated into the value-system of Wirnt’s protagonist without discernible tensions. There is for instance a conspicuous absence here of the common motif of ‘the combat between a friend or kinsman’ which in Parzival is made to symbolize the victory of the Grail king elect over the representative of Arthurian chivalry, Gawan.20 Given Gawein’s mixed legendary reputation, the mere presence at the court of the (erstwhile) mondaine adventurer21 indicates that the imagined kingdom is not meant to represent an oppressively theocratic regime.22 Although the Roaz challenges are performed with divine aid rather than solely by knightly prowess, they nevertheless take place under the symbolic aegis of the Court. Even when facing his supreme spiritual challenge Wigalois refuses the gift of a new shield from an ally since this would not possess insignia capable of proclaiming him a knight of the Round Table: Den hiez er im behalten dâ; sînen schilt brâht man im sâ. Den vuorte er durch diu maere

19

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21

22

‘Es bliebe dabei vielleicht die Frage, wie bewußt und absichtsvoll Wirnt sein neues Königsideal dem Artusideal wirklich entgegensetzt, ob sich dieses nicht vielmehr nur hauptsächlich durch den neu verstärkten Realismus von dem idealisierten Artuskönigtum unterscheidet’ (Ute Schießl, ‘Die Gawangestalt’, p. 69). ‘Wiederholt bezeugen sie [sc. Wigalois and Gawein] wider ihr Wissen ihre Verwandtentriuwe [. . .] Es ist für den Wigalois charakteristisch, daß dieses Erkennen der Verwandten nicht in einer dramatisch zugespitzten, potentiell tragischen Szene erkämpft wird, sondern ohne Einsatz der eigenen Existenz sich in Form einer Vision [sc. in the interview with the spectral Lar] ereignet. Im Wigalois ist der Verwandtenkampf auch dort, wo der Stoff eine Möglichkei dazu bietet, vermieden’ (Wolfgang Harms, Der Kampf mit dem Freund oder Verwandten in der deutschen Literatur bis um 1300, Medium Aevum series, Philologische Studien 1 [Munich: Eidos, 1970], p. 74). ‘Von allen Rittern der Artusgesellschaft kann man sich Gawan am leichtesten ohne mittelalterliches Kostüm vorstellen, ohne den Aufwand von Turnieren und das Gewicht der Rüstungen, nur als ein “homme de mout grant san,” als ein honnête homme am französischen Hof vielleicht, oder als ein unauffälliger gentleman’ (Maria Bindschedler, ‘Die Dichtung um König Artus und seine Ritter’, DVLG 31 (1957), pp. 84–100, 95). On Gawein’s symbolic absence (here with respect to Der Jüngere Titurel) Dietrich Homberger notes that ‘es ist verständlich, dass das ritterlich-höfische Idealbild Gaweins in dieser Darstellung von Askese, Weltflucht und mystischem Priestertum keinen Platz hat [. . .] Seine [sc. Gawein’s] außergewöhnliche Position blieb nur so lange unentbehrlicher Bestandteil der Dichtung, wie diese Dichtung Ausdruck und Bestätigung ritterlich-ständischer Führungsansprüche war’ (‘Gawein. Untersuchungen zur mittelhochdeutschen Artusepik’ [dissertation, University of Bochum, 1970], pp. 96, 100).

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daz ein rîter waere von der tavelrunde, daz man dâ bî kunde sehen unde wizzen daz er zer tavelrunde saz. (lines 6159–66) (He asked him to keep back the shield, and his own shield was then brought to him [instead]. He bore this old shield as a token that he was a knight of the Round Table, so that people could see and know that he had a seat at the Round Table.)

By using such correctives to counteract the otherwise somewhat pious tone of the Roaz section, Wirnt erects an Arthurian ‘frame’ about the series of spiritual challenges and so enlarges the scope and definition of what Arthurian chivalry may be held to consist in.23 He thereby demonstrates the relevance of ‘Arthurian’ standards to a quasi-historical situation appropriately described according to the conventions of the chanson de geste genre rather than to those of the romance form,24 a more naturalistic context in which references to the motif of the Grail would have been out of place. Since the Grail notoriously ‘offers the reader who has somehow to interpret it, a marker of the desire for and unattainability of, an ultimate meaning’,25 it was a motif which Wirnt could not have considered conducive to his didactic purposes. When Chrétien’s uncompleted Conte du Graal breaks off, both Perceval and Gauvain are engaged upon their quest, the lack of closure spawning no less than four separate continuations. The first of these elects Gauvain as its quester figure only to show his inglorious failure to mend a broken sword proffered to him and his omission to ask the requisite question at the Grail. The Second Continuation returns to Perceval yet allows him but partial success in mending the sword (a small, morally symbolic, fissure remains). Gerbert’s Continuation permits Perceval to assume kingship of the Grail but only through the device of having the sword mended by a third party in the form of a smith. Only Manessier’s Continuation permits Perceval to mend the broken sword in person and so proceed to Grail kingship in token of his moral integrity. The sheer variety of sequels imagined by Chrétien’s continuators is one index of contemporary difficulties in comprehending an object which, at the beginning of its legendary evolution, was

23

24

25

Cf. H. de Boor, ‘Doch solches Eingebettetsein in kirchliche Frömmigkeit macht für Wirnt die diesseitige Humanität des Artuswesens nicht problematisch. Das Gott-Weltproblem löst sich ihm in der Formel des jungen Hartmann: wer vorbildlich in dieser Welt lebt und damit den Preis der Welt erringt, dem gibt Gott hier saelde und dort das ewige Leben’ (Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Helmut de Boor and Richard Newald, 8 volumes, II, Die höfische Literatur [Munich: Beck, 1953] p. 88). Here the analogy with Durmart le Galois makes itself felt, the French romance being in terms of its material a hybrid of the romance and chanson de geste forms. On this point see further Neil Thomas, ‘The Old French Durmart le Galois: a demystified version of the Perceval story?’ Parergon, new series, 13 (1995), pp. 117–28, and the summary in the appendix of the present volume. Further attention will be directed to this point below. Catherine Batt and Rosalind Field, ‘The Romance Tradition’, in The Arthur of the English. The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Life and Literature (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), pp. 59–70, 65.

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probably the kind of vessel of wonder known to many pre-scientific traditions connected with the restoration of a waste land to fecundity and a barren king to sexual vigour.26 To what extent these mythical origins were understood by later, Continental writers remains unknown27 for even Wolfram’s continuator, Albrecht, wrote of Wolfram’s Grail as an elusive entity whose true nature Wolfram had failed to illuminate.28 It is also conspicuous that some later readings of the Grail define it in anomalous, negative terms rather than in terms consistent with its original, mythic teleology. In Diu Crône, the relics of lance and Grail are highly ambivalent symbols of destruction representing a curse of which the various apocalyptic portents peppering Heinrich’s narrative give ghostly intimations.29 In the Lancelot-Grail cycle we are at first assured that, when the Grail adventures finally come to an end, prisoners will be liberated, wounded victims will be cured and the blind will regain their sight and that the Grail will bring clarity to a benighted world; but such a resolution does not occur and ‘the Grail [. . .] remains a curious mystery, and the intriguing prophecies surrounding it are never fully explained’.30 In the event, Galahad expires in mystic contemplation before the holy vessel as an exemplification of the Cistercian doctrine that the best life is the one that inheres in the spirit and dies to the flesh. This Cistercian reconceptualisation of the Arthurian story could hardly have been found congenial by a majority of courtly audiences, many of whom, like Malory’s readership at a later date, might have resented knights being adversely judged according to a set of ascetic prescriptions.31 Wolfram’s Grail romance, to be sure, largely avoids the strains of mysticism and asceticism particular to much of the French prose tradition since the hero’s quest is depicted in largely metaphorical terms as a journey of spiritual discovery. Parzival’s taking of his pagan half-brother with him to the Grail realm is possibly as noble an ending as could have been contrived during the bitter

26

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28

29 30 31

See Claude Lévi-Strauss, ‘From Chrétien de Troyes to Richard Wagner’, in The View from Afar, translated by Joachim Neugroschel and Phoebe Hoss (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 219–39. Lessing, in a letter to Johann Joachim Eschenburg of 21 October 1774, wrote of the Grail: ‘Mühe wird es Ihnen doch kosten, sich einen hinlänglichen und deutlichen Begriff (wenn Sie ihn nicht schon haben) daraus zu machen, was denn nun eigentlich der Graal gewesen’ (cited by Ulrich Müller and Annemarie Eder ‘Wer ist der Gral? Eine Dokumentation’, in Ring und Gral. Texte, Kommentare und Interpretationen zu Richard Wagners ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’, ‘Tristan und Isolde’, ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ und ‘Parsifal’, ed. Ulrich Müller and Oswald Panagl [Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2002], pp. 199–237, 199). On the variable medieval understandings of ancient myth see Neil Thomas, ‘Some critical reflections on myth and medieval European literature’, in Myth and its Legacy in European Literature, ed. Neil Thomas and Françoise Le Saux (Durham: Durham Modern Language Series, 1996), pp. 1–8. ‘Und was der grale waere, des het vor nieman hugede./ sagt ich nu niht die maere so hete man den gral fur ein trugede’ (Der Jüngere Titurel, ed. Nyholm, volume III/2, strophe 5993, lines 1–2). The spectral old Grail King of Diu Crône reports that all such wonders had been ‘caused’ by the Grail (Diu Crône, ed. Scholl, lines 29549–51). E. Jane Burns, Arthurian Fictions. Rereading the Vulgate Cycle (Columbus: Ohio UP, 1985), p. 172. Terence McCarthy, Reading the ‘Morte Darthur’, Arthurian Studies 20 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988), p. 43.

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sectarianism of the Crusading era. It would certainly count as a decidely ‘affirmative action’ in present-day parlance since the old Grail King openly voices his opposition to the presence of the ‘speckled’ half-brother, a minority figure on two counts, he being both a non-Arthurian and non-Caucasian. Parzival, by disregarding the old king’s prejudice, shows that his Grail kingship is to be run on more tolerant lines.32 Despite the nobility of these conceptions, however, Wolfram’s closure suffers as a would-be conciliatory vision from the capital drawback that Gawan is given no place in the new dispensation, so that the kingdom appears (rather like Albrecht’s notion of the Grail itself as a levitating vessel) to be metaphorically suspended in the air with no foundation in the (military) realities of the early thirteenth century. Wirnt by contrast appears to have avoided a like form of exclusion and the consequential suspicion of evoking a purely ideal realm by having Wigalois take Arthur’s second-in-command into his metaphorical embrace by making him both his military arm and the fount of his counsels. By his depiction of a theocracy in which spiritual values are melded with the chivalric qualities of Gawein and other Arthurian knights, Wirnt both defuses the Wolframian worldly/spiritual conflict and creates an effective rejoinder to Wolfram’s Munsalvaesche, a kingdom whose concerns are dealt with so sketchily that Hatto was drawn to speculate that, given Wolfram’s ‘Cervantean’ streak, it might have been little to his purpose to even attempt to flesh out his Grail realm: Without some powerful influence emanating from the Gral which Wolfram fails to mention, Gral Society even in his bare description would not last a week. It would be an amusing literary exercise for an able pen to portray the inevitable disintegration, and Wolfram himself could have done the job as well as any.33

Hatto’s contention is amply supported by a consideration of Parzival in the larger context of Wolfram’s complete oeuvre where the somewhat impractical ideals floated in the first work no longer continue to carry conviction. In the midst of some of the scenes of sectarian strife occurring in Willehalm, the idea of Christian knights as the bearers of an ideal of ‘pleasing God and the world’ would tend to invite little but hollow laughter,34 whilst the watchword of the Grail community, ‘true love in a context of perfect fidelity’ (‘wâre minne mit triuwen’), announced at the beginning of the fragmentary Titurel, is so betrayed in the body of the

32 33 34

See Parzival, ed. Lachmann, section 795, lines 17–19. Hatto, ‘Introduction to a Second Reading’, p. 417. ‘Überall stoßen in der Willehalmdichtung menschliches und göttliches Recht hart aufeinander. Damit hat Wolfram Widersprüche aufgedeckt, die zwar keineswegs den Glauben an den christlichen Gott ins Wanken bringen können, wohl aber die Zuversicht darauf, daß sich die von ihm gewollte Ordnung innerhalb der Welt jemals verwirklichen lasse. Insbesondere aber wird das Vertrauen in die tragfähigen Fundamente der ritterlichen Kultur zerstört, deren Wertvorstellungen sich angesichts der tatsächlichen Gegebenheiten der Wirklichkeit als scheinhaft und illusionär erweisen’ (Barbara Könneker, ‘Die Stellung der Titurelfragmente im Gesamtwerk Wolframs von Eschenbach’, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, new series, 6 [1965], pp. 23–35, citation 25).

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poem that it has even been argued that the work advances a tacit rejection of the Grail evangile.35 Indeed, if Wirnt’s reading of Parzival were to have been similar to that of the English critic cited above, it would explain why he would have wished to introduce a concretely realised ideal in place of a vision of the ‘Grail’ which might have struck him as being both insubstantial and mendacious.

The Place of Wigalois in German Literary History With the benefit of hindsight it is possible to see that Wirnt chose a literaryhistorical middle way between, on the one hand, the kind of ‘secular’ rewrite later chosen by Heinrich von dem Türlin to advance his Arthurian reappropriation of much Grail material and, on the other hand, the conception of an exotic kingship which Wirnt will have encountered in Wolfram’s Parzival – that conception which was to be reaffirmed with amplifications by Wolfram’s continuator, Albrecht, in his Jüngerer Titurel.36 More independent in his relation to the master than Albrecht was to be, Wirnt resisted the siren song of the Grail whilst still contriving to render something of the positive pretensions of the Grail theme. He differs in this respect from Heinrich von dem Türlin in his adoption of an affirmative response to the substance of the religious quest genre (a genre to which Wigalois might in one sense be more appropriately assigned than Diu Crône whose ‘grail’ is simply ‘un objet de conte, dépourvu de tout symbolisme mystique et religieux’).37 The conquest of Roaz is no merely ‘secular’ adventure such as we find in Le Chevalier du Papegau and to some extent in the various later Jewish versions of Wigalois.38 In contradistinction to Parzival, on the other hand, Wirnt’s form of priest-king seems more capable of engaging with political realities than any of the incarnations of Prester John alluded to by Wolfram.39 It is through practical

35

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37 38

39

The unsustainability of the love of Sigune (as a female denizen of the Grail line) and Schionatulander has been taken to show ‘daß der Dichter des Titurel im Gegensatz zu dem Dichter des Parzival das Vertrauen in die Verwirklichungsmöglichkeiten des immer saelic hie und dort innerhalb eben dieser werlde verloren hatte und sich daher gezwungen sah, den Geltungsanspruch des Gralsymbols zumindest in dieser Hinsicht zu negieren’ (italics supplied) (Barbara Könneker, ‘Die Stellung der Titurelfragmente im Gesamtwerk’, p. 33). On the matter of individual members of the Grail dynasty as dubious ambassadors for the exalted standard of ethical life claimed for them see Gertrude Jaron Lewis, ‘Die unheilige Herzeloyde. Ein ikonoklastischer Versuch’, JEGP LXXIV (1975), pp. 465–85. Alfred Ebenbauer makes a similar distinction between Diu Crône and Der Jüngere Titurel: ‘Wo Heinrich säkularisiert, dort ist Albrecht mit dem Weihwasser einer Gral-Heils-Geschichte zur Hand’ (chapter on Der Jüngere Titurel in Interpretationen: Mittelhochdeutsche Romane und Heldenepen, ed. Horst Brunner [Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993], pp. 353–72, 366). Danielle Buschinger, ‘Un roman arthurien post-classique: La Couronne de Heinrich von dem Türlin’, Le Moyen Âge 89 (1983), pp. 381–95, 393. In the Widuwilt versions there is a suppression of many motifs from the Christian domain (possibly related to the Jewish narrators’ religious reservations concerning the Christological references). On this point see Wulf-Otto Dreessen, ‘Wandlungen des Artusromans im Yiddischen’, especially pp. 92–3. Many Oriental potentates come to offer Wigalois homage to the extent that ‘tout se passe comme si l’Orient venait faire sa soumission à Wigalois’ (Guy Borgnet, ‘Le pouvoir politique’, p. 43).

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statecraft that he demonstrates the ability to square the medieval circle of making imperium and sacerdotium work in unison, his two eastern lands being functionally more reminiscent of workable crusader fiefdoms than of a paradise nobody had been able to set eyes on. Although Wigalois’s kingship aspires to renew the rule of the pious Lar, paying greater attention to almsgiving and the plight of the poor than was customary in romance representations of Arthurian rule,40 it is at the same time a part-restoration of that of Arthur – the model of the highest order for the lay world. It is particularly significant that Wigalois continues to honour Arthur even after he acquires a crown of his own by dint of continuing expressions of homage.41 For these obeisances to Arthur suggest features of the ‘classical’ Arthurian structure found in Hartmann’s Erec where two framing scenes at Arthur’s court are so positioned as to lend symbolic weight to the launch of the knight’s career and to give regal validation to his later accomplishments – Arthur functioning as a model of chivalric perfection against whom the efforts of individual knights are to be measured. Although Wirnt made no attempt to make his work cohere with the bipartite structure of Hartmann’s romances42 and Wigalois’s career does not turn on the kind of vindication which gives a natural two-part division to Hartmann’s works, Wirnt’s hero expresses loyalty to Arthur at the beginning of his career (lines 1607–9) and at the end where Arthur and Guinevere reach forward to take his hand in greeting (lines 11394ff), Wigalois here swearing an eternal oath of allegiance to Arthur.43 A classically ‘Hartmannian’ expression of the medieval virtue of the Golden Mean appears to be implicit in the diplomatic contention that, on the one hand, Arthur was the proximate author of Wigalois’s act of salvation of Lar, but that God’s hidden hand had also been behind the hero’s intervention,44 the melding of secular and divine inspiration making of it in effect a bellum deo auctore.45

40 41

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43 44 45

Although the reformed Gawein too points out to his son the importance of almsgiving and of alleviating the suffering of the poor wherever possible (lines 11540–1). In her analysis of the narrative structure of Wigalois Luise Lerner put the category of ‘Bestätigung durch König Artus’ in penultimate position, preceding the final ‘Rückkehr nach Korntin’ (Studien zur Komposition des höfischen Romans im 13. Jahrhundert, p. 20). Monika Unzeitig-Herzog has recently pointed out with regard to the ‘classical’ romances ‘daß der Artusroman einen Heldentypus entwirft, dessen Handlungsziel und Hauptmotivation nicht a priori die Rückkehr zum Artushof ist, sondern daß der Weg dieses Helden über diverse Aventiuren vom Artusritter zum Herrscher führt. Der Artushof hat in bezug auf den Helden propädeutische Funktion. In dieser Doppelung von Artusritter und Herrscher liegt die wesentliche Konzeption des Artushelden. Gerade durch die Herrschaftsetablierung über die arthurische Ideologie, die die Herstellung von Recht und Ordnung zum Ziel hat, wird ein Konzept des berechtigten und gerechten Herrschers entworfen, dessen Herrschaft nur eine Zeit der saelde sein kann’ (Überlegungen zum Erzählschluß im Artusroman’, in Erzählstrukturen der Artusliteratur, ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel, pp. 233–53, 253). ‘nu wizzet daz ich immer wil/ iu dienstes wesen undertân (lines 11506f). ‘nu hat dich got her gesant/ daz du uns erledigen solt;/ dâ mit erwirbestu den solt/ des du immer vrô maht sîn/ Larien, die tohter mîn/ dar zuo ditz lant ze Korntin’ (lines 4701–6). ‘Vor allem zeichnet er [sc. der Wigalois] sich zwar nicht durch eine scharf herausgearbeitete Konfliktsituation aus, aber die Kämpfe des Helden sind im Grunde keine sinnlosen Kraftanstrengungen aus Freude am Abenteuer, sondern Wigalois kämpft im Auftrag Gottes für die Sache der Christen gegen Teufel und Heiden’ (Hiltrud. K. Knoll, ‘Studien zur realen und außerrealen Welt im deutschen Artusroman’, p. 242).

