Chapter Six—
Epic and Romance in Germany
Intergeneric Dominants
The preceding analysis provides the tools to discriminate among the three codes of behavior addressed to the ruling class in both narrative literature and literature of behavior, the latter eventually resulting in generalized public standards. Once again, the three codes (courtly, chivalric/heroic, and chivalric/courtois ), all in full bloom around 1200, were seldom isolated from one another, although their degree of mixture varied with time and place. In the south of France, for example, with Guilhelm IX, Bertran de Born, and Peire Vidal, the lively feeling for the rapacious warrior who obtains vital satisfaction at the sight of strife, broken arms, and split heads was still a norm which coexisted with the refinements of love, though without much need for sublimation. I shall now try to gauge how the codes interacted in German literature.
German lyric forms were fragmented into a number of metrical frameworks which had more to do with musical patterns than with ancient examples. In turn the new epic forms, without deriving directly from ancient models, sprang out of a conflation of classical genres and new popular ones. In other words, they grew directly out of indigenous oral narratives, with some limited background of mediated Homeric and Virgilian features and materials. Just as significant, the “dominants” or constants that we see weaving their way in and out of each group of texts were literary phenomena whose genesis was not strictly literary,
but moral and social. As a way to gauge their vitality and autonomy, as it were, H.-R. Jauss has proposed “the test of commutation.”[1] He asserts that in a synchronic perspective the delimitation of genres “cannot be decided according to one-sided formal or thematic characteristics.” The “test of commutation” reveals the true “dominant” that establishes “constitutive genre distinctions.” Just as, for example, “if one puts a princess in a fairy tale next to a princess in a novella, one notices the difference,” so characters are not interchangeable (they are “non-commutable”) between the chanson de geste and the romance. So far, so good. Yet the codes we are pursuing cut across genres: they are, should we say, “non-generic dominants.” If it is true that Arthurian knights would not fit in a chanson de geste or, vice versa, that the paladins of Charlemagne would be out of place around the Round Table (at least before Boiardo and Ariosto), what do we make, for example, of Siegfried and Brunhild in the Nibelungenlied? They are certainly heroic characters, but do they not incorporate strong courtly / courtois / chivalric elements, as well as fairy tale magic elements?
On the basis of degrees of reality, John of Garlandia's Poetria had differentiated the medieval genres as “res gesta or historia, res ficta or fabula, and res ficta quae tamen fieri potuit ”—historic fact, fanciful fable, and imagined possibility.[2] But let us think of the magic Cloak of Darkness that Siegfried uses to win the fateful test imposed by Brunhild, and then again to subjugate her for her husband King Gunther. Was this delivered by the poet as fact, fanciful fiction, or realistic fiction? How far does the distinction reach in the body of the actual texts, beyond the realization of the different origins of single features: some epic, some mytho-religious, some from the folklore of fairy tales? Narrative constituents do become commutable between genres by virtue of the way they serve the deeper dominant constituent of, for example, courtly conventions. Since knights are both subservient to the code of their court society and rebellious against, or transcendent to, it—and more so in Germany than in France: witness Tristan, Iwein, and Parzival—their behavior responds to the ethical point to be made.[3]
Jauss has integrated the educational dimension of literary artifacts into his proposed description of “the fundamental model that the medieval genres of epic, romance, and novella have in common.” His “Mode of Construction and Levels of Significance” include the presence of an “exclusively aristocratic” social status in the epic and romance (the novella being essentially bourgeois), with opposition, in the ro-
mance, between the nobility and the vilain on the one hand, and, on the other, the “inactive ideal king” and “the knight who alone takes the field and whose adventure stands in relation to the winning of his lady.” Next, his “Mode of Reception” includes, for the romance, the communication of “the doctrine of courtly education [Bildung ] through its ethics of the event.” Finally, his “Mode of Social Function” includes, again for the romance, that “the later function as an entertainment for the private reader is preceded by the original function as the initiation into courtly life and courtly love: the legitimate quest for a terrestrial happiness regulated by a social discipline and a life-style.”[4] Such characterizations should clearly confirm the points I am trying to make.
True enough, through the twelfth century the code of courtly conduct could not be regarded as a coherent whole except for the basic notion of dienst und lon, service and reward.[5] The qualities we encounter in so many texts are the traditional ones of ere (honor), milte (generosity), triuwe (loyalty), staete (constancy), maze (measure), zuht (good conduct), and tapferheit (bravery), but the specific role they play varies with authors and contexts.[6] Similarly, for some scholars the notion of courtly love implies a collective ideology which does not correspond to the idiosyncrasies of individual poets and texts. One authoritative skeptic was W. T. H. Jackson, whose admirable familiarity with the texts does not seem to me to vouchsafe his efforts to “deconstruct” (avantla-lettre ) the poets' adherence to a common mythology.[7] For him Chrétien de Troyes's chief purpose was to display the failure of the Arthurian code of conduct (e.g. 27: Hartmann, in his Iwein, “believed in the courtly mystique,” whereas his source Chrétien did not, so that Hartmann “failed to appreciate his predecessor's irony”). The only woman with a human face in Chrétien's poems, Jackson claims, is Enide, who was no Arthurian lady, and every one of his heroes learns at great expense that the Arthurian code, superficial and shallow as it had become, failed to lead to harmony, greatness, and happiness. Erec, in that poem about love in marriage—a most un-Arthurian and uncourtly notion—learns to love Enide above concupiscentia, with trust and appreciation for her personal qualities (23–34).
Granted that Chrétien must have had a long and rich oral tradition behind him, it seems excessive to assume that at his time the Arthurian code was already worn out and conventionalized to the point of decay. Yvain's memorable opening lines (1–41) depict Arthur's court in a context where the irony appears aimed less at that court than, trenchantly,
at the inadequacy of Chrétien's villainous contemporaries, who are worth less alive than are the dead knights of Arthur's memory: “Artus . . . / la cui proesce nos enseigne / que nos soiens preu et cortois”; “car molt valt mialz, ce m'est a vis, / un cortois morz c'uns vilains vis.” In any event, Jackson maintains that passion was generally considered morally wrong in the Middle Ages, which caused a conflict between the needs of society and the needs of pure Christianity.[8] The sacrament of marriage sanctified sex, but only as the means to obey the commandment to grow and multiply; passionate love had no place within marriage, since desire and enjoyment of sex were inherently and inescapably sinful, the fall's tragic mark, as St. Augustine had so eloquently preached. Duby's recent researches basically agree with this definition of the place of love and sex in marriage.[9] A consequence was the apparent impossibility of finding a logical moral place for love literature. The following discussion should help to focus Jackson's strictures and answer some of them.