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The nearest analogy in the German tradition to this form of kingship is not Wolfram’s Grail but that of Claus Wisse and Philipp Colin in their considerably later Rappoltstein Parzifal (1336).46 Here, at the conclusion of a work which gives a generally very faithful translation of a number of Chrétien’s continuations, the German authors nevertheless alter the conclusion of the third (Manessier) Continuation by deleting the tradition in which Perceval ends his days as a hermit. Here it is not only ‘Ferfis Anschvrin’ but the whole of the Arthurian retinue who are invited by Parzival to the Grail realm, the benefits of the Grail being accessible to all in this symbolic blurring of the distinction between the worldly realm of Arthur and the spiritual realm of the Grail. The Rappoltstein Parzifal, however, is a late medieval summa, somewhat like Ulrich Füetrer’s Buch der Abenteuer – a work in which familiar motifs and even whole romances are appropriated according to a principle of maximum inclusivity.47 Illumination concerning Wirnt’s working methods may perhaps be more appropriately sought from an intertextual comparison with a work stemming from the productive stage of romance composition, namely, from the near-contemporary early thirteenth-century French verse romance, Durmart Le Galois, for this work supplies analogies to Wigalois both in its high spiritual tone and in its attempt to demystify the quest tradition found in Chrétien’s Perceval.48 Although many versions of the Grail legend link it with the Passion, this identification was never officially endorsed by the orthodox Church which consistently declined to recognize it as a symbol emblematic of the Saviour’s sacrifice.49 Like Wirnt, the Durmart poet does not invoke the motif of the Grail, introducing instead a symbol of a candle-lit tree whose meaning is expounded ex cathedra by the Pope himself. The tree thereafter becomes the focus of oracular guidance to the hero at various stages of a career which falls under the spiritual aegis of Holy Church. In this way Durmart provides a corrective to the individualistic notion of a spiritually unmonitored knight in quest of an invisible goal outside the Church’s moral jurisdiction. The final phase of the French romance is in substance a Crusading epic in which Durmart and his allies combat the enemies of the Church in defence of its Holy Father. From this representative of supreme spiritual authority Durmart receives further guidance before establishing himself as King in Ireland. In an epilogue we are told that Durmart continued throughout his reign to pursue the medieval Golden Mean of pleasing God and his peers: Largece et cortoisie ama Tant cum il vesqui et dura.

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Parzifal von Claus Wisse and Philipp Colin, Elsässische Literaturdenkmäler aus dem XIV–XVII Jahrhundert 5, ed. Karl Schorbach (Strassburg and London: Trübner, 1888; repr. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1974). Dorothee Wittmann-Klemm, Studien zum ‘Rappoltsteiner Parzifal’, GAG 224 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1977), p. 129. Durmart Le Galois, ed. Gildea. For discussion see Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, pp. 170–80 and the summary of Durmart in the appendix section below. The Grail. A Casebook, ed. Dhira B. Mahoney, Introduction, p. 2. See also Anne-Marie d’Arcy, Wisdom and the Grail. The Image of the Vessel in the ‘Queste del Saint Graal’ and Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreall’ (Dublin, Portland, Oregon: Four Courts Press, 2000), p. 26; and Richard O’Gorman, ‘Ecclesiastical tradition and the Holy Grail’, Australian Journal for French Studies 6 (1969), pp. 3–8.

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Molt ama deu et sainte glise, Et si tenoit droite justise. (ed. Gildea, lines 15919–22) (He loved generosity and courtesy as long as he lived; he greatly loved God and Holy Church, and maintained the highest standards of justice.)

Durmart, I have argued elsewhere, is less ‘a realisation and confirmation of the spiritual currents present in Chrétien’s last work’50 than a creative confrontation with that work and the plethora of variant continuations to which it gave rise.51 The hero’s final challenge becomes a practical and collective one in a recognisable, politico-historical context. The relocation of the quest within a moral universe issuing clear imperatives and requiring unequivocal responses dissociates this romance from the world of Perceval. Durmart is less a moral and metaphysical conundrum than an Arthurian mirror-for-princes penned by a moralist possessed of clear and positive religious convictions.52 The God of Durmart reveals himself in a graduated series of epiphanies via the glossed symbol of the illuminated tree, guiding the hero’s quest and finally speaking to him through the voice of his vicar, the Pope. This ideal of a guiding God, contrasting so markedly with Chrétien’s (apparently) proto-Deist notions of an impassible, non-interventionist God, is the creation of an author whose hero symbolises both Christian and chivalric values. Durmart stands out not only from Perceval but also from the somewhat complacent, pragmatic tone of the majority of post-Chrétien verse romances as being a chivalric Bildungsroman with a clear moral for the rank-and-file, many of whom might have been more mystified than enlightened by Perceval and its widely different literary continuations. In a similar expository manner, Wirnt presented the idea that Wolfram adumbrates obliquely through the figures of Feirefiz and Prester John (namely, the harmony of Cross and Crescent) more literally when Wigalois uses Christ’s own methods to preach to Roaz’s pagan subjects and lead them towards acceptance of the Christian faith.53 In doing away with the distinction between roman courtois and chanson de geste (where scenes of mass conversion are more common) Wigalois departs from the limitations the romance customarily imposes on its heroes and shows enlightened kingship to be a more practicable ideal than anything we encounter in the works of the ‘classical’ generation. By this I mean that, whilst it is generally conceded that the endings of

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53

The words cited are those of Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, ‘Arthurian heroes and convention: Meraugis de Portlesguez and Durmart le Galois’, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, 2 volumes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly and Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), II, pp. 79–92. Neil Thomas, ‘The Old French Durmart le Galois: a demystified version of the Perceval story?’ Edmund Stengel in his edition of Li Romans de Durmart le Galois (Stuttgart: Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart 116: 1873), pp. 514–18, made a collection of the narrator’s mainly conventional moral digressions (‘sentenzen, deren meiste er [sc. the Durmart poet] aus den damals circulierenden sammlungen von moralsprüchen geschöpft haben wird’, p. 514). See lines 9493–560, in the course of which Wigalois commends to his new subjects the name of the Emperor, Charlemagne (line 9554), a figure whose erstwhile imposition of Christianity on the first German Empire was proverbial.

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Iwein and Parzival are problematical, even that of Erec, where the hero’s kingship is alluded to only summarily, begs disturbing questions (or, in medieval terms, imagined ‘continuations’) about what the substance of the new king’s régime was meant to be in precise terms. In Wigalois, by contrast, the values espoused by the protagonist in his capacity as regal role model are made abundantly clear. The messianic hope for a clearly defined form of kingship in the ‘Epoche der Angst’ of medieval Europe was omnipresent.54 That a feasible means of controlling the problem of endemic lawlessness through strong leadership was perceived to be a prime desideratum by the narrator is discernible from the frequency and power of jeremiads which sometimes attain an apocalyptic pitch.55 The old view of Wigalois that it was simply full of ‘an abundance of phantoms and enchantments’56 (especially in the Lar/Roaz sections) has recently begun to yield to the realisation that ‘Wirnt designed the Korntin adventure and, in the last analysis, the romance as a whole, to deliver a message of apocalyptic urgency to his age’.57 Given the foreboding tone which dominates the narrator’s thought structures, the monstrous creatures and uncanny phenomena which his protagonist is set to face cannot simply be glossed as mirabilia (as this term is reflected in the somewhat ironic title of the thirteenth-century French verse romance, Les Merveilles de Rigomer, with its pseudo-quest structure),58 but rather as portents of annihilation from which the protagonist must provide messianic salvation. Apocalyptic fears doubtless contributed much to what has been termed the compensatory ‘Überperfektionierung’ (Stefan Fuchs) of the title hero. The young knight, when he passes beyond the maternal stage of tuition, must submit to his father’s counsels in a prolonged apprenticeship.59 His career must

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59

Cf. Franz Kampers, Die deutsche Kaiseridee in Prophetie und Sage (Munich: H. Lüneberg, 1896), especially pp. 65–82. ‘Wîlen dô minten si got,/ dô hêt ouch ers in sîner pflege./ nû kêre wir alle von dem wege/ sîner gebot, diu er uns lie./ dâ von solt wir bedenken wie/ diu werlt sich verkêret hât;/ ir vreude jaemerlîche stât;/ diu reht sint gevloehet;/ ir gewalt der ist gehoehet;/ diu triuwe ist verschertet;/ untriuwe mit nîde hertet./ diu zît hât sich verwandelt gar;/ ie lanc lenger boesent diu jâr./ ezn lebt nu niemen sîne zît;/ diu gîticheit boese ende gît;/ sus hât si sich verkêret./ ir vreude ist gesêret/ mit toetlîcher sünde’ (lines 10254–71). Hendricus Sparnaay, ‘Hartmann von Aue and his successors’, in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. R. S. Loomis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), pp. 430–42, 439. Ingeborg Henderson, ‘Dark figures and Eschatological Imagery’, p. 110. Les Merveilles de Rigomer, ed. Wendelin Foerster and Hermann Breuer, 2 volumes (Dresden: Niemeyer, 1908, 1915); trans. as The Wonders of Rigomer by Thomas Vesce (New York: Garland, 1988). Like the Grail romances, Rigomer excels in evocations of the uncanny, including the sound of mysterious hunting horns heard in a forest suggesting the Wild Hunt with its phantom forms of unconfessed dead and unbaptized child deaths, but the metaphysical dimension remains a blind motif when we find out (rather bathetically) that the supreme challenge awaiting the hero (Lancelot) at the ostensibly cursed castle of Rigomer is essentially a secular one requiring prowess at arms (and sexual self-control) rather than spiritual distinction. See Neil Thomas, ‘The secularisation of myth: Les Merveilles de Rigomer as a contrafactura of the French Grail romances’, in Myth and its Legacy in European Literature, ed. Neil Thomas and Françoise Le Saux (Durham: Durham Modern Language Series, 1996), pp. 159–69. Cf. Wildt: ‘Am meisten bedrückt unseren Dichter hier im Gedanken an seine Zeit der Verlust der ritterrechtlichen Bestimmungen über die Zulassung zum Ritterstand, der das Absinken eben dieses Standes zur Folge hat. Ihren Inhalt sieht er vorwiegend in der ausreichend langen Bewährung als Knappe und der Bedingung adliger Abkunft’ (‘Das Gottes- und Menschenbild’, p. 226).

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thereafter proceed in a graduated, linear movement (inimical though this may be to modern tastes),60 advancing from an initial knightly proving to a katabasis in the demonic underworld and thence to an ‘anabasis’, that is, an ‘ascent to a position of social and psychological security’61 where his distinctive rule finds favour with both God and his peers. Only such a hyberbolically delineated saviour figure might be depended on to ward off the disturbingly intrusive visions of apocalyptic punctuating Wirnt’s composition.62 Because the present dangers and future portents of disaster are so great, the elect knight must possess a firm sense of the spiritual plane and yet at one and the same time be capable of dealing with any demonic manifestations of the unseen world as they reveal themselves in the fabric of everyday circumstance. If Wigalois’s ‘great adventure’ against devilish foes lacks for us the tension of the trials undergone by Erec, Iwein and Parzival, this is partly because we have lost the logic of what Rudolf Otto termed ‘daemonic dread’, the fear of malign forces beyond the phenomenal sphere which are nevertheless thought to exert an all-too palpable effect on the material world in which we are set to live. Wirnt’s experiment in making an Arthurian romance a vehicle for his didactic aims appears to have formed part of an ‘attempted emancipation of secular literature’.63 There is perhaps no ready-made generic label for a romance with such aims in medieval German. In the Middle English context the term ‘homiletic romance’ has been mooted for a disparate group of romances bearing affinities with religious literature and saints’ lives presenting ‘a hero who is not only an exemplary knight and warrior but such a faithful servant of God that he becomes almost a saint’.64 The objection to the term ‘homiletic romances’

60

61

62

63

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‘The hero himself must not embody achieved perfection. If he does, as Galahad in effect does, then the suspense is lost. We know that Galahad is destined to draw the sword from the Stone; we know that he is the peerless knight who can sit in the empty seat of the Round Table; we know, finally, that “Thys ys he by whom the sankgreall shall be encheved, for there sate never none but he there but he were myscheved.” ’ The result is that we can never believe in Galahad’s humanity; he is too perfect. At least the hero must be unproven, even though we suspect him of perfectibility; he must be a Beaumains or a Perceval, with much to learn and much to undergo’ (John Stevens, Medieval Romance [London: Hutchinson, 1973], p. 170). The term is used by Gary Shockey, ‘Homo Viator, Katabasis and Landscapes. A comparison of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône’, dissertation, University of California at Davis (Ann Arbor MI: University Microfilms International, 1999), Preface, p. i. Cf. Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘ “Ein rîs ich dar vmbe abe brach/von seinem wunder bovme” ’: ‘Was machte Wirnts Werk zu einem Bestseller? [. . .] Der Held ohne Krise bewährt die angeborenen adligen Tugenden in einer Welt, deren Gefahren aus eigener Kraft nicht mehr in jedem Fall gemeistert werden können. Nur ungebrochenes Gottvertrauen gepaart mit dem selbstverständlichen Festhalten an den höfischen Normen garantiert den Erfolg. Diese spannend verpackte adlige Lebenslehre traf den Nerv der feudalen Welt’ (p. 236). Cf. Lewis Jillings, Diu Crône, pp. 142–84, and Walter Haug, Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle Ages. The German Tradition 800–1300 in its European Context, translated by Joanna Catling (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), especially p. 233. See Dieter Mehl, The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 120–58, citation 120 (German version: Mittelenglische Romanzen des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts [Heidelberg: Winter, 1967]). Cf. also Claudia Brinker who sees in Wigalois ‘ein anschauliches Beispiel dafür, wie fließend die Grenzen zwischen geistlicher und weltlicher Dichtung angelegt sind, wie sehr die eine von der anderen beeinflußt

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on the grounds that such are ‘mainly feudal romances which incorporate Christian values’65 hardly seems a fatal one to the present writer when applied to Wigalois and, indeed, both the above formulations would seem to fit Wigalois adequately. Wirnt too shows knights not simply as figures of entertainment but as role models with whom his audience could identify.66 By erasing the generic parameters by which these knights are customarily confined, Wirnt is able to hold up the idealised morals of an ‘Arthurian’ culture as being complementary to universal Christian values and so potentially applicable to a contemporary context. Investing the culture of his imagined Arthurian age with high moral authority, he enlists the services of knights of that entourage to support the hero in stemming a representative manifestation of random lawlessness. Unlike many other moralists who either disdained the Arthurian fictions or saw them as being a form of propaedeutic ‘children’s literature’,67 Wirnt saw in their entertaining but morally somewhat variegated traditions an opportunity for rewriting so as to represent the persons of the Arthurian world as contemporary icons. Their patterns of conduct are delineated both imaginatively and, more unusually, via the glosses of Wirnt’s moral exhortations,68 as a fitting support for the Christian faith. Initially styled the Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, Wigalois reconciles the realm of Fortuna/World metonymically associated with the paternal, Arthurian sphere with his obligations to God and to all those dubbed in Willehalm ‘God’s creatures’ (gotes hantgetât) more convincingly than any other hero in the canon of courtly literature.

65 66

67

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sein kann und wie wenig von der Forschung postulierte Gattungsnormen greifen’ (‘Hie ist diu âventiure geholt!’ p. 87) and Ingrid Hahn, who writes of ‘Wirnts Gratwanderung zwischen den Gattungen’ (‘Gott und Minne, Tod und Triuwe. Zur Konzeption des Wirnt von Gravenberg’, in Personalbezeichnungen in der mittlealaterlichen Literatur, ed. Helmut Brall, Barbara Haupt and Urban Küsters [Düsseldorf: Droste, 1994], pp. 37–50, 52). Stephen Knight, ‘The Social Function of the Middle English Romances’, p. 104. Wirnt wished to extend ‘die gesellschaftliche Deutungskapazität des attraktiven und beliebten Artusstoffes’ (Gert Kaiser, ‘Der Wigalois des Wirnt von Gravenberg’, p. 436). Cf. also the judgement of Volker Mertens who writes that that the work is ‘vor allem zur fürstlichen Repräsentation geeignet’ because its hero is beyond reproach (‘Iwein und Gwigalois – der Weg zur Landesherrschaft’, p. 23). Thomasin von Zerclaere advances a number of Arthurian heroes as role models for youth (Erec, Gawan, Parzival, Iwan, Arthur) but also Charlemagne and Alexander. See Thomasin von Zirklaria, Der Wälsche Gast, ed. by Heinrich Rückert with an Introduction and ‘Register’ by Friedrich Neumann (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965): ‘Juncherren suln von Gâwein/ hoeren, Clîes, Erec, Îwein,/ und suln richten sîn jugent/ gar nâch Gâweins reiner tugent./ volgt Artûs dem künege hêr/ der treit iu vor vil guote lêr,/ und hebt ouch in iuwerm muot/ künic Karl den helt guot’ (lines 1041–8). Cf. also lines 6325–34. Wirnt differs for instance from Konrad von Stoffeln in that Konrad, whilst expressing generally ‘improving’ ambitions for his work, is more inclined to let his romance itself perform that task: ‘[. . .] nu ist genuoc/ geseit an disem maere [sc. the moralising preamble]/ bîspel si sint ze swaere/ ze sagen, wâ man sich dâ bî/ niht bezzert. Lâzen wir si vrî/ und grîfen wir daz maere an/ dar umb ich der rede began’ (Der Ritter mit dem Boc, ed. Wolfgang Achnitz, lines 11–18).

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Conclusion This study began by addressing the problem most frequently posed about Wigalois, namely, why should a text often understood in the modern era as one on the face of it deriving its substance from the same style, conventional machinery and range of motifs as the romances of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue and other ‘classical’ writers have held such a great appeal for medieval audiences. In analysing this issue I concluded that the question was in part misconceived. The method of collecting verbal or motif correspondences as proof of later poets’ dependence on their predecessors (as practised by an earlier, yet influential group of scholars) had, I noted, already been disputed (most trenchantly by Wolfgang Mitgau). For the Middle High German Dichtersprache was the common resource of the majority of poets using rhyming couplets (just as Biblical tags were often used unconsciously by Goethe and Schiller as it served their turn). No individual medieval poet owned the ‘copyright’ of this common stock of expressions. Furthermore, in all the major medieval genres, lyric, heroic and romance, examples were provided of later authors’ challenging their predecessors’ ‘ownership’ of particular themes, this adversarial modus operandi revealing itself to have been one particularly characteristic of Wirnt himself. The phenomenon of the ‘literary feud’ is well enough known in the lyric genre where Walther von der Vogelweide contested notions of chaste adoration (‘Hohe Minne’) common in the poetic traditions of his predecessors. However, by drawing attention to a large volume of further evidence in heroic and romance forms (where later poets were likewise observed to be ‘entering the lists’ with poetic predecessors), I myself sought to contest the rise and fall school of medieval literary historiography (according to which later, ‘epigonal’ writers are held to have represented the lamentable fall from high to low of a once productive literary tradition). My own readings suggest, on the contrary, that the phenomenon of later writers’ criticising the terms of their predecessors’ compositions (and offering creative rewrites of them) was as least as common a phenomenon as mere poetic imitation. This finding in turn suggests the possibility that the ‘squire’ invoked by Wirnt as his source did not correspond to one, historical person but was rather invoked as a means of disarming any possible criticisms of a narrative which coheres so little either with the matter or the sense of the Fair Unknown/Perceval traditions. Wirnt’s romance, although formally assigned to that tradition, does not appear to have been a passive response to any one, particular source since it in effect advances an ideological critique of the germinal thought informing that whole tradition, namely, that ‘nature will eventually out despite a lack of corresponding nurture’. The emphasis laid on nurture as a force of equal

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importance to that of nature is signposted by the (strictly speaking) premature appearance in the narrative of the supposedly long-lost father. Although Wigalois is cut off from Gawein from his earliest infancy, little is lost since contact is reestablished just as soon as the youth is ready to receive adult counsels. This means (against the received terms of the tradition) that the son is not compelled to miss out on what is depicted as being the indispensable rite of passage where Gawein instructs him in the proper ways of chivalric conduct. This anomalously interpolated communication between father and son, together with the fact that the hero’s initial series of challenges (which contains telling reminiscences of the father’s adventures in Parzival) is described as being performed according to his father’s example. This suggests that an apter subtitle for the romance than the rather misleading ‘Knight of Fortune’s Wheel’ might be ‘The Romance of Gawein’s Son’. For the ideological thrust of the narrative is that Gawein’s legacy – albeit in the rather more refined and spiritualised form lent it by the son – is that which the narrator would wish to project into the uncertain future in the form of the imagined grandson, Lifort Gawanides. The emphasis placed by Wirnt on the knightly equivalent of an uninterrupted apostolic succession, together with his narratorial fulminations on the subject of jumped-up stable boys becoming knights, provides ample evidence that he could have hardly permitted himself the liberty of telling a story with such a ‘latitudinarian’ bias as that of how an entirely uninstructed youth might achieve the heights of chivalric preeminence. So strong, indeed, does Wirnt appear to have been on this point that the original logic of the Fair Unknown tradition seems to have become entirely expunged from the German reception of his work. In the fourteenth-century Wigamur, partly inspired by Wigalois,1 the eponymous hero declines a crown thrice even though his superlative feats of valour entitle him to kingship in the eyes of many peers. Without an accredited name and a title to legitimate succession, he asserts, he would be scorned by those many lords who would dispute his title.2 He even turns down a lady’s hand in marriage since he does not, given his present status as an anonymous, feel worthy of her.3 Only when he finds that his father is a member of the established nobility does he feel qualified to accept the privileges of kingship, which include the taking of a wife.4 By the time of the appearance of the various Yiddish Artushof versions in the seventeenth century, the notion that the hero could be looking for an unknown father has become a completely dead letter. The Jewish adapters tell the story of how Widuwilt searches out an admired father whose valour has

1

2

3

4

For the text see Wigamur, ed. Danielle Buschinger, GAG 303 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1987). For the Wigalois/Wigamur connections see Neil Thomas, ‘The sources of Wigamur and the German reception of the Fair Unknown legend’. ‘nem ich das kunigreich nu,/ vil leicht kem es dar zu,/ so dy hern in den landen/ mein geburt nit erkanten,/ sye hetten mich schwechlich,/ und begunden mein reich/ wider rauben und heren’ (Wigamur, ed. Buschinger, lines 2261–7). He turns down the proposal of the lady, Eydes, with these words: ‘ich bin nit so reich,/ noch so mächtig und gleych/ guottes und eren,/ das ich solte kerren zu eüch, frawe grofß’ (Wigamur, ed. Buschinger, lines 1954–8). Wigamur, ed. Buschinger, lines 4321–9.

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already been described to him. There is no equivocation about the naming of the father and the grandfather tells Widuwilt exactly how to recognise him: Wilstu doch dein vatr findn, du solst reitn in künig Artus land lebt er [sc. the father] noch, er wert dir bikant der libst vatr dein er tregt ein guldi rot auf dem helm sein; dr bei solst in kenen un’ wen du ritr Giwein hürst nenen. (ed. Landau, section 27, lines 19–27) (If you wish to find your father then ride to the court of King Arthur. Your dear father, if he still lives, will become known to you: he bears a golden wheel on his helmet by which you may recognize him as well as by his name when you hear it: Gawein.)

These later receptions document the continuing influence of the Wirntian backlash against the egalitarian notions of the Fair Unknown tradition. Ironically, it appears that this tradition was modified in the course of its establishment on German soil so as to silence its emancipatory undertones and bring it into line with a more dynastically orientated political ideology in which the noble name of the father begins to dominate the tradition.5 Since Gawein in legendary history is as closely connected to the interests of the Arthurian regime as is Hagen to the concerns of the Burgundian royal court in the Nibelungenlied, any romance which underscores its protagonist’s status as Gawein’s son must clearly be at one and the same time a work seeking to validate ‘Arthurian’ values. Although Wigalois’s kingship was often interpreted in twentieth-century critical writings as having been influenced by a spiritual form of rule deriving from Wolfram’s conception of a separate (non-Arthurian) Grail realm, in fact the conciliatory spirit in which Wirnt narrates his finale does not imply a disregard for the symbolic importance of the Arthurian régime. If negative hints in contemporary traditions about Arthur had impinged on Wirnt, he declines to notice them, and his Arthur is represented as being of an equivalent status with the title hero himself. Such appears to have been Ulrich Füetrer’s reading of Wigalois when he glossed the final part of the narrative as indicating a parity of Wigalois’s kingship with that of Arthur: Wigelois zogt zu lannde mit seiner frawen clar. mit menng küenem weygannde do ward beseczt das lannd mit alle gar. Korotin ward der frewden zil genennet, an den vogt von Pritone ward zu seinr zeit nye pesser chünig erchennet.6

5 6

See Alfred Ebenbauer, ‘Wigamur und die Familie’, in Artusrittertum im späten Mittelalter. Ethos und Ideologie, ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel (Giessen: Schmitz, 1984), pp. 28–44. Ulrich Füetrer, Wigoleis, ed. Heribert A. Hilgers (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975), stanza 315. It is noteworthy that Wirnt’s Wigalois receives Arthur’s blessing only after he has proved

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(Wigoleis repaired to his kingdom with his beautiful wife, and his land was henceforth occupied by the most valorous knights. Korntin became known as the crown of joy. Apart from the Leader of the Britons [sc. Arthur] no better king [than Wigoleis] was ever witnessed in those times.)

It is an irony of the Arthurian legend that the erstwhile leader of an ancient Celtic ‘fringe’ against the incursionary Saxons was made into an establishment figurehead when he was coopted by the many language communities to which his fame spread (with the notable exception of the late-medieval Scottish chronicle tradition). Given the narrator’s many reactionary animadversions, it is natural that he should have sought to rehoist the Arthurian standard against the somewhat quizzical or even sceptical attitudes towards Arthur found in some of the works of his ‘classical’ predecessors (preeminently in Parzival with its confrontational Parzival/Gawan grouping). Unlike Heinrich von dem Türlin, on the other hand, whose systematic attempt to secularise the Grail tradition led him to the lectio facilior that the Grail was little more than an Arthurian trophy, Wirnt strove to give a more credible religious underpinning to his imagined ideal kingdom. That kingship is described in considerably less hyperbolic terms than is Wolfram’s kingdom of the Grail since Wirnt strives to demonstrate the practicability of an ideal to which Wolfram merely adverts in the celebrated envoi to Parzival, drawing attention there only to the desirability of pleasing God and one’s peers: swes lebn sich sô verendet, daz got niht wirt gepfendet der sêle durch des lîbes schulde, und der doch der werlde hulde behalten kan mit werdekeit, daz ist ein nütziu arbeit.7 (Whoever ends his days in such a way that God is not deprived of his soul on account of his sins yet at one and the same time he is able to win the good will of his peers through nobility of conduct – that person has not wasted his life.)

It is an ideal to which the foremost social and political commentator of thirteenth-century Germany, Walther von der Vogelweide, gave his imprimatur in a celebrated philosophical meditation, ‘Ich saz ûf eime steine.’ Yet the would-be gradualist solution of the God/World problem offered in Parzival is marred by the spoiling effect of Wolfram’s enigmatic closure and, in Walther’s case, by the poet’s pessimistic estimate of the practicability of the very ideal he invokes. It is not in the end possible, judges Walther, to be able to reconcile secular projects with devotion to the Almighty: jâ leider desn mac niht gesîn, daz guot und werltlîch êre

7

himself as king, whereas Hartmann’s Erec receives Arthur’s praises after his last exploit as a knight errant and before he inaugurates a kingship of his own. Through this variation on the structural model of Erec we gain an idea of the two institutions as complementary (the notion which Füetrer appears to endorse in the stanza cited immediately above). Parzival, ed. Lachmann, section 827, lines 19–24.

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und gotes hulde mêre zesamene in ein herze komen. stîg und wege sint in benomen; untriuwe ist in der sâze, gewalt vert ûf der strâze, fride und reht sint sêre wunt.8 (It most assuredly can never be that possessions, social standing and devotion to God are to be reconciled in any single human heart. The paths towards that goal have been taken from under us. Treachery crouches in ambush; violence stalks our highways, law and order has been fatally undermined.)

In contradistinction to the tone of Wolfram’s belated and casually introduced nostrum and to Walther’s nihilistic pose, Wirnt succeeds in showing the much invoked but little realised ideal in action, inventively moulding together a profusion of disparate traditions with his own running commentaries to create an Arthurian mirror-for-princes and commoners alike whose formal and thematic unity makes his claim to have derived the entirety of his story from the oral testimony of a single French squire seem considerably too modest.

8

Walther von der Vogelweide, Gedichte, ed. and translated by Peter Wapnewski (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1972), poem 36.

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Appendix: Summaries of Related Romances1

Diu Crône After a proem in which the narrator claims both merits and demerits for his artistry, he turns to the figure of Arthur, opening with a somewhat dismal account of the humiliations, defections and schisms scarring the Arthurian court. The king had an early taste of tragedy at the age of six when his father, Uther, died. On the occasion of a test of virtue brought to the court by an emissary of King Priure none of the courtiers except Arthur are able to drink of the goblet without spilling its wine, and this is taken as a great dishonour for the court. Honour is hardly restored when Kei challenges the emissary to a fight which he loses (despite the emissary being lightly armed). Soon after this event, Gawein surreptitiously leads away the majority of the knights to take part in a tournament elsewhere, leaving the unsuspecting Arthur with only Kei, Gales and Aumagwin. When he finds out about the deception, Arthur angrily convenes a hunting expedition with his remaining companions. They make a modest catch but the rigours of the season presently impel them to return to court, where Arthur warms himself by the fireside. For this act Arthur is mocked by his wife for his soft ways, and she contrasts him unfavourably with a man who rides out lightly clad in all seasons singing love songs. Stung by the reproach, Arthur and his companions set out once more in the freezing weather to find out if the stranger knight really exists. The latter turns out to be real enough and when challenged by Arthur’s companions, proceeds to trounce them despite the fact that, like King Priure’s emissary, he fights without armour. To Arthur he reveals his name – Gasozein de Dragoz – and the fact that he was the first love of Queen Guinevere, whom he now reclaims as his own. As proof of his claim he reveals a ring given him by Guinevere (a token of Fortune said to confer invincibility on its possessor together with the love and respect of all). Gawein, at length returning to the court after numerous campaigns (during which he acquires a wife, Amurfina), sets out to remedy the problems of his liege lord. After a prolonged battle, Gawein is able to overcome Gasozein, who later agrees to drop his claim and become a knight of the Round Table. After adjudicating in a Rival Sisters contest (similar to that occuring in Iwein), Gawein joins Arthur and the other knights on a ride through the forest of ‘Aventuros’ on the way to another tournament. In the course of the journey Gawein becomes detached from his fellows and appears to go into a trance-like state in which he

1

For summaries of the Fair Unknown analogues see Chapter One.

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witnesses a series of terrifying visions. At first he sees a maiden riding with a dead knight on her steed (rather like Wolfram’s Sigune). The woman attributes the knight’s death and those of others to Parzival’s failure to ask the Question at the Grail castle. After the maiden has ridden on Gawein sees hovering above two riderless horses a broadsword and a lance mowing down a troupe of knights dressed in white tunics. The slain army then catches fire and makes the night bright as day. Gawein follows the tracks of the horses which bring him into a burned-up waste land beyond which, on a high mountain, he notices a variety of victims undergoing torments. Passing by these awful sights, he strains to keep up with the two horses, at one point being sucked down into deep mud but saved at the last moment by an emissary of the goddess Fortuna. Eventually he comes to a castle where an old man is nourished by blood from a crystal vessel carried by a procession of maidens in a ritual which appears to be a variant of the ‘Grail’ topos. Gawein never succeeds in grasping the import of this strange ceremony and the next day has to endure the shame of finding himself outside the castle walls lying in a field. On his return Gawein passes through the land of Fimbeus of Gardin whose wrath he had incurred by wresting from him the magic belt with its miraculous jewel. This had been wrought by Lady Fortuna and then been given to Fortuna’s sister, Giramphiel, who had passed it to her lover, Fimbeus, as a protective amulet. Under Fortuna’s tutelage, we are told, he is able to make his way through that hostile territory. However, Giramphiel still tries to avenge herself by giving him the false information that the land of Fortuna is guarded only by a small dragon where in fact it is a large one which almost costs Gawein his life. Making his escape from the fiery breath of the enormous dragon, he comes in a singed and rather denuded state to the palace of the Lady Siamerac of Lembil who gives him the requisite instructions for reaching Fortuna’s realm of Ordohorht (which is to cast a ball of thread over the lake before her castle and pull himself over the water towards her stronghold). Having gained Fortuna’s palace he finds that goddess, in accordance with traditional iconographic conventions, to be beautiful on her right hand side but loathsome on the left. On Gawein’s entrance, however, her notorious wheel stops its rotations, whereupon the goddess, her son, ‘Heil’, and other inhabitants of her palace become as well-formed on both sides of their bodies as they had once been only on their one side. The goddess now promises perpetual good fortune to Gawein and to his king – although, contradictorily to that assurance, Gawein immediately runs into a volcanic storm in which he needs the further help of Fortuna’s burgrave, Aanzim, these events occurring even before he has made his way back to the perimeter of Fortuna’s realm. Gawein perseveres to the castle of Karamphi (Chrétien’s Escavalon, Wolfram’s Schampfanzun) where a sequence of events occurs closely paralleling a section of Chretien’s Perceval and Wolfram’s Parzival. The younger lord of the castle, Angaras, wishes to avenge himself on Gawein for his having inadvertently killed Angaras’s brother when Angaras was still a boy. Besieged in a tower with the daughter of the castle, Seimeret, Gawein can escape only by consenting to take over the Grail quest as a penance from Angaras. (We are not told of the circumstances under which Angaras had been assigned the quest.) The following Castle of Marvels section (called Sâlie in Diu Crône) also

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follows Heinrich’s sources but with a greater likeness to Chrétien’s account in that the owner of the castle, Gansguoter, is not, like Wolfram’s Clinschor, an evil and bitter black magician but a wholly benign one, as his name implies. Moreover in Heinrich’s genealogy he had honourably married Arthur’s mother, Igern, on the death of her husband, Uther. He lives with her at Sâlie together with Gawein’s long-lost mother and his sister. This group had resided there ever since they had been ousted from their ancestral land by a son of Jascaphin of Orcanie, father of Gawein. After Gawein’s liberation of the castle there is an opportunity for Arthur to meet again the mother he had hardly known, Igern. Subsequently an emissary of Giramphiel turns up with another test for the court in the shape of a magic glove which is able to discover moral imperfections in those who try it on. This time both Arthur and Gawein pass the test. Then a second messenger dispatched by the hostile Giramphiel comes to the court – a knight on a goat. Falsely purporting to represent the wishes of Fortuna, and persuading the company that the successful accomplishment of the Grail quest requires the two gloves and Fortuna’s stone, he dupes Gawein into parting with that stone. All are dismayed at this theft except Gawein who trusts to succeed even without the magical requisite. A young girl who had originally warned of the trickery opines that all will be well with the Grail quest if Gawein seeks counsel with Gansguoter at his castle of Madarp, and Igern supports this sentiment. An expeditionary party of Gawein, Kei, Lanzelet and Calocreant is assembled (Arthur and Parzival are turned down). At Madarp, Gansguoter takes the side of Gawein against the treacherous Giramphiel and gives his protégé a hauberk having the power to neutralise hostile magic. In a supernatural sequence (one of a series of ‘Wunderketten’ which punctuate the narrative) the Arthurians witness a fiery troupe whom Gansguoter succeeds in dispelling. After this Gansguoter uses his knowledge of castle construction to enable them to gain entrance to the otherwise inaccessible land of Sardin, and enables Gawein to defeat Fimbeus. Fimbeus’s lover, Giramphiel, agrees to return all the stolen objects in return for her lover’s life. With the talismans retrieved, the party is ready to persevere in their quest for the Grail, but first they pass by the abode of Manbur (the Grail bearer who is also Gansguoter’s sister) who prepares Gawein with the instruction that he must ask the requisite question when he should see her officiating at the ceremony in the Grail castle. After witnessing further, unearthly ‘Wunderketten’ (‘caused’ by the Grail, we later learn) Gawein proceeds to the Grail castle where he sees the ailing old grail king (altherre). When Manbur brings in a reliquary with a piece of bread with which to feed him, Gawein poses the question as to the meaning of all that he sees. The altherre says that much must remain mysterious but that Gawein should be congratulated for having redeemed so many souls, in contradistinction to Parzival, who had been too fearful to pose the Question. The terrible spectres which Gawein had witnessed, explains the altherre, had come about because of a fratricide in Parzival’s family. This had resulted in a divine curse being imposed upon the family which the younger scion, Parzival, had been unable to lift. This sin of Cain committed by one of Parzival’s kinsmen had resulted in a curse on the family which had ‘spread’ its fatal influence far and wide (the altherre himself is a walking corpse). The living had been driven from the country whilst the dead

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had been condemned to wander as revenants. Yet they still found some favour with God in that the altherre (who avows complete innocence) was sustained by the annual remission which Gawein witnessed. It was possible for someone to lift the curse if he were to ask after the true meaning of the catastrophe (which Gawein had now done). The old king now presents Gawein with an intact sword which, he assures him, will never fail him. He also tells him that for his efforts Gawein will be spared the duel with Angaras of Karamphi. Furthermore, the grail would never be seen again. At this point, the altherre disappears together with his male retinue (and with him, we presume, the other spectral phenomena). Now the three knights go to fetch Kei and encounter Angaras who, with the Grail quest accomplished, agrees to become their ally. The knights return to the Round Table with Angaras as one of their number. This is the last we hear of the Grail since, after Gawein’s successful quest, he does not assume kingship in the grail lands but returns to the Arthurian ranks.