Chivalry and the German Epic
One reason for the relative dearth of German chivalric literature in the twelfth century is that education, according to customs inherited from the earliest times, was still regarded with a certain contempt among the German nobility. The Ostrogoths had forbidden noblemen to entrust their sons to teachers, who would turn their minds away from the pursuits of the warrior class. Procopius of Caesarea (The Gothic War, sixth century) relates such an edict by Theodoric the Great. Thereafter the Goths sought a “barbaric education” for their sons, who should grow up in the company of their peers and accustom themselves to the use of arms and the exercise of force over their subjects, away from the influence of old, effeminate wise men.[10]
Raoul Glaber of Cluny (Historiae sui temporis 2.12, written in the 1030s) tells the story of the grammarian Vilgardus of Ravenna around A.D. 1000 as a moral exemplum of the danger of falling into heresy from excessive love of letters:
He nourished for grammar a passion more insane than prudent, as is typical of the Italians, who, for the sake of it, will neglect all the other arts. Filled with pride for his knowledge he came close to madness. So much so that one night the devils appeared to him in the shape of Virgil, Juvenal, and Horace, and thanked him for his enthusiasm in studying their books and extolling their authority among posterity. Thereafter, seduced by the devils' delusion,
he started to teach their dogmas, asserting that the poets' words carry authority on all matters. At last he was judged to be a heretic and condemned by the bishop of the city, Peter. Everywhere in Italy there were found people who embraced this pestiferous belief: they too died from the iron and the fire.[11]
Historians have often referred to the Burgundian cleric Wipo, preceptor of the future Emperor Henry III (1039–1056), for his regretful observation that Germans regarded it as frivolous and shameful (vacuum et turpe ) for nonclerics to submit themselves to tutors.[12] Nevertheless, no matter how limited and qualified, the appreciation of classical culture had been growing: Wipo held up the example of Italy, where Roman boys rushed to school as soon as they had passed the age of playing with childish toys.
If Italians differed from Germans in their appreciation of schooling, so did the French. In his biography of Count Burchard, Vita domni Burcardi (1058), Odo of St. Maur (Eudes de Saint-Maur) registered the French custom of sending the sons of high noblemen to the king's court for education.[13] Marbod of Rennes (ca. 1035–1123) repeatedly pointed out that it was customary for French noblemen to send their sons to grammar school as soon as they reached the right age.[14] As we saw above (chap. 3), at Henry II's English court Gerald of Wales had praised the great princes of the past for joining “toga and armor,” literacy and valor.
In Germany, the epic genre had combined the heathen martial spirit with chivalrous civility without the Christian element so prominent in the French epic, although the specifically chivalric brand of piety that the historian Adolf Waas labelled Ritterfrömmigkeit was conspicuously present in the religious epics of biblical inspiration, for example, the Heliand.[15] Historians have somewhat confused the picture by distinguishing too sharply between a Volksepos, or popular national epic (Nibelungenlied, Gudrun ), and a höfisches Epos (the romance), presumably related to the noble class.[16] But both the epic and the romance thrived within the higher classes and may well have been produced mostly by clerics (as seems to be the case with the extant version of the Nibelungenlied ), even while minstrels and rhapsodes could perform both kinds before receptive popular audiences. It might be more meaningful to distinguish between a heroic/knightly inspiration in the Volksepos, based on the ethic of the warrior class, and an essentially clerically-based inspiration in the romance. The chivalric values of bravery, loyalty, and generosity—the French prouesse, loyauté, and
largesse —were already present in the early pagan epics, signally Beowulf and the Hildebrantslied (both composed around A.D. 800 or even somewhat earlier), and then appeared in the tenth-century Waltharius and eleventh-century Ruodlieb,[17] together with the ritual testing of the young hero (who even in Beowulf fights monsters rather than heathens, in a way that is characteristic of the French romance vis-à-vis the French epic). The coexistence of martial ethos and Christian piety, with the early forms of courtesy eventually acting as a catalyst between the two, is not a paradox but a natural response to conditions in the earlier Middle Ages, when such late pagan invaders as Magyars, Arabs, Turks, and Vikings threatened the survival of monasteries and the surrounding Christian communities. Germanic bellicosity had a positive side when harnessed for defense from outside dangers: the early epic forms grew in and around the monasteries, most often by the hand of clerical rhapsodes, reflecting this genuine need. Messages of this type resounded in Beowulf and the Hildebrantslied, and a similar sense of mission was carried in the later Ruodlieb and the proliferating songs inspired by the crusading spirit of the eleventh and later centuries.[18] Chroniclers represented family conflicts in terms that echoed the poetic myths in spirit and narrative detail.[19] Both the chronology and geography of such literary and historical documents appear to undermine Jaeger's claim that Germany originated these ethical motifs, since they go further back than his quoted sources and are common to both Germany and France.
Ever since Georges Dumézil (1940),[20] cultural anthropologists have attempted to identify the primeval forms of the epic through such binary oppositions as that of the terrible (Varuna) and the enlightened (Mitra), as between Achilles and Odysseus or Nestor. The Greek, Roman, and Germanic epos starts with tragic anger (see Curtius 170)—a heroic but uncourtly moral trait, by our frame of reference. Achilles' anger sets the theme of the Iliad, and Hagen's and Kriemhild's frightening anger fills the stanzas of the Nibelungenlied. But the hero can be, and most commonly is, either a youthfully impetuous, emotional, and violent warrior, like Achilles, or a wise, prudent, learned, and self-controlled senior sage, like Nestor. Ideally the hero combines the two, thus creating a more complex and somewhat ambiguous, Janus-like figure, like Odysseus, although the emphasis on wisdom was more characteristic of Hesiod than of Homer. The Homeric epic also flanks these types with the educators of warriors and princes, such as Cheiron and Phoenix. Dares Phrygius transmitted to the Middle Ages an Odysseus who was witty, eloquent, and wise,[21] while Fulgentius (ca. 467–532)
and Isidore (d. 636) canonized the two ingredients of the perfect hero, namely courage and wisdom, fortitudo and sapientia (see Fulgentius's interpretation of the Virgilian arma virumque and Isidore, Etimologiae 1.39.9, where the definition of the hero worthy of heaven prepared the type for Christian treatment). The soldier fortis et proelio doctus became a common topos. In Stoic terms fortitudo and sapientia corresponded to the cardinal virtues of fortitudo and prudentia, while justice and temperance appeared later as heroic dedication to the service of high causes and as measure or self-control; these, too, were “courtly” elements that entered the chivalric romance. All these schemata were then transferred to rulers and statesmen, starting with the emperors (Curtius 1963: 167–182).
Education and instruction—character formation and training in “rules”—are undoubtedly at the base of the höfisches Epos as its courtly element: this is the novel ingredient that stems from social transformations harking back to the early German courts, coupled with the French poets' mediating contributions.[22] The civilizing process of courtly ideology and sensibility acted gradually in capillary ways. Courtliness rested on consciously chosen social roles and notions of personal responsibility induced by education. When it came in contact with such collective archetypes as the epic and the imaginative romance (including the lyrical eroticism of “courtly love”), it set up a tension between contradictory, incompatible elements that forced profound revisions in form and matter alike.
The most “definitive” text of the Germanic epics, the Nibelungenlied (probably composed near Passau, ca. 1203–1205) deserves our attention for its paradigmatic value.[23] Of course the poem is of the heroic type. Three words with the highest frequency of recurrence in its vocabulary are recke, helt, and degen (warrior, hero).[24] The conclusive episode, climaxing in Kriemhild's beheading of Hagen with Siegfried's sword, is clearly an excess of savage revenge: it entails the planned destruction of the house of Burgundy including Kriemhild's own brothers, who were treacherously invited to Etzel's court for that precise purpose.[25] Kriemhild too will die, however, cut down by Hildebrand's sword in punishment for her criminal anger.