Lanzelet The eponymous hero is the son of King Pant of Genewîs and his wife, Clarine. When the autocratic Pant is killed during an insurrection by his barons, the ensuing chaos in his realm creates conditions where the infant Lanzelet is taken away by a fairy (mêrfeine) to a lake where he is brought up until the age of fifteen in an abode of many thousand women but few men (Meidelant). Here he acquires many cultural advantages including musical skills but does not learn about the specifics of knighthood. His adoptive mother will reveal nothing about his biological identity until he defeats the strongest knight in the world, Iweret of Beforet. Leaving the lake by boat, he knows nothing of chivalric practice and is inept at horsemanship before being taken in hand by Johfrit de Liez, from whom he learns the art of tourneying. His first formal challenge after receiving instruction as a knight is at a castle where he falls in love with a maiden condemned by her father to perpetual virginity. He fights a duel with and kills the father, thereafter marrying the girl. We hear no more of this marriage and his next assignation occurs at the castle of Limors where he manages to escape from the imprisonment imposed upon him by the host (whom he slays), whereupon he takes up with the daughter of the castle, Ade. Lanzelet’s fame has in the meanwhile reached the Arthurian Court and Gawein (Walwein) is sent out to find him. The two meet, fight an undecided combat and then Lanzelet decides to visit a tournament elsewhere to which he repairs in the company of Ade. He falls victim to the magician, Mâbûz, at Schâtel de Mort, who imprisons him for a while but then elects him his champion. Meanwhile Iblis, the daughter of Iwerert, has a dream of an unknown knight, who turns out to be Lanzelet. The latter duly slays her father and takes Iblis as his bride. Now that Lanzelet’s great adventure is accomplished the Fairy of the Lake reveals to him that the original aim of her theft of him is now fulfilled: she had wanted to gain a champion who would free Mâbûz (who is her son) from his enemy, Iweret. Now Lanzelet defeats Valerin who claims that Guinevere had

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been betrothed to him before marrying Arthur. Next he repairs to the castle of Pluris where he defeats its armed forces and acquires yet another wife (whom he deserts after a year and returns to Iblis). There follows an account of Guinevere’s abduction by Valerin and rescue by the magician, Malduc. Finally, Lanzelet assays the adventure of the Fier Baiser: he gives a kiss to a dragon which presently changes into a beautiful maiden, Elidia (transformed into beast form for having transgressed the ‘rules of love’). She is taken to Arthur’s court where she acts as arbiter in matters of love. Thereafter Lanzelet wins back his ancestral land of Genewîs, promising to treat his subjects better than did his father. The royal couple receive Arthur and Guinevere at their court and the romance ends with an Ausblick to their future children and grandchildren.

Wigamur This work takes its subject-matter from both Wigalois and Lanzelet. Like Lanzelet, Wigamur is abducted by a Lady of the Lake (mêrfeine) as an infant, and at the bottom of her lake he loses all memory of his natural parents. He is later rescued by a porpoise-like creature (‘merswein’, line 175) who teaches him the rudiments of horsemanship and reveals that the mêrfeine (Lespia) is not his natural mother. Like Lanzelet he is gauche and untutored when on dry land but he soon acquires a tutor (Glakotelosflöyr), and after his initiation into the chivalric world he enjoys a chaste friendship with a maiden (Pioles), his conduct from this time forward adhering more to the ethical standards of Wigalois than to those of the serial philanderer, Lanzelet. His sexual purity is in evidence when he passes a chastity test by being able to immerse himself in a miraculous bath made of the stone, ‘aptor’ (the model for which was probably Wirnt’s Tugendstein). He then sets out to establish his name (being keenly aware that he is an unknown knight). In episodes reminiscent of Hartmann’s Iwein Wigamur gains his cognomen, ‘der ritter, mit dem arn’, when he shoots a vulture. Presently he becomes caught up in litigation with a maiden’s aunt over the possession of a pleasaunce. When Wigamur triumphs against the aunt’s champion, the maiden (Eydes) offers him her hand in marraiage, but Wigamur, still feeling himself to be marked by the stigma of being an unknown knight, humbly declines the offer. Even after winning a tournament organised by Arthur to pick the successor to the kingdom of Deleprosat, he once again puts by the crown, this time even against the public acclamation of all the Arthurian knights. Despite his noble deeds, he still feels insecure about his unknown ancestry. He then sets out in the company of the Arthurian knights to free Queen Ysope from the unwanted attentions of Marroch, the pagan king of Sarzin. Having accomplished this mission, Wigamur makes Marroch receive his land as a fief from Arthur. Queen Ysope’s people now want Wigamur as their king but once more he turns down the offer. It is only after he has faced his father in combat and father and son become aware of their respective identities that Wigamur agrees to marry a maiden (Dulceflur) chosen for him by his father, Paltriot. The latter now abdicates in his son’s favour and Wigamur at last bears a crown. A sequel involves the detailed description of a tournament, followed by

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Wigamur’s successful opposition to a rival suitor for his wife’s hand and by the news that the son of Wigamur and Dulceflur will be called Dulciwigar.

Le Chevalier du Papegau On the day of Arthur’s coronation a female messenger rides to court requesting his aid to help her mistress, Flor de Mont, daughter of King Belnain (or Beauvoisin), presently besieged by an alien knight. Leaving the care of his dominion to Loth, Arthur rides off with the young woman. On the way he champions a number of virtuous causes before arriving at his destination. Here the messenger informs him that her mistress’s father has fallen in a tournament and power has been transferred to his ignoble marshal who has since kept Flor de Mont and her mother captive in another castle. But before he is able to take on this task, yet more minor challenges await his attention, including a somewhat picaresque episode in the course of which Arthur spends a week of love with the ‘Dame aux cheveux blonds’ of the ‘Amoureuse Cité’. In the part of the romance which agrees with Wigalois, a stag-like beast (the metamorphosed spirit of the dead king) arrives to escort Arthur on his mission to a ruined castle where they halt under a sweet-smelling tree. Here a knight in white clothing (the spirit of the slain Belnain restored to the form of a human wraith) appears to Arthur and informs him that he (Belnain) will remain in that state ‘until the fulfilment of Merlin’s prophecy’, whereupon he will be transferred to a more heavenly abode. The apparition advises Arthur to remain close to the blessed tree and to press a flower from it close to his chest for protection; for during that night he will witness a tournament from which he must at all cost abstain, otherwise he will receive a wound that no physician can heal (a reference to the purgatorial flames which envelop the troupe). Just as the apparition had foretold, a ghostly company of lords and ladies convenes for a tournament, and Arthur is tempted to join in, but at that moment a hermit’s bell is sounded and the spectral company disperses. Presently Arthur encounters a lady whose beloved has been abducted in the jaws of a dragon. Arthur manages to defeat the dragon but receives a poisonous lash from its tail which causes him to collapse. Robbed of his armour in his vulnerable state, Arthur is helped to recuperate by the knight whom he had saved from the dragon (and also by the flower from Belnain’s tree which he had been clutching). Recovered, Arthur goes to fight the marshal but on the way is attacked by a ‘femme saulvage’ to whose supernatural strength he would have succumbed had she not been scared off by the neighing of his horse (which she takes to be the dragon). Having arrived at last at the marshal’s ‘Chastel Perilleux’, Arthur encounters the ‘dyable seigneur’ in the company of twelve candle-bearing maidens. He defeats the marshal whose consort also dies when in the extremity of her grief she embraces him so strongly as to cause her own death. After this successful outcome Flor de Mont and her mother are able to return to their ancestral dominions and there is universal jubilation. After this Arthur boards a boat for Brittany but runs aground. Here he is told of marvels by a dwarf and the dwarf’s giant son [sic] who with a unicorn helps Arthur to

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put out to sea again. Arthur reaches the land of the ‘Dame aux cheveux blonds’ once more and after a certain time there sends out instructions that he will soon repair to Windsor, there to hold court.

Durmart le Galois In his youth Durmart enters into an illicit affair with the wife of his father’s seneschal and incurs the disapproval both of his father and of the populace. Only when he breaks off the adulterous liaison and sets his sights on the altogether more suitable Queen of Ireland (Fenise) does he regain his father’s favour. The sequel is largely concerned with the way that Durmart proves himself worthy of the Irish queen through the performance of knightly deeds (some reminiscent of episodes in Chrétien’s Erec), but this service d’amour is interlaced with a considerably more spiritual action involving an illuminated tree. Atop this candle-lit tree sits a child (the Christ child, it is later revealed). When he first witnesses it a voice commands him to be vigilant to the summons he will receive from that quarter when he next passes that way. Some time after his repeated shows of prowess in arms have won him Fenise’s hand, he comes across the illuminated tree again in a forest, and a voice informs him that he will not fully comprehend the meaning of the portent until he takes advice from the Pope in Rome. This Durmart does in the company of his wife and his parents. Finding Rome besieged by an army of infidels, Durmart and his father with their forces defeat the pagan army before Durmart confesses himself to the Pope, who explains to him the import of the tree: the candles, some of which are bright, others not, represent the varying states of inner illumination of the world’s people, and the child figure represents Christ himself. After hearing this ex cathedra exegesis, Durmart returns to Ireland to commence an exemplary rule in Limerick.

Der Artushof/Widuwilt A stranger knight approaches the Arthurian court with a gift for the queen. The king and other counsellors advise her to accept it, but Gabein disagrees with their advice and, accusing the stranger of offending regal honour, challenges him to a duel. Gabein loses the contest and Arthur is obliged to treat with the stranger in order to save Gabein’s life. The knight takes Gabein to his wondrous realm where he has no son, only a sixteen-year-old daughter. Having heard of Gabein’s valour, the knight reveals that he had brought him to that place in order to give his daughter a worthy hand in marriage. Gabein subsequently leaves his pregnant wife to return to his Arthurian peers. When the son grows to young manhood he goes out to seek his father and is told that he will recognise Gabein by the golden wheel he bears on his helmet. His mother gives him a belt which will confer the strength of twelve upon him. At the Arthurian court Widuwilt sits on the marble chair (Wirnt’s Tugendstein) and people marvel at this feat, thinking that an ‘engil’ has come amongst them. To Arthur’s question about his identity he replies evasively (claiming that his kin live in a distant place about which

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Arthur could have no knowledge). Gabein is appointed his mentor (although we learn that he had already been taught chivalric skills by his grandfather). At this point the female messenger (Wirnt’s Nereja) arrives, telling that her lord is ‘lebendig tot’. The murder had occurred because a giant (called ‘Luzifr’, ed. Landau, p. 34a, line 39) had wanted to marry Lorel (Larie) but her father would not countenance the match, at which the giant’s mother [sic] killed Lorel’s father and laid waste his lands. None of the other knights dare oppose such devilish adversaries except Widuwilt who volunteers to uphold the honour of the Arthurian court. Gabein at this point gives him his helmet as a token of his support and father and son become known to each other in an extensive recognition scene. A similar series of adventures in the company of a disapproving messenger (Wirnt’s Nereja) occurs as the sequence represented in Wigalois, followed by Widuwilt’s meeting with the spirit king (Wirnt’s Lar). From the spectral king Widuwilt learns about the fiery (purgatorial) souls languishing in that land, all of whose citizens are now in thrall to the giant’s mother. A similar series of combats to those of Wigalois in the Roaz sequence now ensues until at length Widuwilt encounters the giant’s mother (corresponding to Wirnt’s Ruel) and defeats her and her monstrous son. The land is now restored, the honour of the Arthurian court vindicated and Wigalois is free to mary the princess, Lorel. After King Arthur has adjudicated between two rival claimants for the hero’s hand, the wedding goes forward and there is no (Lion) continuation as there is in Wigalois, the narrator forestalling any implicit demands for a sequel by his rhetorical question: ‘was soln nun di red mer?’ (ed. Landau, p. 125a, line 24).

The Didot Perceval The romance is linked to the preceding Merlin which has described Arthur’s coronation after the nobles have witnessed his drawing the sword from the stone. The Perceval section proper begins when Merlin tells them that Arthur is the son of Uther Pendragon and Ygerne. The nobles inform Arthur that Merlin had been Uther’s court seer and the architect of the Round Table. Merlin predicts Arthur’s future greatness and tells of the sick Fisher King who awaits a knight who will pose the question which will allow him an easeful death and put an end to the Enchantments of Britain. Alain Le Gros, father of Perceval, hearing of Arthur’s fame, sends his son to court. Alain receives a divine message that his son will be successful in the future Grail quest. In the meantime, however, Perceval’s hubris is punished when he decides to take his place prematurely on the Siege Perilous. For the seat splits, darkness envelops the court and a voice reproves Perceval for his temerity, warning that the seat will not become intact again nor the Enchantments of Britain be dissipated until the adventure of the Grail is accomplished. Perceval resolves to undertake the quest at which a hermit uncle (brother of Perceval’s father) enjoins Perceval to avoid sin and the killing of knights on his quest. Not long afterwards, however, he is forced to kill in selfdefence a knight abducting his sister. Merlin appears in the shape of a shadow to Perceval in order to warn him not to go back on his Grail vows. Having attained the castle of the Fisher King (who is Perceval’s grandfather) he fails to pose the

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appropriate question since he does not wish to trouble his host and because his mother had warned him not to ask too many questions. A maiden reproves him for his failure but tells him he must return to try again. It takes Perceval seven years of aimless wandering before he can return again. At length he confesses his sins to the hermit uncle and encounters Merlin who puts him back on the right way to the Grail. The work concludes with an abbreviated version of material paralleled in the Mort Artu, detailing the last days of the Arthurian reign.

De Ortu Walwanii, nepotis Arturi Uther Pendragon’s daughter, Anna, becomes pregnant with the child of Loth and in order to conceal her baby she entrusts him to the care of some third parties. At the age of twelve, the anonymous youth is given into the charge of the Emperor and Pope Sulpicius. Under the Emperor’s tuition he becomes a valiant defender of the cause of Rome and the Christian faith. Presently the young unknown gets to hear of the valour of Arthur and begs leave to depart for Demetia where Arthur holds court at Caerleon-on-Usk. The Emperor, hoping his charge might play a role in regaining Britannia for the Empire, grants permission for his departure. Just as Walwanius approaches Caerleon, Guendoloena (Guinevere) has a vision that a knight even stronger than her husband is approaching their court. When the queen falls asleep, Arthur goes off in the middle of the night with Kay to search for the mysterious stranger. Encountering the stranger, Arthur asks him whether he is an exile, bandit or spy – hostile words which unleash a battle in which both Arthur and Kay are unhorsed. Arthur subsequently returns to Guendoloena, at first attempting to hide a reverse which however becomes public the next day when Walwanius brings home the horses of his victims. Arthur, though discountenanced, feels considerably better when written documents which Walwanius had brought with him from Rome prove that he is his own nephew, and after Walwanius has signalled his willingness to obey Arthur, the latter reveals his identity to his nephew amongst general celebrations.

Les Merveilles de Rigomer An emissary of the châtelaine of Rigomer, Dionise, challenges the Arthurian knights to remove a spell from her mistress’s castle. Lancelot volunteers and sets out for her fastness in Ireland. He witnesses there a number of strange sights including an eerie house haunted by a corpse on a bier and a sick host who, because of a spell, can remain alive only if visited periodically by a number of stranger knights. On his way to Rigomer he is informed by various interlocutors that the castle contains many dangers and sexual temptations. On gaining Rigomer he succumbs to the wiles of an enchantress and inadvisedly accepts a magic spear from a maiden which paralyses him, whereupon a ring is placed on his finger which robs him of his wits. Helpless to defend himself he is consigned to an understairs val sanz retour in the kitchens of the castle. The sequel concerns the liberation of Lancelot by Gauvain. Gauvain faces the same challenges as his

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peer, but, inspired by his fairy consort, Lorie de la Roche Florie, he is granted immunity from the enchantress’s arts. The latter’s loss of power allows Gauvain to proceed unmolested to a liberation of Lancelot. On finding the witless Lancelot he breaks the ring on his finger and with it the spell which detains him. Dionise, who had long awaited the superlative knight who could break the enchantments of her realm, is disappointed when Gauvain declines her hand because of his liaison with Lorie. However, Gauvain chivalrously agrees to procure for Dionise a worthy husband whom he finds in the person of the young prince, Midomidas.

Der Jüngere Titurel After a prolonged introduction (stanzas 1–85) where Albrecht stresses the didactic nature of his material and prays for God’s assistance in his labours, he begins to tell of the Grail line. The members of the dynasty are introduced, beginning with the pagan Sennabor and his Christian successor, Parille, who marries Vespasian’s daughter, fights on the Emperor’s behalf and is rewarded with the gift of France, his brothers receiving Anjou and Cornwall. Parille and his son, Titurison, fight many wars against the heathen in northern Spain. All this, we are told, was some five hundred years before the time of Gandin (father of Gahmuret) and Marke of Cornwall (strophe 117). Titurel is born to Titurison and his wife, Elizabel of Arragon. They remain childless until they go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, whereupon Elizabel conceives a son of a special spiritual distinction (strophe 161) who is later warned off Ovidian notions of love since such conceptions were as pernicious as harmful demons (strophe 190). Titurison and Titurel continue to fight the heathen and Titurel keeps himself sexually chaste. In return for his purity an angel brings down to him the Grail (strophe 272) and Titurel repairs with the angel to ‘Mont Salvasch’ in Galicia in north-west Spain. The Grail, here kept in a temple, dispenses boons to its guardians and bears inscriptions of the names of future generations of the Grail line. The narrative now begins to cover in vastly expanded form ground familiar from Wolfram’s Titurel: we are told of Gahmuret’s death in battle, of Parzival’s birth to Herzeloyde, of the burgeoning love between Sigune and Schionatulander and of the tragic train of events in which Schionatulander goes after a setter’s leash at Sigune’s behest only to meet his death. When Parzival enters the narrative (strophes 5127ff), Albrecht follows Wolfram’s lead for much of his material but expands parts about which Wolfram was silent (such as Parzival’s actions in the wilderness after his first failure at the Grail castle, strophes 5512 ff). As in Wolfram, the Arthurian entourage is not permitted access to the Grail realm (strophe 5159). The last part of the narrative deals with the translation (by the power of prayer) of the Grail from the sinful West to India (said to be ‘near to paradise’) where Parzival’s half-brother, Feirefiz, welcomes the Grail company. Feirefiz informs them that the supreme ruler in that region is Prester John (strophes 6093ff) and Titurel reveals to the company the nature of the Grail as the dish of the Last Supper (not the stein of the Wolframian tradition). Titurel dies and Prester John bids Parzival take over the Grail crown for an interval of ten years, after which a son of Feirefiz is to relieve him of the office.

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EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS WIGALOIS

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‘Daz Jad von Wirtemberg’, in Erzählungen aus altdeutschen Handschriften, ed. Adalbert von Keller (Stuttgart: Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 1855), pp. 80–92. Das Jüngere Hildebrandslied, in Le Cycle de Dietrich. Morceaux Choisis, ed. Georges Zink (Paris: Aubier, 1953), pp. 231–5. Konrad von Stoffeln, Gauriel von Muntabel: eine höfische Erzählung aus dem 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Ferdinand Khull (Graz: Leuschner und Lubensky, 1885). ———, Der Ritter mit dem Bock. Konrads von Stoffeln ‘Gauriel von Muntabel’, ed. Wolfgang Achnitz (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997). Konrad von Würzburg, ‘Der Welt Lohn’, in Kleinere Dichtungen Konrads von Würzburg, ed. E. Schröder with ‘Nachwort’ by Ludwig Wolff 3 volumes, (Berlin: Weidmann, 1959), I. Diu Klage, ed. Karl Bartsch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, 1964). ———, The Lament of the Nibelungen (Div Chlage), translated by Winder McConnell (New York: Camden House, 1994). Das Nibelungenlied, ed. Karl Bartsch, Helmut de Boor, Roswitha Wisniewski (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1979). Das Nibelungenlied und die Klage, Handschrift C der F. F. Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen, ed. Heinz Engels (Stuttgart: Müller and Schindler, 1968). Das Nibelungenlied nach der Handschrift C, ed. Ursula Hennig (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1971). Der Pleier, Tandareis und Flordibel, ed. Ferdinand Khull (Graz: Buchhandlung Styria, 1885). ———, The Arthurian Romances of Der Pleier, translated by J. W. Thomas (New York: Garland, 1992). Püterich von Reichertshausen, Jakob, ‘Der Ehrenbrief Jakob Putrichs von Reichertshausen, Die Turnierreime Johann Hollands, Der Namenkatalog Ulrich Füetrers. Texte mit Einleitung und Kommentar’, ed. Martha Mueller (dissertation, Ann Arbor MI: University Microfilms International, 1988). Die Rabenschlacht, in Deutsches Heldenbuch, zweiter Teil, ed. Ernst Martin (Dublin and Zurich: Weidmann, 1967). Ritter Widuwilt. Die westjiddische Fassung des ‘Wigalois’ des Wirnt von Gravenberc mit dem jiddischen Druck von 1699, ed. Siegmund A. Wolf, Sprach- und Geisteswissenschaftliche Texte 1 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1974). Rudolf von Ems, Alexander, ed. Victor Junk (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1928). Der Stricker, Daniel von dem blühenden Tal, ed. Michael Resler, ATB 92 (Tübingen, 1983). ———, Daniel of the Blossoming Valley, translated by Michael Resler, Garland Library of Medieval Literature Series B, volume 58 (London and New York: Garland, 1990). Thomasin von Zirklaria, Der Wälsche Gast, ed. Heinrich Rückert with an Introduction and ‘Register’ by Friedrich Neumann (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965). Tondolus Der Ritter, ed. Nigel F. Palmer, Kleine Prosadenkmäler des Mittelalters 13 (Munich: Fink, 1980). Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, Lanzelet, ed. K. A. Hahn with a ‘Nachwort’ and Bibliography by Frederick Norman (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965). ———, Lanzelet, translated by K. G. T. Webster with an Introduction by R. S. Loomis (New York: Columbia UP, 1951). Walther von der Vogelweide, Gedichte, ed. and translated by Peter Wapnewski (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1972). Wernher der Gartenaere: Helmbrecht, ed. Friedrich Panzer, revised by Kurt Ruh, ATB 11 (Tübingen: Niemeyer 1968). Wigamur, ed. Danielle Buschinger, GAG 303 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1987).

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Index

Aanzim (Fortuna’s burgrave in Diu Crône), 125 Abraham, 72 abduction, 17, 19, 39n., 45, 48, 80, 107, 128, 129, 131 Abyssinia, 100 Achnitz, Wolfgang, 13n., 18n., 36n. Adam, 38, 75–6, 89 Adams, Denise Ann, 26n., 28n. Adan (ally of Wigalois), 24n., 89, 102 Ade (in Lanzelet), 127 adultery, 20, 130 advisor figure, 85 Aeneas, 62 Africa, 100 Agloval (in Morien), 81 Alain Le Gros, 70, 131 Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus, 49 Albrecht, Der Jüngere Titurel, 10, 14, 21, 37, 41, 71, 94n., 96, 100, 103, 104, 108n., 110–11, 112, 133 Albrecht of Besançon, 24n. Alexander, 118n. allegory, 49, 50, 57 almsgiving, 24, 74, 90n., 113 Altendorf, Hans-Dietrich, 64n. altherre (in Diu Crône), see Grail king Amire, King of Libya (in Wigalois), 90 ‘Amoureuse Cité’ (in Chevalier du Papegau), 129 Amurfina (Gawein’s wife in Diu Crône), 47, 124 anabasis, see ascent Anchises, 62 Ancients, the, 44, see also Antiquity Andersen, Elizabeth, 20n., 38n. Anfortas (in Parzival), 23, 94–5 Angaras of Karamphi (in Diu Crône), 125, 127 angels, 61, 130, 133 Anglians, see Saxons Anjou (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Anna (in De Ortu Walwanii), 132 Antioch, 63 Antiquity/ancient world, 51, 61, 62, see also Ancients, the apocalyptic, 23, 60–1, 72, 110, 116–17 apocryphal writings, 75 Arcadia, 50 Archibald, Elizabeth, 33n. art, medieval German, 1, 3, 30, 64n.; see also iconography Arthur, King, 1, 2, 10, 13–14, 18–20, 22, 28–9, 34, 39n., 44, 45, 53, 54, 55, 64, 67, 68, 79, 84, 87,

99, 106, 108, 111, 113, 114, 118n., 121–2, 124, 126, 128, 129, 130–1, 132; as problematic figure, 14, 17n., 19–20, 105, 121; as role model, 104, 106, 113; coronation of, 129, 131; historicity of, 104–6; makes offer or promise, 17, 28–9, 45 Arthur’s court, 1–2, 9n., 16, 17n., 19, 21, 28–9, 31, 32, 34, 46, 51, 57n., 67, 81, 84, 86, 87, 107n., 108, 113, 114, 121, 124, 126, 127–8, 130–1, 132, challenges to, 19–20, 21, 30; his courtiers and counsellors, 20, 65, 130; his knights, 2, 9, 13–14, 17, 19, 29, 34, 44, 78n., 85, 86, 87, 98, 102, 103, 111, 118, 124, 126–7, 128, 132, 133, see also Round Table; his parents and relatives, 13n., 19, 20n., 31–2, 105, 124, 126, 131, see also Gawain, Mordred, Morgan, Uther, Ygern Arthurian age/era, 82, 104, 106, 118; chivalry, 10, 19, 42, 48, 99, 103, 104–5, 108, 109, 113, see also chivalry/knighthood; critical scholarship, 4–5, 12–13, 14n., 15, 20–1, 40, see also Wigalois; exemplum, Wigalois as, 10; fellowship, 93; heraldry, 52; ideals and values, 14, 19, 35, 106, 121; legend and tradition, 11, 12, 25, 31, 47, 67, 76n., 79, 81, 89n., 94, 98, 105, 106, 107, 118, 122; order/world, 8, 10, 21, 30, 35, 53, 106, 107, 121, 132 Arthurian romance, 2n.–3n., 12, 20, 33n., 62, 67n., 71n., 81, 103, 112, 113, 115, 117; ‘classical’, 1, 4, 11–13, 37, 72, 78, 83, 88, 113, 115, 119, 122; in Dutch, see Morien; in English, 23, 28–9, 31, 47, 54, 66, 72, 79; in French, 12, 13–14, 15, 16–17, 22, 23n., 24n., 25n., 26n., 28–31, 40, 47, 64, 67–8, 85, 99, 102n., 104, 109, 110, 114, 116; in German, 1, 11–12, 13–14, 15, 16–17, 21, 30–1, 39, 47, 63n., 67–8, 71, 84–5, 104, 114; in Italian, see Carduino; in Latin, see De Ortu Walwanii; in Welsh, see Peredur; ‘post-classical’, 11–12, 36, 60, 71 Artushof, Der, see Yiddish adaptations of Wigalois ascent to higher world (anabasis), 60, 117, see also journey Asia, 90–1, 100; Asiatic characters, 93; see also Orient, the Âtre Périlleux, L’, 78 audiences, 1, 9, 40n., 45, 62, 96–7, 103, 110, see also Wirnt von Gravenberg Auerbach, Erich, 9n., 86n.

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156 Augustine, St, 71n. authorship, medieval, 4–5 Aumagwin (in Diu Crône), 124 Avalon, 105 Bak, Janos M., 60n. Ban (in Livre d’Artus), 13n.; see also Pant baptism, 89, 93–4, 102, 116n. Barbarossa, see Frederick II Barron, W. R. J., 65n. Bataille d’Aliscans, 102n. Batt, Catherine, 109n. Bauer, Ruth, 5n. Bayer, H. J., 48n. Bayreuth, 1 Beacurs (in Parzival), 55 Beaton, Roderick, 86n. Beatrice of Burgundy, 24n. Beaumains, 117n. Bede, 61, 64n. Beer, Gillian, 66n. Bejolarz (in Wigalois), 61n. Bel Inconnu, Le, see Renaut de Bâgé Belakane (in Parzival), 80, 89, 93 Beleare, Lady (in Wigalois), 52 belt/girdle, gift of, 47, 72, 130, see also Fortuna, magic bellum deo auctore 113 Belnain/Beauvoisin, King (in Chevalier du Papegau), 129 Benecke, Georg Friedrich, 1n., 3, 4, 5n., 40, 41n., 51n. Beowulf, 61, 92n. Bernard, Duke of Carinthia, 3 Bernheimer, Richard, 61n. Bernstein, Alan E., 76n. Bertau, Karl, 94n. Bertelsmeier-Kierst, Christa, 2n. Bertilak de Hautdesert (in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), 45, 48, 79; his wife, 47 Bethge, Richard, 30 betrayal, see treachery Bildungsroman, 115 binary/bipartite literary model, 4, 8, 50, 37, 72, 75 Bindschedler, Maria, 108n. Blanchefleur (in Gottfried’s Tristan), 49 Blancmal (in Le Bel Inconnu), 22, 28, 30n. Blank, Walter, 39n. blighted land, see waste land Blonde Esmerée (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28 Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, 115n. Boethius, 71n.; Consolation of Philosophy , 49 Bohort (in Livre d’Artus), 13n. Boreas, 50 Borgnet, Guy, 3n., 21n., 23n., 107n., 112n. Bosch, Hieronymus, 61 Bostock, J. Knight, 14n.–15n. Braches, Hulda H., 45n. Brangaene, 55 Braune, Wilhelm, 14n. Breton cycle, 86

INDEX bridge, and wheel; 67–8; impassable/infernal, 67–8; sword, 67 Brinker, Claudia, 90n., 117n. Britain/Britannia, 13, 132; enchantments of, 131; matter of 2, 7, 60 Britons, the, 121–2 Brittany, 13n., 129 Brittnacher, Hans Richard, 66n. Brodeur, A. C., 65n. Brownlee, Kevin, 4n. Brundage, James A., 101n. Brunner, Horst, 100n. Buch der Abenteuer, see Füetrer, Ulrich Buettner, Bonnie, 55n. Bumke, Joachim, 5n., 94n., 97n. Burgundians (in Nibelungenlied), 15, 121 Burgundy, 24n. burlesque, 84 Burns, E. Jane, 110n. Busby, Keith, 55n., 56n., 107n. Buschinger, Danielle, 112n. Caerleon-on-Usk , 132 Cain, 126; race of, 60 Calocreant, 126 Calypso, 80n. Camelot, 1, 20, 45, 56 canon, medieval literary, 1, 15, 20, 21n., 88, 118 captatio benevolentiae, 25, 99n. Caradoc, see Continuations Carduel, 27n. Carduino, 27n., 29 Carduino, 7, 29; ascribed to Antonio Pucci, 29 Carinthia, 5 Carolingian law, 106 Castle of the Maiden, 3n. Castle of Marvels/Wonders (Sâlie) (in Diu Crône), 105, 125–6; schastel marveile (in Parzival), 84 Catling, Joanna, 117n. Celtic myth and legend, 13, 45, 47, 62, 122 centaur (in Wigalois), 61 Cerberus, 62 chair, marble, see testing stone Champguin Chandler, Frank W., 99n. chanson de geste, 9, 24, 109, 115 Chanson de Roland, 92 Charlemagne, 105–6, 115n., 118n. Charon, 62 ‘Chastel Perilleux’ (in Chevalier du Papegau), 129 Chaucer; Knight’s Tale, 49; Squire’s Tale, 8n., Wife of Bath’s Tale, 23n. Chestre, Thomas, see Libeaus Desconus Chevalier à l’Épée, Le, 44n. Chevalier au Lion, le, 80n., see also Iwein Chevalier de la Charrete, see Chrétien de Troyes Chevalier du Papegau, Le, 31, 63n., 64, 67–9, 75, 93n., 112, 129–30 chivalry and knighthood, 2, 4, 8, 10, 13, 16, 18–19, 20n., 21, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35–8, 39n., 42, 44, 48, 50–6, 58–9, 71–2, 75, 77, 78n., 80, 82, 83–5, 87, 93, 96, 98, 104, 105, 107, 111, 115,

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INDEX 120, 127, 128, 130, 131, 133, see also Arthurian chivalry, iuvenes Chrétien de Troyes, 4, 6, 11–12, 14, 15, 16, 17n., 21n., 22, 25n., 27, 39n., 44, 47, 84, 86, 101, 105, 115, 125–6; Chevalier de la Charrete, 17, 19n., 39n., 45, 76; Cligès, 86; Conte du Graal/Perceval, 23, 27, 29, 55, 99, 109, 114–15, 125; Erec, 16, 17n., 84, 130; Yvain, 18, 45; his successors, 11, 16, 22n., 115, see also Continuations Christ, 54, 63n., 68, 75–7, 97, 101, 114, 115; the Christ child, 130 Christendom, 37 Christian concerns, doctrine and tradition, 2, 18, 23, 24, 37, 49, 51, 58–9, 60–3, 67n., 68, 71, 72, 75, 77, 89–90, 93–4, 100, 101–2, 107, 111, 112n., 115, 118, 132, 133, see also God Christianity, 8, 45, 90, 102, 107, 115n. Church, the, 114–15 Cistercian doctrine, 110 Clarine (wife of King Pant in Lanzelet), 127 Classen, Albrecht, 100n. Classical themes, 62–3; see also Ancients, Antiquity Claudian, De Nuptis Honorii et Mariae, 49 Claudius (Shakespeare’s), 64, 73 Cligès, see Chrétien de Troyes Clinschor (in Parzival), 12, 72, 89, 126 closure, 9, 10, 18, 87–8, 92–3, 99, 101, 102n., 109, 111, 122 Colby-Hall, Alice, 30n. Colin, Philipp, see Wisse, Claus comedy, 75, 94; see also burlesque, fabliau, farce, humour Condwiramurs (in Parzival), 94 confession, 65n., 132 Conrad, Peter, 11n. Constantinople, 86 Conte du Graal/Perceval, see Chrétien de Troyes continuation, literary, 14, 21, 28, 102, 110, 112, 116; sequel, 131, 132; see also Continuations Continuations of Chrétien de Troyes, 14, 109, 114–15; First Continuation, 27, 56n., 109, Caradoc section of, 89; Second Continuation, 27, 109; Third Continuation (by Manessier), 23, 109, 114; Fourth Continuation (by Gerbert), 109 contrafactura, 14n. conversion, 9, 61, 70, 101–02, 115 Cooper, Helen, 8n., 46n. Cormeau, Christoph, 4n., 6n., 12, 25n., 29n., 49n., 62n., 63, 67, 73n., 102n. Cornwall (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Cosman, Madeleine P., 34n., 39n. counterworld, see Otherworld courtly culture and society, 6, 9n., 19, 21, 30n., 35, 45, 47, 49, 51, 65, 82, 83n., 86, 88, 89, 92, 106, 107, 110, 115, 118 Coxon, Sebastian, 78n. Cross and Crescent, 9, 102, 115 Crucifixion, the, 63n.