Because of the relative closeness of the two ruling classes of feudal nobility and high clergy, there was a certain convergence of ideals all along. Even within a truly heroic context, the Hildebrantslied already showed the sort of feudal casuistry about the fine points of loyalty to lord and kin that both a high aristocrat and a sophisticated cleric could
nurture and appreciate.[26] This short, powerful poem revolves around the conflict between loyalty to king and loyalty to family. After a long separation, father and son meet on the field of battle at the heads of opposite armies. Since he owes it to his king to fight with all his might, Hildebrant hesitates to reveal his identity to his son Hadubrant. Conversely, Hadubrant is so completely engrossed in performing his duty as warrior that he rejects all hints that he is facing his father, who, he insists, must have died in distant lands. Hildebrant's behavior expresses the heroic notion of identification with the tribe, to which the individual owes unconditional allegiance—even to the point of killing his son. The poem has lost its ending, but critics agree that the likely outcome was Hadubrant's death by Hildebrant's hand, possibly followed by the latter's lament and suicide over the son's body.[27]
Somewhat similar to Hildebrant's is Rüdeger's predicament in the Nibelungenlied. When he is sent to the Burgundian court with the mission of persuading Kriemhild to marry Etzel, he sways Kriemhild by a momentous offer that puts his own life on the line. As a courtier who is fully dedicated to the service of master and state, he promises her revenge against all wrongdoers and “swears for himself and all his vassals” to “serve her to the death” in achieving “whatever her honor demands.” On this condition she marries Etzel. Then, when the Burgundians arrive at Etzel's court—invited by Kriemhild to carry out her revenge against them—Rüdeger must choose between fighting the Burgundians out of loyalty to his king and queen, Etzel and Kriemhild, or refusing to fight because he had promised his help to the Burgundians when they were his house guests (37.11-32).[28] He begs Etzel to release him from his obligation, to no avail. This type of feudal casuistry was the epic background to the subtle “questions of love” in the “courts of love.”
Some of the text's apparent contradictions are probably to be explained by the poet's gloomy sense of tragedy, rather than by his treating courtliness only as a somewhat confused court-critic.[29] A good example of the poet's view of his story as determined by an iron necessity is the grimly humorous episode of Hagen putting the mermaids' prophecy to the test. When the mermaids predict that only the chaplain will survive the trip to Hunland, Hagen tries to drown the chaplain (who survives, thus confirming the prophecy). The poet is so confident in his fatalism that he can play it for powerful effects. Furthermore, everything being preordained, he does not hesitate to anticipate the issue of each of his narrative threads. The suspense is made not of surprise, but of the haunting realization that what must happen is happening step by step
before our own eyes. This feature was not uncommon in medieval narrative, where the reader is often apprised beforehand of a story's outcome. In the Italian Tristano Riccardiano (ca. 1300) the narrator warns the reader that Tristan's decision to marry Isotta dalle Bianche Mani in order to forget Isotta la Bionda will not turn out the way he planned it.[30] In contrast, of all medieval narrators Chrétien de Troyes was probably the one who played most methodically with a calculated element of surprise by surrounding his characters and events with an atmosphere of dense mystery as to reasons and circumstances.
In the French romances, courtliness subdued the heroic need for proud self-assertion and revenge of personal offense. The failure of courtliness to achieve this triumph of “measure” is part of the tragic element in the Nibelungenlied, even though some of its key figures do appear conditioned by courtliness. Siegfried and his parents, Kriemhild herself, Gunther and his brothers, even the pagan Etzel and his surrounding vassals, chiefly Dietrich von Bern, Hildebrand, and especially Rüdeger, are guided by a sense of humanity, good breeding (zuht ), and measure or self-restraint (mâze ). The numerous hôchgezîte or festival banquets are marked by liberality (milte ), hospitality, and knightly contests. The three contests Brunhild imposes on Gunther and Siegfried (Bartsch/de Boor ed.: 7.37 [425]) are tests of manhood of the type that the chivalrous knight would undergo to prove himself as deserving of his lady's guerdon. Even in the Old Norse saga (the one drawn upon by Wagner) Siegfried's freeing of Brunhild from the ring of fire served the same purpose.
Siegfried, in particular, has been interpreted as a chivalric hero: he is knighted in a formal ceremony, his relationship with Kriemhild involves deliberate courtly wooing, and he is seeking hohe Minne (e.g., 3.4 [47]: “Do gedâht uf hôhe minne daz Siglinde kint”). It is not unwarranted to assume that the ladies' dominant role in determining the course and fate of the knights' heroic adventures had antecedents beyond the chivalric romances. An outstanding example is Brunhild's behaving as the amazon who would submit only to a victorious hero. Before the right of the stronger man to possess the woman of his choice started to be questioned (perhaps under the influence of the mercantile ethic, as we have observed), the woman could only assert her dignity by fighting on man's own terms, sword at hand, ready to be subdued by force in a fair, manly contest. The code of the French romances, where the woman was not allowed to handle manly weapons, excluded this “heroic” Germanic way.
The reader is struck by an aspect of the narrative that sounds more
like a bourgeois way of looking at chivalry than a genuinely heroic one: that is the emphatic element of pompous ceremony, show, and display. Note, for example, in the third âventiure, the apprehensive fuss about Siegfried's departure for Worms, which must be impressively planned with all the trappings of knightly honor: finely embroidered suits of sumptuous fabrics, richly laden beasts in the sumpter-train, and so on. When he arrives in Worms the plain folk keep staring at the party, their mouths agape. An irreverent modern reader might almost be reminded of a Disneyland-like spectacle where the shiny armor is tinfoil. Could this be a sign that the poet, a cleric, was awed by the grandeur of courts to which he did not really belong? The aesthetic element of show was an integral part of curialitas from very early times; it has continued to surround the life of the mighty down to our own day. Court ceremony was destined to become more and more elaborate as a show of worth among both secular princes and princes of the Church, bishops and, later, cardinals. But we must conclude that this pervasive feature of the poem is part of its being, rather than a realistic representation of the life of the nobility, a courtly reflection on it.[31]
The legends' original versions having been lost in the mist of time, we can only guess as to how and when such elements entered the German sagas. To be sure, we do not find them in earlier texts of French chansons de geste. The German poet is clearly no part of that monastic world that would have disdained the conspicuous display of worldly riches and flashy ornaments. Moreover, such elements are related to the epic poet's habit of hyperbole: he overcharges visual details and over-does the elements that will awe his audience. When we find this marked relish in pomp and display in later poets, it may be part of a gothique flamboyant sense of décor —as in the masterful representations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which surpassed anything previously known in fond descriptions of the luxuries of courtly living. The growing force of the mercantile ethic may also have been a factor. This factor is clearly present in an Italian version of the Arthurian cycle, the well known Tavola Ritonda or Tavola Polidori (early fourteenth century), and it is interesting to observe that the appreciation of worldly luxury, common to both epic and romance, could take on an overt bourgeois coloring in the land of merchant communes. At one point Queen Isotta's (Isolde) garments and personal ornaments are not only described in great detail, but precisely apprised one by one for their monetary value.[32] In a general sense, this taste for the rich display of wealth, refinement, and comfort is a feature that the German epos shares with the
romance, and which clearly reflects not the original epic sense of severe and austere devotion to warlike ideals but the courtly ways acquired by the new, “courtified” nobility. The sumptuous court festivals, often accompanied by hunting parties and tournaments, had become in actual practice keen models of self-image. The poets appreciated them as the best setting for their live performances and consequent reward.
Similarly, the reader is taken by surprise by rather intimate scenes within the privacy of palace chambers, wherein otherwise savage warriors behave politely and exquisitely, according to the best etiquette of educated society. Here again the poet may introduce elements that were not part of the social reality of the class he portrayed. His occasional irony, another possibly “bourgeois” trait, also reveals his personal distance from that class. Think of the humorous touch of the fierce Brunhild's maidens curiously peeking through the windows at the unknown men in Gunther's party (7.7 [395]). Or consider, in the Eighth Adventure, the poet's explaining Siegfried's financial ability to raise an army of one thousand Nibelungs. Again, remember the scene when Hagen's brother gets the key to Brunhild's treasury to spread presents all around, much to Brunhild's horror. The very episode of the taming of Brunhild on her nuptial bed could be read as sheer, snickering comedy.