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crusades/crusading, 3, 63, 77, 86, 90, 101, 111, 113, 114 Cundrie (in Parzival), 37n., 72, 93, 95, 96 Curschmann, Michael, 15n. cycles/cyclicity, 14, 15n., 19n., 20, 23, 26–7, 33n., 38n., 39n., 53, 86, see also Lancelot-Grail cycle D’Arcy, Anne-Marie, 11, 114n. Dahamorht (in Diu Crône), 56 ‘Dame aux cheveux blonds’ (in Chevalier du Papegau), 129–30 damoiselle maledisaunte, 54 Dandaraw, Cornelia, 38n., 88n. Daniel (Stricker’s), 36n. Daniel von dem blühenden Tal, see Stricker, Der Dante, 50, 61, Divine Comedy, 60 de Boor, Helmut, 5n., 6, 13, 109n. De Ortu Walwanii nepotis Arturi, 54, 132 dead, the, 62, 64, 65, 76, 77, 116n., 126, 129; undead, the, 2 death, 23, 60, 63–6, 74, 98, 125, 127, 131, 133; of Christ, 75 Deist, Rosemarie, 85n. Deleprosat (kingdom in Wigamur), 128 Demetia (in De Ortu Walwanii), 132 demons/demonic forces, 2, 42, 61, 64, 66, 67, 68n., 72, 117, 129, 133, see also devil, the descensus (katabasis)/descent to lower world, 60–2, 75, 77n., 117, see also journey desertion of wife, 45, 80–1, 83, 107, 130 desperatio, 70 deus ex machina, 99 devil, the, 2, 59, 61, 65, 66, 76, 77, 91, 92n.; she-devil, 15, 68; see also demons Dichtersprache, 41, 119 Dick, Ernst S., 62n., 66, 88n. Dido, 62 Didones (in Wigalois), 48 Didot Perceval, 20, 23, 70, 131–2 Dietrich (in Rabenschlacht), 14, 102 Dinzelbacher, Peter, 61n., 62n. Dionise (in Merveilles de Rigomer), 132–3 Diu Crône, see Heinrich von dem Türlin divine message/voice, 70, 75 dog, theft of, 56 Donaueschingen Court Library, 30 Dondinello (in Carduino), 29 donor-and-recipient model, 11–12 dragon, 22, 61, 69–70, 125; fight, 30, 58, 70, 72–3, 129; Dragon Kiss, see Fier Baiser Dreessen, Wulf-Otto, 36n., 67n., 88n., 112n. Duby, Georges, 84n. Dulceflur (in Wigamur), 128–9 Dulciwigar (in Wigamur), 129 Dümmling, 39n. Dunlap, Thomas, 5n. Durmart, 16–17, 114, 130 Durmart le Galois, 16, 104, 109n., 114–15, 130 dwarf, 129 earthly paradise, 74–5, 100, 113, 133 East, the, see Orient

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Easter Day, 75 Ebenbauer, Alfred, 103n., 112n., 121n. Echard, Siân, 54n. Eden, garden of, 100 Edrich-Porzberg, Brigitte, 17n. education, see instruction Egerding, Manfred, 18n. Ekhunat (in Parzival), 55 Ehrismann, Gustav, 45n. Elamie (Persian princess in Wigalois), 62, 90n. Elene (in Libeaus Desconus), 29 elephant, 99 Eliavres (in First Continuation), 89 Elidia (in Lanzelet), 128 Elizabel of Arragon (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Eming, Jutta, 7n., 26n., 52n., 55n., 63n. Emmel, Hildegard, 18n. Emmerson, Richard K., 60n. Emperor, the (in De Ortu Walwanii), 132 enchanters/enchantresses, see magicians enchantments, see magic Endres, Rolf, 73n. ‘Enfances Gauvain’, Les, 54 epigones, 4, 6n., 119 êre, 55–6 Erec, 16, 20, 38, 87, 107n., 117, 118n., 122n. Erec, see Chrétien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue Escanor, see Girart d’Amiens Escavalon (Chrétien’s), 125 eschatology, 62, 63, 65 Eschenburg, Johann Joachim, 110n. Esmerée, see Blonde Esmerée ethics/ethical context, 10, 15, 18, 39, 54–6, 86, 90, 96, 101, 112n., 128 Ethiopia, 100 Etna, 64 Eurain (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28 Eve, 38 evil, 61–2, 64n., 70–1, 89–90, 126 exegesis, 97, 130 exile, 14 Eydes (in Wigamur), 120n., 128 fabliau, 67 Fagan, Teresa Lavender, 64n. Fair Unknown, the, 37 Fair Unknown tradition, 3n., 4, 7–8, 22, 23n., 26–7, 31, 34, 36, 38–9, 53, 54, 58, 106n., 107n., 119–21 fairy/fée characters, 18, 19n., 22, 27, 28–30, 47, 51, 65, 80n., 106, 127, 133, see also Morgan the Fay; Fairy of the Lake, see Lady of the Lake fairyland, 86, 106n. fairytale/fairy lore, 39n., 45, 48, 100 Fall, the, 39, 75 Famurgan, see Morgan the Fay fantastic, the, see marvels farce, 67n., 93 father-son relationship, 14, 27, 33, 44, 54, 56, 60, 62, 81, 93, 94–5, 105, 107n., 127–8, 130, see also Wigalois and Gawein

Faust, 61 Feirefiz, in Parzival, 37n., 86, 93–4, 99, 101–02, 110–11, 115; in Jüngere Titurel, 133; Ferfis Anschvrin (in Rappoltstein Parzifal), 114 Fenise, Queen of Ireland (in Durmart), 17, 130 Fenster, Thelma, 105n. Ferfis Anschvrin, see Feirefiz Feroz (in Wigalois), 61n. Field, Rosalind, 109n. Fier Baiser, 22, 27–31, 33n., 39n., 128 Fierz-Monnier, Antoinette, 57n. Fimbeus of Gardin (in Diu Crône), 46, 125–6 First Continuation, see Continuations Fischer, Hubertus, 14n. Fisher King, 131; brother of, 23 Fisher, Rodney, 71n. fisherwoman (in Wigalois), 58 flashback, 22, 44, 47 Flood, John L., 3n. Flor de Mont (in Chevalier du Papegau), 129 Flordibel (Indian princess), 17 Flordimar, see Füetrer, Ulrich Floree (in Livre d’Artus), 31 Floreis (Joram figure), in Wigoleis, 45; in Artushof, 48n. Flori (in Diu Crône), 31–2 Florie, Syrian princess (Gawein’s wife, hero’s mother in Wigalois), 1, 22, 34, 45, 47, 49, 51n., 52–3, 78, 83–5, 99, 106 Fluratrône, queen of (in Gauriel von Muntabel), 19 folk tale, 23n.; folklore, 65 Fortuna/Fortune/Saelde, Lady, 1, 8, 44, 46–7, 49–52, 118, 125–6; her jewel/stone, 125–6; her magic belt/girdle, 1–2, 8, 46, 48–9, 51–2, 58–9, 72, 78n., 80n., 106, 125; her ring of invincibility, 124; her trophies/symbols, 8, 44, 46, 52–3, 58; her wheel, 8, 49, 51, 52, 125, see also Wigalois fortune (good)/saelde, 8, 44, 47n., 50–2, 58, 60, 81, 95–6, 107, 125; fame and 97n. Fourth Continuation, see Continuations France, 11–12, 24, 133 Frank, Emma, 31n. Frappier, Jean, 77n. fratricide, see murder Frederick II, Barbarossa, Emperor, 92n., 101n. Free Will, 95, 97 Fresco, Karen, 27, 30n. Friedman, John B., 60n. Fromm, Hans, 62n., 105n. Frou Mâze/Lady Moderation, 50n. Frou Minne/Lady Love, 50n. Frou Werlt/Lady World, 3, 50 Frye, Northrop, 21n., 60n. Fuchs, Stefan, 7n., 22n., 26n., 34n., 49n., 52n., 53n., 57n., 77n., 78n., 106n., 116 Füetrer, Ulrich, Buch der Abenteuer, 3, 114; Flordimar, 27; Wigoleis, 45, 58, 77, 121–2 Funcke, Eberhard W., 47n., 51n. Gabein, see Gawein Gabon, see Gawein

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INDEX Gahmuret, in Parzival, 44, 49, 93; in Jüngere Titurel, 133 Galahad, 56, 98, 110, 117n. Gales (knight in Diu Crône), 124 Galicia (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Gandin (father of Gahmuret), 133 Gansguoter (in Diu Crône), 45, 105, 126 Gardner, Eileen, 50n., 62n. Garel von dem blühenden Tal, see Pleier, Der Gasozein de Dragoz (in Diu Crône), 18–20, 106n., 124; Gasozein–Arthur–Guinevere triangle, 18–20, 124 Gaunt, Simon, 4n. Gauriel, 19 Gauriel von Muntabel, see Konrad von Stoffeln Gauvain, see Gawein Gawain, see Gawein Gawan, see Gawein Gawein, 8, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 31–3, 42n., 55–6, 58, 72, 78, 79, 84, 105, 121, 124–7, and Fortuna, 8, 46–7, 49–51; his reputation, 2, 8, 45n., 55–6, 78, 79, 83–4, 108; in Wigalois, 1–2, 8–9, 25, 32–4, 37, 44–9, 51n., 52–3, 58–9, 78–81, 87, 98–9, 102, 103n., 104, 107–8, 111, 113, 120–21, rehabilitation of, 82–5, 98, 107; Gabein, 3, 45, 81, 130–1; Gabon, 45, 58; Gauvain, 13n., 17n., 22, 26n., 27, 28, 31, 33n., 34n., 44, 54, 55, 78, 79n., 109, 132–3; Gawan, 8–9, 18, 37, 54, 55, 57, 78, 93, 108, 111, 118n., 122 Gawain, 29, 47, 65–6; Gaweyn, 29; Walwanius, 54, 132; Walwein, 127 Gaweyn, see Gawein Genewîs (land in Lanzelet), 127–8 genre, 4, 9, 12, 14, 20–1, 22, 23, 27, 30n., 39n., 48, 61, 62n., 65, 82, 88, 102, 103, 109, 112, 117–18, 119 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 20; Historia Regum Britanniae, 26 Gerbert, see Continuations Gerhardt, Christoph, 18n. Germanic themes/traditions, 14, 62 Geynleyn, see Guinglain ghosts/phantoms/spirits, 64–6, 73–4, 77, 106n., 110, 116, 126–7, 129, 131, 132, see also supernatural giants, 56, 57n., 129, 131 Giesa, Gerhard, 45n. gifts, 62–3, 108, 126, 130, 132; of belt/girdle, 47, 72, 130, see also Fortuna; of dog, 56; of ring, see Fortuna; of sword, 71, 127; of wafer, 63 Gilgamesh, 62 Gillespie, George T., 15n., 61n. Giramphiel (Fortuna’s sister in Diu Crône), 46n., 125–6 girdle, see belt Girart d’Amiens, Escanor, 56n. Glakotelosflöyr (in Wigamur), 128 Glastonbury, 29 Glencross, Michael, 12n. Gliglois, 78–9 Glois (land in Wigalois), 66n. glove, testing, see testing

159

goblet, testing, see testing goat, 126 God (of Christian tradition), 2, 3, 10, 21, 23, 24, 35–6, 38, 47n., 50–2, 58–9, 63–5, 67–78, 89, 95–8, 100, 101, 107, 108, 109n., 111, 113, 114–15, 117, 118, 122–3, 127, 133, grace of, 95, 97–8 gods, Greek, 72n. Goethe, 119; Iphigenie auf Tauris, 72 Goetinck, Glenys Witchard, 24n. golden bough, 62 Golden Mean, 19, 113, 114 Goldhammer, Arthur, 64n. Good Friday, 75 Gordon, Bruce, 64n. Gorre (Meleagant’s realm), 76n. Gospel of Nicodemus, 76 Gothic novel, 66 gotinne, 51 Gottfried von Strassburg, 40, 50n.; Tristan, 3, 40, 56n., 102n. Göttner-Abendroth, Heide, 46n. Göttweiger Trojanerkrieg, Der, 2 Gottzmann, Carola L., 81n. Götz, Josef, 41n. Gräfenberg/Gravenberg, 1, 5 Grail, the, 3n., 10, 14, 21, 27, 36, 41, 42, 65, 84, 93–7, 99, 100–01, 103, 104, 105, 107n., 109, 110–12, 114, 122, 125–7, 131–2, 133, ‘sankgreall’, 117n.; Grail bearer, 93–4, 126; castle, 75, 95, 125–6; company, 100, 133; dynasty, 133; knights, 94, 100; king, 23, 37, 73n., 93, 94n., 96, 99, 101, 108, 110n., 111, 126–7, altherre (in Diu Crône),73n., 126–7; kingship, 37, 99, 109, 111, 133; kingdom/ realm, 8, 9, 18, 21, 86, 98, 99n., 102, 111, 114, 121–2, 133; messenger, 37n., 42n., 96; quest, 21, 36, 42, 56, 70, 79, 95–6, 125–7, 131; question, 23, 36n.,–37n., 42n., 94–5, 109, 125–7, 131–2; tradition and romance, 23, 116n., 122; sword, 23, 127 Grals/Pittimont (in Jüngere Titurel), 100 Grant, Marshall Severy, 79n. Gravenberg, see Gräfenberg Green Chapel, 66 Green, Dennis H., 14n. Green Knight, see Bertilak Greenblatt, Stephen, 65n. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, 61 Grimm, Jacob, 61n. Guendoloena, see Guinevere Guggenberger, Herbert, 14n. guiding beast, 65, 129 Guinevere, Queen, 17n., 18–20, 31–2, 39n., 46, 48, 76, 79, 83n., 99, 106, 113, 124, 127–8, 130; Guendoloena, 132 Guingambresil (in Perceval), 55 Guinglain (in Le Bel Inconnu), 22, 26, 28, 30, 33n., 44, 57, 107n.; Geynleyn/Gyngelayne (in Libeaus Desconus), 29 Gunter (in Nibelungenlied), 45 Gurevich, Aron, 60n., 64n.

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Gurnemanz (in Parzival), 58 Gürttler, Karin R., 35n., 93n. Gwîgalois, see Wigalois Gyburg (in Willehalm), 89 Gyngelayne, see Guinglain Haas, Gerhard, 66n. Haasch, Günther, 99n. Hades, see Hell Hagen (in Nibelungenlied), 15, 121 Hahn, Ingrid, 118n. Halle, 105n. Hamlet, 65; his father/Old Hamlet, 64, 65, 73, 75 Hamlet, see Shakespeare Harding, George Edward, 107n. Hardman, Philippa, 53n. Harms, Wolfgang, 108n. Hartmann von Aue, 1, 4, 11–12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 39–41, 50–1, 70, 71, 78, 88, 107, 113, 119; Der Arme Heinrich, 73n.; Erec, 12, 21, 51n., 84, 113, 116, 122n.; Iwein, 12, 15, 17–18, 21, 45, 47, 80, 84, 105, 116, 124, 128 Hasael of Syria (biblical), 99n. Hasty, Will, 54n. Hatto, A. T., 37, 111 Haug, Walter, 50n., 60n., 75n., 117n. heathens, see pagans Heaven, 62, 64, 74, 76, 81, 95, 129; message/ voice from, 95, 130, 131; see also letters Heil (Fortuna’s son in Diu Crône), 125 Heinrich, Lord (Hartmann’s), 70 Heinrich von dem Türlin, 5, 21, 24n.–25n., 41, 47, 60, 84, 112, 122; Diu Crône, 2, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18–20, 21, 31, 42, 45–7, 50–1, 55, 65, 66, 71, 79, 105, 106n., 110, 112, use of Wigalois in, 10, 23, 61, 73n., 124–7 Heinrich von Veldeke, 11, 40–1; German version of Aeneid, 62 Heinzle, Joachim, 15n., 89n. Hélie (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28, 31, 56–7 Hell/Hades, 60, 62, 64, 76, 94n.; harrowing of, 75–7 Helmbrecht senior, 35 Helmbrecht, see Wernher der Gartenaere Henderson, Ingeborg, 30n., 72n., 88n., 116n. Henry II, King, 86 Henry V, Emperor, 105n. Henry VI, Emperor, 101n. heredity, 38, 39, 49 heresy, 77 hermits, 70n., 114, 129; hermit uncle, 131–32 Herzeloyde, in Parzival, 44, 49; in Jüngere Titurel, 133 Heuckenkamp, Ferdinand, 69n., 93n. Hildebrand, 14n. Hildebrandslied, 14, 15n. Hilgers, Heribert, 2n. Hilton, James, Lost Horizon/Irgendwo in Tibet, 100 Hincmar of Reims, 61 Hippeau, Célestin, 29 Historie oder moralische Erzehlung von Ritter Gabein, 3, 81

Hoffman, Werner, 15n. Hojir von Mannesvelt (in Wigalois), 52, 89–90 Hojir/Hoyer von Mannesvelt (the historical), 105 Hollingsworth, Paul A., 60n. Holmer, Shari Rachel, 97n. Holtzmann, Robert, 105n. Holy Grail, see Grail Homberger, Dietrich, 6n., 108n. homicide, see murder homiletic, 10, 82, 117 Honemann, Volker, 7n., 106n. honour, 17, 19, 46, 48, 55, 80, 124, 130–1 Host, the, 63, 67n. host figure, 28, 31, 56, 127, 132 hubris, 23n., 70, 72, 75, 131 Hugo von Trimberg, 2 humility formulae, 5, 13, 25 humour, 78n., 79, 105, see also comedy Hunt, Tony, 50n. Huschenbett, Dietrich, 3n. hysteron proteron, 47 Iblis (in Lanzelet), 127–8 iconography, 50, 77, 125; see also art ideology, 3, 7, 8 identity, 2, 4, 33n., 53 Igern, see Ygerne India (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 innovation, 13n., see also Wigalois instruction, 36, 39, 42n., 58, 104, 127, 128, 131, 132; see also Wigalois insults, ritual, 92 intercession, 77 interpreter (in Wigalois), 24n. intertextuality 9, 12, 13n., 20n., 114 intruder figure, 45, 45n.–46n. Iphigenie, 72n. Ireland, 64; in Durmart, 17, 114, 130; in Merveilles de Rigomer, 132 Isolde, 55, 56n. iuvenes, 84n. Iwan, see Iwein Iwein, 15–16, 38, 45, 72, 78, 81, 83–4, 87, 107n., 117; Iwan, 118n.; see also Chevalier au Lion Iwein, see Hartmann von Aue Iweret of Beforet (in Lanzelet), 127 Jad von Wirtemberg, Daz, 77 Jaeger, Achim, 4n., 7n., 52n., 81n., 106n. Janke, A., 2n. Japhite (widow of Roaz in Wigalois), 24n., 89–90, 91n. Jascaphin of Orcanie (in Diu Crône), 126 Jean de Meun, Romance of the Rose, 49 Jehan, Les Merveilles de Rigomer, 22, 56n., 116, 132–33 Jeraphîn (realm in Wigalois), 99 Jerusalem (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Jeschute (in Parzival), 41, 42n. Jesus, see Christ Jewish adaptations of Wigalois, see Yiddish

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INDEX Jews, 89, 112n. Jillings, Lewis, 18n., 21n., 72n., 117n. Johfrit de Liez (in Lanzelet), 39, 127 Johnson, L. Peter, 7n., 25n., 45n. Johnston, Arthur, 104 Jones, George F., 55n. Jones, Martin H., 97n., 99n. Joram, King (in Wigalois), 1, 4, 25, 32n., 45, 47–8, 50, 52n., 78n., 83n., 99; Joram figure in Der Artushof, 45, 48n.; see also Floreis Joram, king of Israel (biblical), 99n. Joram, king of Judah (biblical), 99n. Jordan, Leo, 27n. Jorel (in Wigalois), 65 Jones, W. R., 63n. journey, 86, 87, 88; beyond death, 63; Gawain’s, 65; penitential, 83; spiritual, 69, 110; to Otherworld, 46n., 62, 63n., 65; see also ascent, descensus, Wigalois Judaeo-Christian legends, 62 Judas kiss, 55 judgement, 57, 64, 89–90; Day of, 74 Jüngere Hildebrandslied, 14 Jüngerer Titurel, see Albrecht justice, 38, 76 Kaiser, Gert, 55n., 118n. Kampers, Franz, 116n. Kapteyn, J. M. N., 1n. Karamphi (castle in Diu Crône), 125, 127 Kardeiz (in Parzival), 94 Karidol, 21, 32n., 45, 78n. Karrioz (in Wigalois), 61 Kasper, Christine, 79n. katabasis, see descensus Kay, see Kei Keferstein, Georg, 72n. Kei/Keii, 18, 19, 42n., 48, 124, 126–7; Kay, 132; Keu, 17n. Keii, see Kei Keller, Johannes, 61n. Kennedy, Elspeth, 14n., 26n., 38n., 42n. Kern, Manfred, 2n.–3n. Keu, see Kei Kiekhefer, Richard, 92n. kinship, 8, 85 King, K. C., 14n. Kingrisin (in Parzival), 55 kingship, 8–10, 23, 42–3, 86, 92–3, 107n., 108n., 112, 114, 116, 120–2; see also Wigalois Klage, the, 15 Klaniczay, Gabor, 92n. Klare, Andreas, 106n. Klarmann, Irma, 23n. Klein, Klaus, 2n. Klein, Ute, 81n. Knapp, F.-P., 51n. Knefelkamp, Ulrich, 100n. Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, see Wigalois Knight, Stephen, 34n., 36n., 118n. knighthood, see chivalry Knoll, Hiltrud K., 63n., 113n.