This discourse of bourgeois distance from the original world of heroic legend should also apply to the element of the marvelous, which plays a diminishing role as it passes from the earlier, mythologicallygrounded sagas to the hands of the Nibelungenlied poet. The poet reduces the fairy element of the Hoard and Brunhild's enchantment by Odin to mere backgroud, preserving only the magic stratagem of the Cloak of Darkness—a device Siegfried needs in order to trick Brunhild both in the three contests and on her wedding night—and Siegfried's raising of the army of Nibelungs in order to help Gunther get out of Iceland with his hostile bride-to-be Brunhild.
Insofar as they mark departures from earlier epic forms and, particularly, the more austere French epic, all these elements can be viewed as part and parcel of the courtly/chivalric culture. Even the artistic element that is so striking in the personal formation of Tristan and Isolt is far from belonging uniquely to those characters, since it is also found in the epic, including the Nibelungenlied, where it did not appear dissonant with the character of a warrior. Volker, who side by side with the unbending Hagen plays a major role in the final battle at Etzel's court, is a minstrel, a poet-musician, and a great warrior. We are reminded of the famous minstrel Taillefer who, reportedly singing the (still unwrit-
ten) Chanson de Roland, led William the Conqueror's army to battle at Hastings in 1066.[33] Minstrels and musicians are also employed in diplomatic missions, as in the embassy led by Rüdeger and sent by Etzel to extend the fateful invitation to the Burgundians. Other humane (we could even say humanistic) qualities are found among the fighting heroes, who all along indulge in effective displays of oratory. Hagen himself is a persuasive orator, but Rüdeger, in particular, is a master courtier/diplomat/orator in the sense of active practical politics, as he shows in the way he handles his difficult mission to Kriemhild: it is from that act of “diplomacy” that stems the catastrophe of the fall of the house of Burgundy, the poem's tragic resolution.
Though driven by hateful arrogance, the warriors always behave in a formally courteous manner toward one another, both friends and foes (we may recall Ordericus Vitalis's description of King William Rufus's respect for his prisoners). Out of mutual appreciation and regard for their valor, the opposing armies, which will utterly destroy each other in the end, meet with eager mutual courtesy before the fray (beginning of âventiure 28). Dietrich's and Hildebrand's troops “welcome” the Burgundians arriving in Hunland even while they expect great trouble from them. Courtesy reaches a climax in the great battle between Rüdeger and the Burgundians, where, in exchange for Rüdeger's gracious gift of his own shield to Hagen, Hagen and Volker refuse to fight him even if he slew all the other Burgundians (âventiure 37).
Courtliness accorded with the principles of Christian personal responsibility, which replaced the pagan fatalism of old. God-willed necessity, the basic predicament in the primitive epic, negated personal choice, but now the hero had to be judged as a good or bad person. The poet had abandoned the psychological frame of the heroic, noble heroes, who though savage, had the aura of divinity about them. The negative view of courtly vices pierces through the Nibelungenlied in a way that alters the heroic nature of the original (or at least earlier, Nordic) saga. Thus Gunther's court came to harbor characters who possessed the chief canonical virtues of courtliness, that is, bravery and loyalty, but had few scruples in exerting them for ignoble “political” causes. Hagen kills Siegfried treacherously and out of hateful envy; Gunther backs him in his repeated thievery at the expense of a woman, his own sister Kriemhild. One is reminded of the medieval chroniclers who extolled rulers as noble and admirable even while exposing their horrible crimes, apparently without perceiving the glaring moral contradiction.[34]
Indeed, one can find so many parallels and analogies between the heroes of the sagas and those of the romances that we could easily believe they shared common origins, despite the clear genre distinctions. Tristan and Siegfried go through similar stages of apprenticeship. They both arrive at court as little known guests and manage to obtain general favor with their amazing talents and prowess. Both will tragically succumb to the envy their excellence has aroused against them. Both are used by their kings to win wives for them. In their adventures to win brides for their lieges they use force as well as cunning. The suggestion that the hero be sent to win a bride for the king is made by Mark's envious courtiers just as Hagen originates the same idea in Gunther's mind, at Siegfried's expense.[35] On a more general level, the heroic single combat that characterizes the individualism of the chivalric romance is an epic feature that goes back to the Homeric beginnings of the epic genre.
Gottfried's Tristan
Knowledge of the Arthurian world must have developed rather early in Germany, since the way Eilhart von Oberge's Tristrant und Isalde (ca. 1170) introduced Arthurian characters assumed on the part of the readers some familiarity with the role of the court (e.g., vv. 5046–5058). Eilhart apparently imported the Tristan legend to Germany, having perhaps received it through the intermediary of Alienor of Aquitaine or her daughter Mathilde, who in 1168 married Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony: in 1182/1186 the poet followed them into exile in Normandy or England.[36]
For W. T. H. Jackson (1971: 35–48) the Tristan cycle entailed a moralizing condemnation of the lovers as socially subversive sinners, with the exception of Thomas and Gottfried, who alone adopted a sympathetic view, Gottfried even declaring himself one of the noble lovers' followers. Tristan's and Isolt's mutual passion thus became, quite exceptionally, an equal union of noble souls: “ein man ein wîp, ein wîp ein man; / Tristan Isolt, Isolt Tristan,” “a man a woman, a woman a man, Tristan Isolde, Isolde Tristan” (vv. 129 f.).[37]
The following interpretation of the Tristan story varies from Jaeger's assessment of the role of German romances within the courtly tradition. For Jaeger, the French romances of the twelfth century offered two basic approaches to courtliness: the courtier narrative and the chivalric narrative. In Germany, he sees Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von
Eschenbach (b. ca. 1170, d. ca. 1220, about ten years after Gottfried) as typically representing these two complementary poles. Gottfried's Tristan would be a hero of courtliness as the art of success and survival, whereas Wolfram's Parzival (ca. 1195–1210, contemporary with Gottfried's unfinished Tristan und Isolt ) postulated an ideal of perfect knighthood which Parzival strove to reach but which only his son Loherangrîn, whose sublime chivalry was pure and uncontaminated inner humanity, was destined to achieve. This distinction between the courtly and the chivalric stresses the latter as God-oriented, the former as more thoroughly immanent. To be sure, God is as absent from the more worldly context of Gottfried's poem as He is ever-present in Wolfram's version of the Parzival story, more so than in Chrétien's Perceval. But the following analysis may show such a distinction to be neither fundamental nor always clear.[38] Jaeger (chap. 12) sees the Verhöflichung der Krieger[39] in the two great knight poets, Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach, signally through their respective adaptations of Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain (Iwein, ca. 1202) and Perceval.
Critics have commented on Gottfried's apparent disagreement with Wolfram. Indeed the two poets embody the opposing classes of clerics and knights: Gottfried, not exactly a cleric but probably educated in a monastery school (meister he was called, not nobleman, hêr ), aimed to uphold the worldly, courtly qualities of the civil servant, as distinct from the knightly virtues extolled by hêr Wolfram. Gottfried's Tristan is not, by and large, a “knightly” statement. We can agree with W. T. H. Jackson (1971) that Gottfried believed neither in the Arthurian world of chivalrous conventions nor in “courtly love,” hence he picked up the romance as a matter of opportunity, because it was there, asking, as it were, to be handled “correctly.” The thesis that interested him could neither be understood nor accepted as viable in an Arthurian court: it was “Tristan-love,” hohe minne for the edele herzen, the few elect. He believed that the practice of true love as well as the reading of good love stories (i.e., love literature) went together with the noblest virtues: “liebe, triuwe, staeter muot, / ere und ander manic guot” (amiability, faithfulness, constancy, honor, and many other good dispositions, vv. 181–186).[40] Since love produces a richer way of life, we must strive to love (191–200). Only love can assure true honor, praise, and fame: “ere unde lop erwerben / oder ane si verderben” (207–210). Tristan's impassioned example proved that courtly qualities were not necessarily good, and could be downright bad. At Mark's court, envy (nît ), suspicion (arcwan, ), indecision (zwivel ), hate (haz ), cowardice, intrigue, and selfishness prevailed, becoming obstacles to the superior hero like Tristan.[41]
Envy was a particularly powerful obstacle to courtesy. In Chrétien de Troyes's Chevalier de la charrete, Meleaganz, one of the most disloyal and treacherous villains of Arthurian literature, was said to be driven by envy. Later on, Dante presented the tragic case of Pier della Vigna as an exemplary victim of this scourge of the courts. Tristan could not survive without yielding to the ways of the world, thus becoming a deceitful, contradictory, and cunning liar.[42] The blame fell on that court society which crushed our heroes because they could not observe its tenets, whereas the romances had presented the court as an ideal milieu in which love provided the motive for the highest and most refined deeds. Thus, for Gottfried, either the education of the knight had failed in its purpose, or the society that harbored that ideal of education fell short of rewarding its own pupils.
Rual li Foitenant, perhaps the most virtuous character in the poem, is a sort of anticourtier. Jackson (1971: 160 f.) sees this as proof that Gottfried did not believe in courtliness, which is part of this scholar's persuasive “deconstruction” of the poem. He reads it as a radical subversion of everything the readership of this literary genre wanted to believe in. Another interpretation may be more plausible. Gottfried had to put Mark's court under an unfavorable light but Rual is measured by no other virtues than the courtly ones, such as loyalty above all (he is even so named) and total dedication to a superior cause (his lord Riwalin's future through his son Tristan).[43] Gottfried's theme is not the representation of courtliness but of the conflict between love and society—specifically, courtly society. He replaces the knight-hero with the artist-hero. Tristan/Tantris in Ireland is ein höfischer spilmann, a courtly minstrel, and is received by Isolt's tutor who is also a musically skilled priest. We move in a world of art appreciators. Just the same, it is a world of knighthood, defined according to the basic traditional virtues we have seen—for example, by King Mark at the lavish ceremony of Tristan's dubbing (vv. 5022–5040). Gottfried's ironic attitude toward the warlike side of the chivalric world comes out typically in such episodes as Tristan's gruesome duel with Morolt (see especially vv. 6871–6905: each rival is four men in one, and so on), almost worthy of Ariosto in its humorous way of quoting alleged sources for textual hyperbole.
Just as other texts justify and extol the active virtues of political agents (for example, Peter of Blois's justification of the role of governors and courtiers, Dudo of St. Quentin's and William of Jumièges's stories of the abbot Martin of Jumièges dissuading William Long-Sword from becoming a monk, John of Limoges's story of Joseph and the Pharaoh),
so does King Mark warn Tristan not to let the court discourage him from service to his king: “Virtue and envy are to each other like a mother to her child,” Mark advises. “Virtue incessantly gives birth to envy and nourishes it . . . . Bliss and fortune are contemptible when they have never faced hatred.”[44] Like Joseph in John of Limoges's text, Tristan is won by King Mark's advice to fight back bravely rather than yield to the attacks of envy and hatred. Not only does Tristan overcome his paralyzing fears of his scheming enemies and decide to remain at court, he even outdoes his detractors by shrewdly returning their own devices against them. He thus becomes a triumphant hero of political courtiership by accepting his enemies' scheme to go and win a bride for Mark, but he tricks his enemies by asking them to go with him on that dangerous adventure. They cannot refuse what was their own idea; hence they must exert themselves for a successful expedition by saving Tristan from Isolt's revenge for the slaying of her uncle Morolt.
As we have seen, in consequence of the prerequisites advertised in the doctrine of curiality, the courtier had became a master of disguise. Similarly, in Gottfried's Tristan “what was a virtue has become a stratagem” (Jaeger: 42), as in Castiglione's courtier, who will disguise his art as a second nature under the practice of sprezzatura: “true art is what does not seem to be art, and the most important thing is to conceal it” (Cortegiano: 1.26).
Gottfried had begun his psychological portrait of Tristan from the outside: “In gestures and beautiful manners nature had been so good to him that he was a pleasure to look at.”[45] This was a comprehensive presentation of good manners, coupling mores with gestures or outward comportment. But serious moral substance underlies this doctrine, since it is said that, when Tristan became a tutor to Isolt, he taught her site through its true source, to wit, moraliteit. While instructing her thoroughly in music, languages, and the reading of formative books,
besides all his instruction, he also taught her a discipline which we call moraliteit, the art which teaches fine behavior. All women ought to practice it in their youth. Moraliteit, that sweet pursuit, is delightful and pure. Its study is in harmony with the world and with God. In its commandment it teaches us to please both God and the world. It is given to all lofty spirits as a nurse.[46]
Commenting on these famous lines, W. T. H. Jackson (1971: 76 f.) pointed out that this German neologism, “probably” from Latin moralitas (but what else could it come from?), could only have the meaning of the Latin term, to wit, not exactly “morality,” but state of mind,
character, and habit of praxis. Jackson further suggested that this beautifully moving passage on the power of music (most becoming to the inner circle of edele herzen ) echoed closely Boethius's De re musica, where the moralitas of the singer/performer was said to determine the effect of music, precisely as in Gottfried's context. Musical skill was to be part of the education of the courtier down to Castiglione and beyond, and Gottfried played this motif with unusual subtlety. By his musical talent, Tristan casts a truly magic spell on the court (vv. 3588–3597), and Isolt will learn from him the same art (9036–9131).
Tristan appears in Gottfried as a knight with all the courtly trappings in his education, but he was already so in Eilhart von Oberge and, in part, in the Anglo-Norman Thomas.[47] It is worth noting that Tristan's courtly career shows striking parallels with that of Apollonius of Tyre, the hero of a Latin novel of the fifth to sixth century A.D . that enjoyed remarkable popularity in the Middle Ages. Apollonius, abandoned as a youth in a foreign land, managed to attract the king's attention through his athletic skills, thus becoming a favorite at the palace through his unsurpassed talent at playing the lyre. The princess made him her tutor in music and fell in love with him.[48] The peculiar courtierly twist in the vernacular romances is the element of clever calculation. The result of this educated display of liberal arts is that Isolt, before falling in love with Tristan and when she still knew him only as her tutor and a wandering minstrel called Tantris, concluded that such a man deserved wealth and honor: “der solte guot und ere han” (v. 11,129). She reached this conclusion as she watched him bathe and mused about the great worth of this lowly minstrel. Wealth and honor were the just reward for such a master of the humane arts and moraliteit. Furthermore, Tantris had also slayed the dragon, thus proving himself a worthy knight while winning Isolt for his uncle Mark and saving her from the hated seneschal. She thought he deserved a kingdom.