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Köhler, Erich, 14n., 76n., 77n. Kolb, Herbert, 41n., 64n. Könneker, Barbara, 111n., 112n. Konrad von Stoffeln, 118n.; Gauriel von Muntabel, 13, 18–19, 20–21, 45 Konrad von Würzburg, Der Welt Lohn, 3 Korntin (realm in Wigalois), 2, 62, 64, 77, 90, 99, 107, 116; (in Wigoleis), 121–2 Kratz, Bernd, 5 Kriemhild, 15 Kudrun, 15 Künicesberc (in Wigalois), 24n. Kyot, 25n., 26 Lachmann, Karl, 40n. Lady Love, see Frou Minne Lady Moderation, see Frou Mâze Lady/Fairy of the Lake, 38, 39n., 127–8; mêrfeine, 127–8 Lady World, see Frou Werlt Lampars (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28 lance/spear, 63, 67n., 110, 132; of Longinus, 63 Lancelot, 19–20, 22n., 38, 39n., 75, 76, 116n., 132–33; Lanzelet 39n., 51, 87, 126, 127–8 Lancelot-Grail cycle, 19n., 20, 27, 38, 56, 98, 110; Prose Lancelot, 105; Mort Artu, 20, 132 Landau, Leo, 81n. Landau, Marcus, 64n. Lanval, see Marie de France Lanzelet, see Lancelot Lanzelet, see Ulrich von Zatzikhoven Lar, King of Korntin (in Wigalois), 2, 23, 24n., 37, 62–5, 70, 73–6, 90, 99, 107, 113, 116, 131; Lar figure in Wigoleis, 77 Larie (hero’s wife in Wigalois), 2, 63, 72–3, 84, 87; Lorel in Der Artushof/Widuwilt, 131 Last Supper, the, 133 Latzke, Rudolf, 35n. laudatio temporis acti, 104n. Laudine (in Iwein), 15–16, 18, 45, 47, 49, 81, 83 Le Goff, Jacques, 63, 64n. Lee, Anthony van der, 26n., 45n. Leodarz (in Wigalois), 61n. Lerner, Luise, 113n. Lespia (mêrfeine in Lanzelet), 128 Lessing, 110n. letters, 85, 100, 110n.; heavenly, 67n.; sacred, 63 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 27, 110n. Lewis, Gertrude Jaron, 112n. Li Biaus Desconeüs, see Le Bel Inconnu Libeaus Desconus, 27–8 Libeaus Desconus, 7, 28–9, 54; attributed to Thomas Chestre, 28 Lienert, Elisabeth, 36n. Lifort Gawanides (hero’s son in Wigalois), 26, 108, 120 limbo, 23, 64–5, 73n. Limerick, 130 Limors (castle in Lanzelet), 127 Lion of Namur (in Wigalois), 2, 81, 87–8, 90–2,102–3, 107–8, 131 Livre d’Artus, the, 13, 31

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Loathly Lady, 23n. Lofmark, Carl, 25n., 85n. Loherangrin (in Parzival), 94–5 Longinus, see lance Loomis, L. H., 64n. Loomis, R. S., 47n., 64n. Lord of the Red Tower (in Manessier), 23 Lorel, see Larie Lorenz, Andrea, 14n. Lorie de la Roche Florie (in Merveilles de Rigomer), 22, 133 Lot of Orkney, 13n.; Loth, 129, 132 Loth, see Lot Lough Derg, Ireland, 64 love, 17–18, 30, 33, 39n., 84, 87, 102n., 111, 124, 128, 129, 130, 133; amour de loin, 78; Frou Minne, 50n.; goddess of, 18; lovers, 19, 42, 46n., 56n., 77, 125–6; ‘luf-talkynge’, 79 Lozac’hmeur, Jean-Claude, 24n. Ludwigslied, 72 Lunete (in Iwein), 15, 81 Lüthi, Max, 48n. Luttrell, Claude, 26n. Luzifer/Luzifr, 61, 131 Mabon (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28 Mabonagrin (in Hartmann’s Erec), 12 Mâbûz (magician in Lanzelet), 127 McAlindon, T., 45n. McCarthy, Terence, 110n. McClelland, Nicola, 39n., 51, 82n. McConnell, Winder, 15n. McLintock, D. R., 14n. Machiavelli, 56 Madarp (castle in Diu Crône), 126 Maddox, Donald, 27n., 30n., 70n., 102n. Magdeburg, 3 magic/enchantments, 8, 47, 67, 72, 78n., 89n., 92, 116, 126, 131; necromancy, 88–9; spell, 132–33; see also supernatural, witchcraft magic objects, 8, 72, 126; belt, 130, see also Fortuna; fountain/spring, 12, 86; ring, 132–33, see also Fortuna; spear, 132 magicians/enchanters/necromancers, 2, 28, 88–9, 126, 127–8, see also Roaz; enchantresses, 27, 29, 132–33 Mahoney, Dhira B., 24n., 114n. Maksymiuk, Stephen, 89n. Malduc (in Lanzelet), 128 Malgiers le Gris (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28 Malory, 110; Morte Darthur, 105; Tale of Sir Gareth, 54 Manbur (in Diu Crône), 42n., 126 Manessier, see Continuations Marie de France, 80n.; Lanval, 45 Marke of Cornwall (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 marriage, 16, 28–9, 31, 45, 81, 87–8, 91, 94, 105, 120, 127, 128, 130–1; see also desertion of wife Marriage of Sir Gawaine, The, 23n. Marroch, King of Sarzin (in Wigamur), 128 Marshall, Peter, 64n.

marvels/wonders/the fantastic, 12, 23, 61, 66n., 72, 98–9, 102, 110, 129; Wunderketten (in Diu Crône), 23, 61, 126 matière de Bretagne, see Britain Maurer, Friedrich, 55n. Mauritz, Hans-Dieter, 77n. Mehl, Dieter, 117n. Meidelant, 127 Meisner, Heinrich, 40n. Meleagant/Meljaganz, 17n., 47, 49, 76n.; Miljanz (in Wigalois), 48 Meleranz (Pleier’s), 36n. Meleranz, see Pleier, Der Mennung, Albert, 29–30 Meraugis de Portlesguez, 78 mêrfeine, see Lady/Fairy of the Lake Merlin, 13n., 23, 75, 89n., 129, 131–2 Merlin, 131 Mertens, Volker, 5n., 118n. Merveilles de Rigomer, Les, see Jehan metamorphosis, see transformation metonymy, 49–50, 58, 118 Meyer, E. H., 61n. Meyer, Matthias, 13n. Middleton, Margaret and Roger, 12n. Midomidas (in Merveilles de Rigomer), 133 Miljanz, see Meleagant Mills, Maldwyn, 29n., 54n., 79n. mirabilia, 116 mirror for princes, 104, 115, 123 misogyny, 18 Mitgau, Wolfgang,1n., 6n., 9n., 12n., 87n., 93n., 107n., 119 Mohr, Wolfgang, 33n. Mohammedans, see Muslims monsters, 60, 116 Moorish princess (in Morien), 81 moral context/issues, 3, 4, 8, 10, 16–18, 21, 34, 35, 36n., 37, 38, 44–5, 53, 55, 58, 59, 65, 70, 73, 75, 78, 79, 82, 84–5, 88, 89, 92n., 100, 102, 104, 106, 107n., 109, 114, 115, 116n., 118, 126; see also Wirnt von Gravenberg Moral (regent in Wigalois), 88 Mordred, 20, 29 Morgan the Fay/Famurgan, 51n., 79 Morien, 27, 80 Mort Artu, see Lancelot-Grail Cycle Müller, Ulrich, 15n. Munsalvaesche (Grail realm in Parzival), 21, 111 Muslims/Mohammedans, 2, 9, 81, 88–9, 101–02 murder/homicide, 1, 23–4, 29, 55–6, 64–5, 76, 91, 131; fratricide, 126 mysterium tremendum, 66 myth, 9, 18, 19n., 20, 27, 31n., 51–2, 62, 66, 92, 105, 110, 116n.; see also Celtic myth and legend Namur (in Wigalois), 2, 31, 87–8, 90, 102 Nantes, 2 narrative, aspects of, 42n., 45, 66, 94n., 102, 120; scheme/structure, 11, 24, 37, 42–3, 47, 65, 69, 75, 87, 88, 101, 113n., 126, 133, bipartite, 37, 75

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INDEX narrator, 32, 59, 82, 84; Jewish, 112n.; his concerns/interests, 8, 9, 20, 34n., 44, 49, 55, 80, 83, 103, 106, 116, 120; voice of, 6, 14, 15, 24–6, 28, 36, 43n., 48, 56, 78, 81, 82, 84–5, 89, 94, 97, 98, 100, 106–8, 115n., 120, 122, 124, 131 nature and nurture, 119–20 necromancers, see magicians, Roaz necromancy, see magic Nereja (emissary in Wigalois), 2, 30, 52, 54, 56–7, 62, 69n., 74, 107, 131 Nestorian kingdom, 100 netherworld, see Otherworld Neumann, Friedrich, 5n., 6n., 7, 24n., 66n. New Testament, 75 Nicholson, Helen, 54n. Nickel, Helmut, 3n. Nibelungenlied, the, 15, 42, 45, 92n., 103, 121 Nineham, Dennis, 97n. Noltze, Holger, 101n. Nutt, Alfred, 24n. oath, 83, 91, breaking of, 35 Occitan love lyric, 102n. Odysseus, 62 O’Gorman, Richard, 114n. Old Hamlet, see Hamlet oral transmission, 15n., 25, 40, 123 Orcanie, see Orkney Ordohorht (Fortuna’s realm in Diu Crône), 125 Orgeluse (in Parzival), 54, 57, 78 O’Rian-Raedel, Dagmar, 45n. Orient/East, the, 9, 93–4, 98–9, 100, 102, 112n., 113; Orientalising, 99; see also Asia Original Sin, 75 Orilus (in Parzival), 42 Orkney, 13n.; Orcanie, 126 Other, the, 45, 65 Otherworld, 18, 19, 45, 50, 62, 88; counterworld, 45, 106; netherworld, 2, 62, 76; Underworld, 62, 117; see also journey Otto I, Count of Andechs and Duke of Meran, 24n. Otto of Brunswick, 5 Otto, Rudolf, 66n., 117 Ovid, 133 Owen, D. D. R., 27n., 39n., 63n., 68n., 76n. pagans/heathens/non-Christians, and paganism, 18, 86, 88–9, 90–1, 93, 101, 110–11, 115, 128, 130, 133 Palmer, Nigel, 62n. Paltriot (in Wigamur), 128 Panschavar (in Wigalois), 90–1 Pant, King of Genewîs (in Lanzelet), 38, 127; see also Ban Parille (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Paris, Gaston, 24n., 26n., 30n., 43n. parody, 76 Parshall, Linda, 41n. Parzival, 1, 21, 27, 36, 37–9, 41–2, 53, 58, 69, 72, 75, 84, 86, 93–7, 106, 107n., 110–11, 114, 117,

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122, 125–6, 133; Perceval, 23, 26–7, 29, 39n., 69, 70, 81, 109, 114, 117n., 119, 131–2, his family (in Didot Perceval), 131–2 Parzival, see Wolfram von Eschenbach Passion, the, 114 Patch, Howard Rollins, 12n., 49n., 68n. Paterson, Linda, 41n. Patriarchs, 76 Patristic tradition, 64n. patronage, 4–5 Pausch, Oskar, 2n. Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, 92 penance/punishment, 19, 56, 63, 65, 72–3, 102, 125 penitence, 69, 83 Perceval, see Parzival Perceval, see Chrétien de Troyes Peredur, 23 periphrasis, 46 Peters, Edward, 14n. Petitcriu (in Gottfried’s Tristan), 56n. Pfeiffer, Franz, 1n., 40n. Pfetan (dragon in Wigalois), 61 phantoms, see ghosts Philip of Suabia, 5 Philipot, E., 80n. Pickering, F. P., 71n. Pioles (in Wigamur), 128 Pittimont/Grals (in Jüngere Titurel), 100 Pleier, Der, 20–1, 36n., 60, Garel von dem blühenden Tal, 13; Meleranz, 27; Tandareis und Flordibel, 17–18 Pluris (castle in Lanzelet), 128 Pluto, 62 Pope Sulpicius (in De Ortu Walwanii), 132 Pope, the, 101n., 114–15, 130 porpoise, 128 prayer, 63, 68–9, 72n., 73–4, 77–8, 133 predestination, 97 Prester John, 9, 21, 23, 64, 92, 94, 99–101, 112, 115, 133 primogeniture, 34n. Priure, King (in Diu Crône), 124 prolepsis, 70 prophecy, 28, 62, 66, 70, 75, 110, 129, 131 Prose Lancelot, see Lancelot-Grail cycle Providence, 73, 96, 97–8 Pucci, Antonio, see Carduino punishment, see penance Purgatory, 2, 23, 62, 63–5, 131; purgatorial fire, 23, 77, 129 Püterich von Reichertshausen, Jakob, Der Ehrenbrief, 3 Putter, Ad, 65n., 79n. quests/questing, 22n., 24, 47, 53, 65, 86, 87, 109–110, 112, 114–15, 116; see also Grail Rabenschlacht, the, 102 Ragotzky, Hedda, 41n. Rajna, Pio, 27n., 31n.

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Rappoltstein Parzifal, see Wisse, Claus Raucheisen, Alfred, 80n. Ravenna, Battle of, 14n. Read, Ralph, 21n., 24n. readers, 96, 110 reading in Wigalois, 62 realism, 9, 86–8, 92, 108 reception, 15; by Wirnt, 17n.; see also Wigalois reconciliation, 20 recreantise, 16 red hair, 89–90 redemption, 23–4, 31, 63n., 73–6, 93, 98, 101, 103; sin and, 72; see also Wigalois Reformation, the, 61, 65 Reichertshausen, see Jakob Püterich von Renaissance, the, 61 Renaut de Bâgé/Beaujeu, Le Bel Inconnu, 4, 6, 7, 22, 27–9, 30n., 31, 33, 44, 56–7, 102n. Renoir, Alain, 65n. Repanse de Schoye (in Parzival), 102 Resler, Michael, 25n. resurrection, 75, 76n., 105 revenge, see vengeance rewriting, creative, 42n., 119 Rhadamanthus, 62 rhetoric, 5, 34n., 36, 54, 58, 99n. Richard Coeur de Lion, 8n. Rigomer, castle of, 22n., 116n., 132 ring, see Fortuna, magic objects Ringeler, Frank, 102n. rites of passage, 20n. Rival Sisters contest, 124 Riwalin (in Gottfried’s Tristan), 49 Roaz of Glois, necromancer (in Wigalois), 2, 8, 24n., 42, 59, 61, 64, 67, 72, 87–92, 97, 101, 107–8, 112, 115, 116, 131 Robertshaw, Alan, 55n. ‘rock of virtue’, see testing stone Röhrich, Lutz, 65n. Roimunt, 24n. Roman de Fergus, 27 Roman d’Yder, 27 Roman Empire, 132 Romance of the Rose, see Jean de Meun Romantic era, 4 Rome, 2, 54, 62, 130, 132 Romulus, 62 Round Table, 20, 28, 52, 86, 93, 105, 108–9, 117n., 124, 127, 131; see also Arthur Ruck, Elaine H., 17n. Rudolf von Ems, 40 Rüedeger (in Rabenschlacht), 102 Ruel (wild woman in Wigalois), 30, 61, 68–9, 97–8, 131 Runkelstein murals, 3, 64n. Rushing, James, 1n., 11n. Sachs, Hans, 50 Sacker, Hugh, 14n., 62n., 96 sacrilege, 23 Saelde, see Fortuna saelde, see fortune

Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, Station Island, 64 St Veit an der Glan, 5 saints’ lives, 78n., 117 Salian emperors, 105n. Sâlie (in Diu Crône), see Castle of Marvels salvation, 2, 23, 72, 76n., 97n., 113, 116 Sanders, Willy, 51n. Sandrock, Lucie, 107n. ‘sankgreall’, see Grail Saran, Franz, 5–6, 24n., 30, 32n., 51n., 56n., 99n., 102n. Sardin (land in Diu Crône), 126 Satan, see devil, the Saxons/Anglians, 13, 105n., 122 Schampfanzun (castle in Parzival), 125 schastel marveile, see Castle of Marvels Schâtel de Mort (in Lanzelet), 127 Schauerromantik, 66 Schießl, Ute, 33n., 34n., 35n., 46n., 56n., 83n., 84n., 108n. Schiewer, Hans-Jochen, 2n., 6n.–7n., 117n. Schiller, 119 Schionatulander, in Parzival, 112n.; in Jüngere Titurel, 133 Schirok, Bernd, 41n., 91n. Schmid, Elizabeth, 75n. Schmitt, Jean-Claude, 64n. Schmolke-Hasselmann, Beate, 12, 16n., 79n., 114n. Schofield, William H., 27n., 43n. Scholastic debate, 63 Schrieber, Albert, 5n. Schröder, Werner, 5n., 6n., 42n. Schultz, James A., 20–1, 72n., 102 Second Continuation, see Continuations Secretan, Dominic, 12n. Segremors (in Wigalois), 48 Seimeret (in Diu Crône), 125 Senaudon, Gaste Cité of (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28 Sennabor (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 sermon, romance as, 104 Serpent’s Kiss, see Fier Baiser sexual context/encounters, 8, 19, 20, 31, 39, 41, 55–6, 78–80, 85, 102n., 110, 116n., 128, 123, 133; see also adultery Shades, the, 62 Shakespeare, 64, 92n.; Hamlet, 73 Shangri-La, 100 Shippey, T. A., 92n. Shockey, Gary, 117n. Siamerac of Lembil, Lady (in Diu Crône), 125 Siberry, Elizabeth, 101n. Siege Perilous, the, 70, 117n., 131 Siegfried (in Nibelungenlied), 15, 45 Sigune, in Parzival, 95, 112n., 125; in Jüngere Titurel, 133 Simek, Rudolf, 64n. Singerman, Susan, 92n. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 45, 46–7, 65, 72, 78–9 Sir Percyvell of Gales, 62 Skeels, Dell, 70n.