Gottfried called Tristan a hoveman ( = Hofman, courtier), while King Mark calls Tristan's modest pose (the modestia of the curial ethos) “cunning” or “craftiness” (kündekeit, 3576–3583), very close indeed to Castiglione's sprezzatura, wherein the secret of success lies in a cleverly calculated underplay of talent which blunts envy and intrigue at court. It is exquisitely “political” and “diplomatic” and it arouses admiration, not disapproval, even though the sharp-eyed among the audience, including the king, do not fail to see it as a mask. Jaeger (239) compares this situation with Alain de Lille's very “moral” allegorical figure of Honestas (to be placed alongside Cicero's concept of
honestas ), who advises the New Man to learn the rare art of leading two lives, “living his interior life for himself and his exterior life for the many; to . . . show himself all things to all men” (“intus sibi vivens, pluribus extra; / . . . ut omnibus omnis / pareat”: Anticlaudianus 7: 215–218; the advice is loosely adapted from Seneca, ad Lucilium 5: 2–3: “Intus omnia dissimilia sint, frons populo nostra conveniat”). This positive dissimulation, which the critics called hypocrisy, was found in Thomas Becket, vir geminus (double man), whereas Thomas More, still very much “a man for all seasons,” “omnia omnibus factus” in St. Paul's picturesque metaphor, was equally doomed even without being so ready to adopt duplicity.[49] If duplicity could be regarded as a morally debasing form of hypocrisy, Paul's and Seneca's contexts referred to a manner of duplicity that could well be morally exalting and prudently endowed with saving grace.
Höfische minne thrives on deceit, says Gottfried (Jackson: 93), whereas hohe minne transcends deceit and cunning, valsche und akust (v. 12,239). Yet courtly society breeds precisely these qualities which can be good or bad, according to circumstances. They are good when they allow Tristan to survive envy, bad when Tristan and Isolt use them to serve their love in a struggle against society. So the very qualities that have made Tristan a hero turn negative and pave his path to self-destruction. These have become the same predicaments of adulterous triangles, covered up elegantly and skillfully in the history of courtly societies from King Arthur to Versailles and the Parisian salons, down to the eighteenth-century cicisbei, fashionable young dandies who publicly courted and escorted married ladies as surrogate husbands. Society will destroy the true lovers, whom it casts out because they flaunt its rules overtly and dangerously, whereas it will accept, admire, and honor the courtly, prudent, dissimulating, and “diplomatic” lovers and sinners who play the games of elegant society. The high nobility as well as the high clergy would show the way at all times. Gottfried seems to accuse literature of hypocrisy (Jackson: 94) because it produces mere fiction, divorced from reality, whereas he advocates literary myths that should be our guides in action. In other words, the code that at the start was educational and formative, once established becomes a rule of conformity and success at any cost.
Jaeger (237–241) overdoes it when he singles out the element of cunning in the Tristan story as a distinguishing trait of courtly romance—of German curial origin—if this is meant in any exclusive sense. Indeed, that element was strong in German epic literature, too, and we may
wonder which genre has chronological priority in this sense. Cunning plays a prominent role in Siegfried's way of helping King Gunther conquer the invincible Brunhild. His deceitful courtship is quite analogous to Mark's courting of Isolt with the help of Tristan. Gottfried's sources were French, but could he not also have learned such stratagems from earlier German sagas? In any event, it seems fair to conclude that Tristan is courtly only on the surface: the author is interested in a deeper search for ethical and behavioral values that go beyond courtliness and chivalry. When all is said and done Gottfried's (and Thomas's) Tristan is neither courtly nor courtois, and this conclusion contradicts Jaeger's interpretation of Gottfried's place in the ideology of courtesy. The most striking absence is that of the essential quality of restraint or measure—all versions of the Tristan story in verse (i.e., before Tristan en prose of ca. 1230) are characterized by elements of exasperated, unrestrained violence and passion.[50] The conflict of the codes is extreme there (hence tragic), because each one of them is pushed to radical statement. Gottfried radicalizes the tragic story of the two lovers united against the world and the court. Hence the court can neither understand nor accept them and will act toward them with mean hostility, while they will use all sorts of courtly ruses to survive. Likewise, Tristan is not courtois in that its pessimism denies the optimistic faith of courtois literature (including Chrétien). Tristan's love doubtless civilizes and sublimates, but it also destroys.[51] The naturalism of Gottfried's hohe Minne and Thomas's fin'amour, unlike and against the socially conditioned amour courtois, raises love above human law and social norms to the exalted dignity of a law of nature. The true origin of this phenomenon, admittedly preexisting Thomas, is ostensibly neither courtly nor chivalric. It is an anthropological/psychological fact that seems part of the subgenre and logically and chronologically transcends the birth of chivalry. The court, however, behaves in it not so much as a microcosm of society at large but as a realm of special groups, the rising bourgeoisie and perhaps also the clerical functionaries, who could not hope to achieve chivalric status.[52] It does not seem unwarranted to assume that in the way both Thomas and Gottfried (together with Eilhart) handled their controversial story, and in direct contrast to the way other narrators had handled it (especially Béroul), we see the traces of clerics at work, addressing themselves to a sophisticated audience of noblemen, with their problematic attitudes toward passion, loyalty, and faithfulness.
The place and role of the various codes in the story of Tristan is hard
to assess, chiefly on account of the extant versions' fragmentary state, but it seems clear that, though always present, the Christian ethic there plays a secondary role. In Béroul the two lovers consider themselves sinners and recognize their faults of treachery and disloyalty vis-à-vis King Mark, uncle, benefactor, lord, and husband respectively, but impute to the philter their lack of free choice. When the three years of the philter's effectiveness are up, without really repenting, the lovers accept the hermit Ogrin's attempt to reconcile them to society, in the hope that their violations of the social code will be forgiven for the sake of minimizing the damage and restoring harmony. The moral imperative is reduced to the wisdom of saving what can be saved. It is wise to lie (“por honte oster et mal covrir / doit on un poi par bel mentir,” “one must lie in order to erase the dishonor and cancel the evil”—ll. 2353 f.); wisdom lies in being “diplomatic” and making the best of a difficult situation, without jeopardizing social order and welfare for the sake of absolute or abstract principles. Which is, within our discourse, the essence of “courtliness.”[53]
Wolfram's Parzival
Chivalry in Wolfram's Parzival has been extensively discussed and does not need much comment here beyond the excellent use Jaeger (esp. 247–253) has made of this poem, often judged the most poetic of German medieval literature.[54] Suffice it to mention the qualities that Gurnemanz (Chrétien's Gornemanz) lists as essential to the good knight—keeping in mind that in this Bildungsroman Parzival is chiefly guided by Gurnemanz's advice (and, later, Trevrizent's). The qualities that are most pertinent to the image we are pursuing of the courtier knight are: courtesy, compassion, shame (schame, i.e., as noted before, reverence for others' rights and needs), generosity (milte ), humility, beauty, nobility, moderation (mâze ), good breeding, leadership, a coupling of manliness and cheerful disposition (sît manlich und wol gemuot ), and mastery of arms.[55] Somewhat ironically, one of the canonical curial virtues, reticence (blûkeit, a form of discretion and respect), turns out to be the cause of Parzival's major mistake: he fails to ask the decisive question that would have saved the Fisher King because, he will repeatedly explain, Gurnemanz had taught him to refrain from speaking when not asked.[56]
To understand Wolfram's attitude toward his subject matter we must first face the problem of his irony. Irony was quite common in the ro-
mances, starting with Chrétien, who probably bequeathed it to his imitators as part of the “median” style that characterized the genre. Yet Wolfram uses it so pervasively and personally as to make himself not only the most memorable master of it, but, indeed, even a precursor of such a supreme ironist as Ariosto. Wolfram's being a member of the knightly class is pertinent to the interpretion of this psychological and stylistic feature because his ironic distancing from his subject matter cannot be the reflection of a different social status, as in the case of Gottfried. If, like the Italian poets later on, Wolfram chose to detach himself from his material, it had to be because its most direct users, that public who had embraced it because of ideological affinity, could now perceive it as “literature,” a ludic fiction. The changes vis-à-vis Chrétien included an increase in irony and humor. Parzival himself is more clownish than Perceval ever was: when he leaves home, his mother dresses him up as a buffoon, whereas Perceval's mother had simply dressed him in rawhide, Welsh fashion. Perceval's mother had advised him to take kisses and then perhaps a ring from maidens, but only if willingly granted, and no more; Parzival's mother admonishes him to win (erwerben ) a ring and then kiss and hold the chaste woman, with her consent. In both texts the young hero clumsily forces the maiden to grant him favors in ways that endanger her reputation, but the clumsiness comes closer to actual rape in the German text, where the encounter with Jeschute turns out to be considerably more offensive than in Chrétien, with the hero behaving like a boorish teenager.[57]
Practical aims may also have affected the poem, that is, the praise of the Plantagenet house of Anjou in France and England and, in particular, of an admired Angevin bishop, Philip of Poitou, a fighter/courtier who had become a man of God, like Trevrizent in the poem.[58] These aims could not be as strong a determinant for the orientation of the poem as Ariosto's wish to praise his Este patrons, but they could condition the handling of the particulars. It is also worth noting that Wolfram seemed better inclined than Chrétien de Troyes toward courtly love since, Perceval/Parzival aside, he showed love-service possibly coming to good ends, as in the cases of Gawan and Orgeluse, Gramoflanz and Itonje, and Obie and Meljacanz.[59]
There is, then, the question of Parzival's real mission. He is a bungling young man who is destined for high achievements, but has to find his way by a gradual learning process of inner education and humanization. He unwittingly causes his mother's death, abandons his beloved wife, and fails to ask King Anfortas the decisive question. The realiza-
tion of his failures plunges him into aimless wandering in a state of “God-hatred.” He will emerge from this phase of despair when Trevrizent converts him by explaining to him not only the meaning of the Grail, but also the supreme duties of the good Christian (book 9, 472: 13–17). Parzival then seems ready to enter a life of ascetic dedication to a higher goal than mundane chivalry, having understood those limitations of Arthurian chivalry that Chrétien and then Hartmann had implicitly but effectively criticized. He should now abandon all frivolity (473: 3: “bewart sîn vor lôsheit”), turn the pride of the fighter to the supreme meekness so heroically practiced by his new adviser, and forsake that service of Minne and the “God of Love” which had been King Anfortas's ruin: “‘Amor!’ was his battle-cry. / But when humility's the test, / Such battle-cries are not the best.”[60] The knights who serve the Grail must abjure all love for women (495: 7 f.). Neither that kind of love nor any natural remedies, including the art of herbs or magic that issues from human science, can heal Anfortas's wound. Christian charity is the only remedy. The “question” that was expected of Parzival was to be prompted by humane concern, compassion, and pity. Parzival will succeed in answering his calling, will ask the fateful question and free Anfortas, and will even become King of the Grail. When he has accomplished his task, Trevrizent will once again urge him to turn from pride to humility: “You attained a great success. / Now turn your mind to humility.”[61]
Yet, when we read the elaborate subsequent sections of the poem we wonder whether Parzival has really “converted.” In what way has he changed, if at all? For our hero does not come out of Trevrizent's retreat to pursue the great quest directly and exclusively. Instead, he goes back to his accustomed life of adventure, more aimless than ever, amid all the usual trappings of beautiful and sensuous maidens and displays of rich, high living. In due course, he will simply, as it were, stumble once again, by good fortune, into the path of the Grail, which will be handed to him without much effort. In what sense, then, is chivalry really transcended?
We might tentatively conclude that, despite all the moral qualms and the intellectual realizations of absurdities and shortcomings, the paraphernalia of chivalrous living, or dreaming, were just too powerful to be, even only temporarily, obliterated, let alone effectively transcended. Literature and fiction were stronger than reality. Wolfram was, after all, a knight. To be sure, there is a transcendent, mystical side to the Quest of the Grail, but there is also, at least implicitly, an ethical and social
one: the correction of the shortcomings of knightly and courtly behavior. Only by broadening the horizons could the Christian truth be combined with the knightly one to produce a superior, non-warlike chivalry. Wolfram the knight was educated by the cleric: chivalry became meek, and Wolfram was paving the way for Dante.[62]
This conclusion on Wolfram's hero should remind us of Jean Frappier's (1954) rather severe judgment on the religious element in the Grail cycle as “un masque,” religion being exalted there for no deeper purpose than the self-serving intention of better honoring the chivalric class. In a remarkably “deconstructionist” mood avant-la-lettre, the eminent medievalist surmised that the inner mystique of the Grail, allowing the knights to see themselves as noble in the highest and purest way they could devise, truly as homines sibi relicti, without and outside the Christian militia dreamed about by a St. Bernard, was the defense mechanism of a class that felt threatened—mainly by the rising bourgeoisie. This may be a fair assessment of the complex, mysterious phenomenon of the Quest as reflected in the texts examined by Frappier, and certainly, as I read it, in Wolfram's. It is not that the knight poets felt no religious commitment: indeed, one of them, Hartmann von Aue, abandoned the worldly literature he had so brilliantly cultivated and turned to religious themes for his successful and much discussed, hagiographic Gregorius, although, if the accepted chronology is correct, he did return to chivalry for his last and supreme poem, Iwein. As Frappier put it (1954), the peculiar mystique of the Grail romances as a whole, from Chrétien through Wolfram and on to Robert de Boron and the Vulgate prose romances (the Lancelot/Graal ), expressed not so much a view of chivalry at the service of religion as, rather, of knighthood as a religion in itself. The old ideal of a marriage of bellicosity and piety, which the clerical milieus had fostered and nurtured, resulted once again in a juxtaposition rather than a full harmonization.
Incidentally, a curious symptom of the feeling for social refinement that both courtliness and chivalry embodied and promulgated can be seen in the frequent semi-ironic allusions to personal hygiene. As often and as regularly as feasible, the sweating heroes bathe and wash their hands and bodies, sometimes in elaborate ceremonial situations where the solicitous assistance of fair maidens makes the ritual erotically exciting. Details are not spared: washing after meals is said to prevent hurting one's eyes by rubbing them with hands still scaly from handling fish (487: 1–4). It is worth recalling that the ritual bath on the eve traditionally preceded the dubbing ceremony.
Hartmann's Iwein
The complex case of Hartmann von Aue is fraught with inner contradictions. Iwein, his last great work and, as it were, his conclusive statement, has received two alternate readings: 1) the story reveals the failures of the Arthurian court (which might imply a more general critique of courtly life), since Iwein fails until he transcends the exterior rules of the court and becomes a richer human being through experiences dictated by his conscience rather than by the knightly code; or 2) it reveals the hero's individual failure to uphold the courtly virtues: his conversion from an egotistic adventure-seeker to a socially responsible knight, lord, and husband culminates in his reconciliation with his wife Laudine.[63] The two interpretations may not be mutually exclusive; what the hero experiences in his personal story may be the shortcomings of the court ideology and the way to overcome them by reaching for a higher level of true chivalry.