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INDEX Skowronek, Marianne, 50n. Sneeringer, Kristine K., 55n. society, 6, 35, 99, 102n. social context, 6, 36, 39n., 88, 104, 108, 117, 122 source claim/reference, 24–6, 80n., 119, 123; see also Wirnt von Gravenberg source question, 19n., 21–2, 23n., 28–9, 30n., 39n., 40, 42, 45, 47, 62, 67, 79, 87–8, 99n., 102, 110, 126 sovereignty, jewel of, 46n. Spain (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Sparnaay, Hendricus, 116n. spear, see lance spectres, see ghosts Spenser, 92n. spirits, see ghosts spiritual issues, 23, 59, 60, 63, 65, 69, 70, 72, 75, 77n., 88, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102, 107, 108–9, 110–11, 114–15, 116n., 117, 120, 121, 130, 133; see also Wigalois stag, 129 Stein, Siegfried, 88n. Stengel, Edmund, 115n. Stevens, John, 117n. stone, of virtue, see testing stone; stein, Grail as, 133 Stricker, Der, 60; Daniel von dem blühenden Tal, 13, 24n.–25n., 36n. succession, dynastic, 35, 120, 128, 133 superbia, 72 supernatural/the uncanny, 8, 18, 44, 45, 51n., 64, 66, 86, 87, 92, 97n., 106, 116n., 126, 129; see also ghosts, magic superstition, 70–1 sword bridge, see bridge sword, broken, 109; gift of, 71, 127; in the stone, 117n., 131; two swords, 75; see also Grail sword symbols and symbolism, 48, 52, 58, 60, 71, 84, 86, 89, 101, 104, 105, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 121 Syria (in Wigalois), 99 Syrian princess, see Florie Tandareis, 17–18 Tandareis und Flordibel, see Pleier, Der Tannhäuser, 18, 80n. Taylor, Jane, 67n. temptation, 79, 97 Terence, 51n. test, of chastity; 19, 128; of nobility, 19; spiritual, 70 testing, 22, 37, 54–6, 70, 73, 79, 97n.; see also Wigalois testing objects: bath, 128; glove, 126; goblet, 124; stone/rock (Wirnt’s Tugendstein), 2, 8, 69–70, 79–80, 128, as chair in Der Artushof/Widuwilt, 130 Third Continuation, see Continuations Thomas, John Wesley, 5n., 6, 17n., 27n., 42n., 47n., 51–2

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Thomas, Neil, 3n., 7n., 13n., 18n., 20n., 27n., 41n., 78n., 102n., 109n., 110n., 115n., 116n., 120n. Thomasin von Zerclaere, Der Wälsche Gast, 118n. Thorp, Mary, 42n. Tibet, 100 Tidogolain (in Le Bel Inconnu), 28 Timmel, Madelyn, 63n. Tiresias, 62 Titurel, 96, 133 Titurel, see Wolfram von Eschenbach Titurison (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 tournaments, 3n., 34, 124, 127, 128, 129 Trachsler, Ernst, 67, 69n., 75n., 81n. transformation/metamorphosis, 22–3, 28–9, 31n., 39n., 65n., 128, 129 Trask, Willard, 9n., 86n. treachery/betrayal, 20, 91, 123 tree, blessed (in Chevalier du Papegau), 129; candle-lit (in Durmart), 114–15, 130 Trevrizent (in Parzival), 58, 94, 95, 97 trial of faith, 72 Trinity, the, 96 Tristan, 1 Tristan, see Gottfried von Strassburg trobar clus, 41 Trojan War, the, 2 Troy, 62 Tugendstein, see testing stone tuition, see instruction Tundalus, 61, 69 Uhland, Ludwig, ‘Ritter Wieduwilt’, 3–4 Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, 60, 82; Lanzelet, 27, 32, 38–9, 51, 82, 127–8 Ulysses, 80n. uncanny, the, see supernatural undead, the, 2 Underworld, see Otherworld unicorn, 129 Unterhaltungsroman, 104 Unzeitig-Herzog, Monika, 113n. Uther Pendragon, 13n., 19, 105, 124, 126, 131, 132 Valerin (in Lanzelet), 127 vengeance/revenge, 23–4, 30, 41, 65, 125 Venus, 80n. Venusberg, the, 18 Vergil, Aeneid, 62; German version of, 62 verligen, 16 Vespasian, Emperor (in Jüngere Titurel), 133 Visio Sancti Pauli, 68n. Vision of Tundalus, 61, 68n. visions, 3, 61, 72, 111, 117, 125, 132 Volfing, Annette, 95n. ‘Volksbücher’, 43n. Vorgeschichte, 43, 44, 49 Voß, Rudolf, 14n. vulture, 128 Wace, 13, 20, 84 wafer, see gifts

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Wagner, 18, 94n. Waldschmidt, Anneliese, 15n. Waldstein, Ernst Karl, 3n. Walker, D. P., 64n. Wallbank, Rosemary, 47n., 106n. Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, 26 Walther von der Vogelweide, 50n., 119, 122–3 Walwanius, see Gawein Walwein, see Gawein Warnock, Robert G., 4n. Warnstedt, 105n. Wasielewski-Knecht, Claudia, 41n. waste/blighted land, 23–4, 63, 100, 110, 125; restored, 2, 131 Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, The, 23n. Wehrli, Max, 52n., 55n., 66n., 77n. Welfersholz, 105n. Welt Lohn, Der, see Konrad von Würzburg Wentzlaff-Eggebert, Friedrich, 63n. Wernher der Gartenaere, Helmbrecht, 35 Weston, Jessie L., 54n. wheel, of fire, 68n.; bridge and, 67–8; golden; 121, 130; of Fortune, see Fortuna, Wigalois Widuwilt, 67n., 81, 120–1, 130–1 Widuwilt, see Yiddish adaptations of Wigalois Wigalois, 4n., 7, 8, 23, 24n., 30, 51, 128; and Arthur, 10, 32, 67, 87, 108–9, 113; and his parents, 22, 31, 34, 42, 44–5, 49, 84, 99, 106, 116; and Florie his mother, 47, 49, 52–3, 99, 106, 116; and Gawein his father, 1–2, 8, 32–4, 37, 44–5, 49, 52–4, 56, 58–9, 60, 72, 78, 84–5, 87, 98, 103n., 106–8, 111, 113, 116, 120–1, Widuwilt and Gabein, 130–1; and his son, 26, 108, 120; as Knight of Fortune’s Wheel, 8, 49, 53, 118, 120; as predestined hero, 70; his adversaries, 30, 52, 58, 60–1, 64, 67, 70, 72–3, 87–9, 91–2, 97–8, see also Roaz, Lion; his birth and naming, 1, 32, 99; his campaign against Lion of Namur, 2, 31, 81, 87–8, 90–2, 102–3, 107, 108, 131; his descent to Korntin/defeat of Roaz, 30, 62–5, 67–77, 86, 107–9, 112, 116, 117, 131; his early adventures, 53–9; his education/instruction, 34, 58, 84, 107, 120; his kingship, 8–10, 31, 42–3, 86–8, 90n., 93, 98, 107–8, 112n., 113, 115–16, 121–22, and his subjects, 105–6, 115n.; his marriage to Larie, 87–8, 91; his priorities, 71–2; his public/political life, 88, 107, 112–13; his qualities, 72, 75; his redemptive/spiritual mission, 8, 42–3, 58–9, 73–4, 76–8, 90, 97, 107, 113, 115, 117; his testing/proving, 42–3, 52, 55–6, 61, 69–70, 72, 97, 106–07, 117; his Vorgeschichte, 43, 44, 49; his weapons and shield, 52, 63, 64, 108–9 Wigalois, see Wirnt von Gravenberg Wigamur, 128–9 Wigamur, 3, 20, 36n., 120, 128–9 Wigoleis, see Füetrer, Ulrich Wigoleis vom Rade (prose adaptation of Wigalois), 3, 33 Wild Hunt, 65, 116n.

wild woman, ‘femme saulvage’ in Chevalier du Papegau, 129; in Wigalois, see Ruel Wildt, Heidi, 12n., 50n., 63n., 72n., 107n., 116n. Wilhelm, Friedrich, 25n. Willehalm, see Wolfram von Eschenbach Windsor (in Chevalier du Papegau), 130 Wirnt von Gravenberg, 2n., 3, 5, 10, 16, 17n., 23, 33, 39–40, 41n., 48, 60, 61n., 106; and figure of Arthur, 104–6, 118, 121–2; and literary dissent, 7, 11, 119; and scriptural authority, 77; and Wolfram, 6, 10, 37, 39–43, 44, 86, 93, 97–103, 106, 108, 111–12, 115, 120, 122–3; as moralist, 10, 35n., 39, 56, 67, 82, 84, 90, 102–3, 118; his achievement, 24n., 25n., 30n., 40n., 56n., 103, 113n., 123; his audiences, 9n., 25, 26, 32, 36, 47, 62, 80–2, 107, 118, 119; his contemporaries, 37, 88, 100, 105; his interests/purpose/sympathies, 9, 10, 34–5, 37, 40, 41, 42, 69, 104, 108, 109, 112, 113, 116, 117, 122; his method, 7, 8–10, 11, 21, 24n., 35–9, 42–3, 44–6, 53, 58, 59, 66, 71, 82, 84–5, 92–3, 114, 119; his possible patron, 24n.; his predecessors, 7, 10, 39–40; his readers, 62; his source claims, 24–6, 80n., 119, 123; Wigalois/Gwîgalois, 1–2; and its European cognates, 7, 26–30, 38–9, 53–4, 102n., 107n.; and world literature, 80; chronological position of, 4n., 5n., 6, 11, 66, 67; critical scholarship on, 4–7, 12, 24–5, 29–30, 39–40, 42–3, 54–5, 60, 67, 72–3, 82, 88, 93n., 108, 119, 121; cultural context of, 88; dating of, 5–6, 7n., 40n.; generic status/ nature of, 9–10, 12, 104, 112, 117; handling of Arthurian/source material in, 6–10, 21–6, 29, 31–2, 38–40, 46, 56, 58, 62, 65, 67, 70, 72, 78, 98, 105, 109, 119, 122n., see also Wirnt and Wolfram; in art, 1, 3, 30; innovation in, 8, 9, 11, 31, 86, 88, 99n., 107; its conclusion, 24, 26, 30, 102–03, 106, 121; its successors, 3–4, 7, 77, 81, see also Ulrich Füetrer, Yiddish adaptations, Wigamur, Wigoleis vom Rade; manuscripts of, 2, 30, 43n.; narrative model for, 11, narrative structure, 24, 75n., 88n., 113n., see also narrative, narrator, passim; prologue to, 25–6; reception of, 2–4, 7n., 43n., 77, 81–2, 120–1; spiritual tone of, 71, 78, 107, 114 Wirral, the, 65 Wisse, Claus, and Colin, Philipp, Rappoltstein Parzifal, 114 witchcraft, 18, 61, see also magic, supernatural Withrington, John, 23n. Wittenberg, 65 Wittkower, Rudolf, 100n. Wittmann-Klemm, Dorothee, 114n. Wolfram von Eschenbach, 1, 4, 6–7, 8–9, 10, 11–12, 14, 21, 26, 27, 37, 39–41, 42n., 43, 54, 88, 89, 99–103, 104–5, 106, 108, 110–11, 114, 115, 119, 121, 123, 126, 133; his contemporaries/peers, 24, 40, 100; his style, 40n., 41, 86, 94; ; Parzival, 3, 6, 7–8, 10, 12, 14,

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INDEX 21, 23, 25n., 36, 39, 40n., 41, 42, 49, 54, 55, 57, 58, 78, 80, 84–5, 92–8, 99n., 102–3, 108, 111–12, 116, 120, 122, 125; Titurel, 14, 41, 96, 111, 112n., 133; Willehalm, 6, 9, 86, 89, 100–02, 111–12, 118 Wolfzettel, Friedrich, 75n., 104n. women, conduct towards, 82–5 wonders, see marvels Wrede, Hilmar, 27n. writing, in Wigalois, 24n., 85 Wunderketten (in Diu Crône), see marvels Wunderlich, Werner, 15n. Wyss, Ulrich, 61n.

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Ygerne/Igern, 126, 131 Yiddish adaptations of Wigalois, 3–4, 45, 61, 67n., 87, 112, 120; Der Artushof, 3, 45, 48n., 58, 81, 120, 130–1; Widuwilt, 3, 88, 130–1, 112n. Ysave of Carahes (in First Continuation), 89n. Ysope, Queen (in Wigamur), 128 Yvain, see Chrétien de Troyes Zaradech (in Wigalois), 90–1 Zeleski, Carol, 60n. Zephyr, 50 Ziegler, H.-J., 5n. Zink, Georges, 14n.

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ARTHURIAN STUDIES I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI

XVII

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ASPECTS OF MALORY, edited by Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer THE ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE: A Reassessment of the Poem, edited by Karl Heinz Göller THE ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY, I: Author Listing, edited by C. E. Pickford and R. W. Last THE CHARACTER OF KING ARTHUR IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE, Rosemary Morris PERCEVAL: The Story of the Grail, by Chrétien de Troyes, translated by Nigel Bryant THE ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY, II: Subject Index, edited by C. E. Pickford and R. W. Last THE LEGEND OF ARTHUR IN THE MIDDLE AGES, edited by P. B. Grout, R. A. Lodge, C. E. Pickford and E. K. C. Varty THE ROMANCE OF YDER, edited and translated by Alison Adams THE RETURN OF KING ARTHUR, Beverly Taylor and Elisabeth Brewer ARTHUR’S KINGDOM OF ADVENTURE: The World of Malory’s Morte Darthur, Muriel Whitaker KNIGHTHOOD IN THE MORTE DARTHUR, Beverly Kennedy LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN EN PROSE, tome I, edited by Renée L. Curtis LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN EN PROSE, tome II, edited by Renée L. Curtis LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN EN PROSE, tome III, edited by Renée L. Curtis LOVE’S MASKS: Identity, Intertextuality, and Meaning in the Old French Tristan Poems, Merritt R. Blakeslee THE CHANGING FACE OF ARTHURIAN ROMANCE: Essays on Arthurian Prose Romances in memory of Cedric E. Pickford, edited by Alison Adams, Armel H. Diverres, Karen Stern and Kenneth Varty REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS IN THE ARTHURIAN ROMANCES AND LYRIC POETRY OF MEDIEVAL FRANCE: Essays presented to Kenneth Varty on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, edited by Peter V. Davies and Angus J. Kennedy CEI AND THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND, Linda Gowans LAHAMON’S BRUT: The Poem and its Sources, Françoise H. M. Le Saux READING THE MORTE DARTHUR, Terence McCarthy, reprinted as AN INTRODUCTION TO MALORY CAMELOT REGAINED: The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson, 1800–1849, Roger Simpson THE LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR IN ART, Muriel Whitaker GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG AND THE MEDIEVAL TRISTAN LEGEND: Papers from an Anglo-North American symposium, edited with an introduction by Adrian Stevens and Roy Wisbey ARTHURIAN POETS: CHARLES WILLIAMS, edited and introduced by David Llewellyn Dodds AN INDEX OF THEMES AND MOTIFS IN TWELFTH-CENTURY FRENCH ARTHURIAN POETRY, E. H. Ruck CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES AND THE GERMAN MIDDLE AGES: Papers from an international symposium, edited with an introduction by Martin H. Jones and Roy Wisbey

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SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: Sources and Analogues, compiled by Elisabeth Brewer CLIGÉS by Chrétien de Troyes, edited by Stewart Gregory and Claude Luttrell THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SIR THOMAS MALORY, P. J. C. Field T. H. WHITE’S THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, Elisabeth Brewer ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY, III: 1978–1992, Author Listing and Subject Index, compiled by Caroline Palmer ARTHURIAN POETS: JOHN MASEFIELD, edited and introduced by David Llewellyn Dodds THE TEXT AND TRADITION OF LAZAMON’S BRUT, edited by Françoise Le Saux CHIVALRY IN TWELFTH-CENTURY GERMANY: The Works of Hartmann von Aue, W. H. Jackson THE TWO VERSIONS OF MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR: Multiple Negation and the Editing of the Text, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade RECONSTRUCTING CAMELOT: French Romantic Medievalism and the Arthurian Tradition, Michael Glencross A COMPANION TO MALORY, edited by Elizabeth Archibald and A. S. G. Edwards A COMPANION TO THE GAWAIN-POET, edited by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson MALORY’S BOOK OF ARMS: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur, Andrew Lynch MALORY: TEXTS AND SOURCES, P. J. C. Field KING ARTHUR IN AMERICA, Alan Lupack and Barbara Tepa Lupack THE SOCIAL AND LITERARY CONTEXTS OF MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR, edited by D. Thomas Hanks Jr THE GENESIS OF NARRATIVE IN MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR, Elizabeth Edwards GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND THE ARTHURIAN TRADITION, edited by James P. Carley THE KNIGHT WITHOUT THE SWORD: A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry, Hyonjin Kim ULRICH VON ZATZIKHOVEN’S LANZELET: Narrative Style and Entertainment, Nicola McLelland THE MALORY DEBATE: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, edited by Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick and Michael N. Salda MERLIN AND THE GRAIL: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Arthurian romances attributed to Robert de Boron, translated by Nigel Bryant ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY IV: 1993–1998, Author Listing and Subject Index, compiled by Elaine Barber DIU CRÔNE AND THE MEDIEVAL ARTHURIAN CYCLE, Neil Thomas NEW DIRECTIONS IN ARTHURIAN STUDIES, edited by Alan Lupack KING ARTHUR IN MUSIC, edited by Richard Barber THE BOOK OF LANCELOT: The Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation and the Medieval Tradition of Narrative Cycles, Bart Besamusca A COMPANION TO THE LANCELOT-GRAIL CYCLE, edited by Carol Dover

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THE GENTRY CONTEXT FOR MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR, Raluca L. Radulescu PARZIVAL: WITH TITUREL AND THE LOVE LYRICS, translated by Cyril Edwards ARTHURIAN STUDIES IN HONOUR OF P. J. C. FIELD, edited by Bonnie Wheeler THE LEGEND OF THE GRAIL, Nigel Bryant THE GRAIL LEGEND IN MODERN LITERATURE, John B. Marino RE-VIEWING LE MORTE DARTHUR: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes, edited by K. S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu THE SCOTS AND MEDIEVAL ARTHURIAN LEGEND, edited by Rhiannon Purdie and Nicola Royan