We are more interested in the social aspects of our literature, but critics have also speculated on political motivations. In contrast to Wolfram, who presented Arthur as a prince of justice and peace among rival lords, possibly as “a corrective for the political chaos of Wolfram's own time,” Hartmann has been said to have idealized Arthur as a paterfamilias, without the tense feudal antagonisms from baronial competition that one sensed in Chrétien.[64] The dialectical picture of courtly behavior has its specific counterpart in the opposite vices: in Hartmann's Iwein, for example, the evil conduct of Duke Aliers and of Lunete's older sister is described as “arrogance,” übermuot (vv. 3410, 7657), which leads to “pride,” hôchvart. Interestingly enough, this is also the language of the epic: compare Nibelungenlied 54: “der kan mit übermüete der hôhverte pflegen,” “he can nurture pride with arrogance.”[65]
Even more than Chrétien, his source and model, Hartmann uses chivalric themes as an opportunity to build tales of character formation, moral education, and civil manners on the heroic level that is expected of ideal leaders and social exemplars. In Iwein a typically worthy knight was “by courage and generosity the finest man who ever entered the ranks of knighthood” (“der aller tiureste man, / der rîters namen ie gewan, / von manheit und von milte,” vv. 1455–1457).[66] The growth from the early Erek (1190–1192 ?) to Iwein (1202 ?) seems to show an increasing interest in the virtues of mâze, self-control, decorum, and manners.[67] Lunete, for example, is declared a true lady except for her excessively loud complaining (Enite's problem, too, in Erek ): “hete sî sich niht verclagt” (v. 1154). The trials of Iwein and Laudine, like but
even more severe than those of Erek and Enite, are a necessary path to maturity through error and painful atonement. Iwein shows his exquisite sense of propriety and consideration when he dismounts to avert the inelegance of a duel of swords fought on horseback, once he and Gawein have broken their spears.[68] The Irish seneschal Kay is probably the worst type of courtier, a radical interpretation of Arthur's partly comic figure Kay (Chrétien's Kex, the “ill-mannered Keiî,” “zuhtlôse Keiî” in Hartmann's Iwein, v. 90). The educational burden of Hartmann's devotional story Gregorius is analogous to the main thrust of his previous Erek, in which he had expanded on the didactic aspects of Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide, stressing the virtuous elements in the knightly code and condemning the disregard for measure (mâze ) as a violation of self-restraint.
As Hartmann's relationship to Chrétien encompasses some of the latter's concerns with the moral side of knightly behavior, it also includes a critical view of the troubadourlike kind of Minnedienst. Hartmann is even more socially-oriented than his French source and his plots and characters are clearly invested with a complex, highly problematical didactic role.[69] The positive conjugal love between Hartmann's Erek and Enite contrasts with the courtly theory of love as Minnedienst in the episode of Mabonagrin, displaying toward the prevailing code a critical stance that ties together Chrétien, Hartmann, and Dante. Somewhat similarly, Hartmann's Iwein used Chrétien's Yvain to good advantage as a model for the harmonious blending of conjugal faithfulness and heroic dedication to the knightly duties of service to society and the needy.
The preceding analysis should show why Germany was better prepared to receive a practical lesson on behavior (specifically aimed at Hartmann's own milieu of the courtly ministeriales ) than the France of Chrétien, not because of the serious philosophical bent of the German mind, as critics have been wont to assume, but for the moral, social, and political features of circumstantial historical background. Chrétien remained the provider of themes and forms, but the deeper messages were developed independently. The popularity of Hartmann's Iwein remained high among the nobility through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in the fifteenth it also extended to the wealthy merchants, who were striving to imitate the ways of noblemen.[70] Yet even in the Germanic area the continuators of the Yvain story tended to draw upon the French sources, especially Chrétien, with the exception of Ulrich Füetrer's Yban, composed around 1480.
If we should wonder why such outstanding poets as Wolfram and
Hartmann exerted themselves in “translating” Chrétien, even with much freedom of interpretation and reelaboration, the obvious answer is that Chrétien was a very great narrator. From a strictly literary vantage, even in comparison with his sophisticated and complex German imitators, he remains the best storyteller all around. Yet his imitators carried further his remarkable gifts for imparting “meanings” to sheer stories (the sen Chrétien referred to at the beginning of his Lancelot ).
Alongside the three great masters, some early texts used Celtic fantasies for mere entertainment. The Swiss cleric Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's rather erotic Lanzelet (perhaps 1194, no later than 1200) made of Lancelot a sort of mindless Casanova, while Wirnt von Grafenberg's Wigalois (1204–1209 or 1210–1215) emphasized the nontranscendental, non-Grail-like religious theme of sacred royalty and salvation through a just king (Gawein's son Wigalois, not Arthur).[71] In the rich German production of romances that surrounded and followed the three masters, the Arthurian matter generally lacked vitality. Instead of moral concerns, the main business became jousts, feasts, and sundry pastimes, together with the refined pleasures of the table. It was so in Der Stricker's Daniel von dem blühenden Tal (1220–1230), Heinrich von dem Türlin's encyclopedic compilation Diu Crône (Die Krone, ca. 1230), the anonymous Wigamur (ca. 1250), Albrecht von Scharfenberg's Jüngerer Titurel (ca. 1272), and Konrad von Stoffeln's Gauriel von Muntabel (ca. 1300). Der Stricker and Heinrich von dem Türlin seem to have been commoners, from Franconia and Carinthia respectively. True enough, the Jüngerer Titurel, which stands out with fiftyseven surviving manuscripts in addition to a 1477 printed edition, may have impressed the audiences with its didactic attempt to hold up a mirror of knightly virtue, combining chivalry with Christian conduct. As to the thirty-thousand-line Diu Crône, it was an important original version of Arthurian lore, which Heinrich von dem Türlîn, alone among German romancers, centered on the popular figure of Gawein, placing him within the search for the Holy Grail.[72] Dissatisfied with the marginal role of the chivalric Arthurian ethos in the Daniel, Der Pleier retorted between 1250 and 1280 with his Garel von dem blühenden Tal, Meleranz, and Tandareis und Flordibel, but he could not keep such high values from turning conventional and rather lifeless.7
The learned Rudolf von Ems (d. in Italy 1252/1253) drew upon a lost French original for his very popular Willehalm von Orleans (perhaps 1235–1240; at least 76 manuscripts are extant) but in it praised several German poets including Hartmann, Gottfried, and Wolfram
(who after 1210 had also composed a Willehalm similarly based on a lost French chanson de geste unrelated to Rudolf's romance). The hero is an ideal knight striving to survive in a harsh world of practical realities: he believes in what the poet calls “the highest dignity the world has a name for, I mean the title ‘knight.’”[73] Interestingly enough, Rudolf, a ministerial who had acquired noble status in the entourage of the Count of Montfort and showed clear pride in this status throughout his work, made a rich merchant commoner from Cologne the hero of his early Der gute Gerhard (ca. 1220), a poem of charity and humility told in first person to Emperor Otto I as a warning against excessive pride. Around 1230 Ulrich von Türheim completed Gottfried's Tristan and, between 1240 and 1250, Wolfram's Willehalm. In midstream, the prolific Konrad von Würzburg (ca. 1225–1287), virtuoso of the geblümte Rede, the flowery style, as he labeled it, tried his hand at many genres including the longer romance in Engelhard and Partonopier und Meliur (derived from the French Partonopeus de Blois of ca. 1170). Konrad, too, was a commoner who could count clerics (including perhaps the bishop of Strassburg), city fathers, and high merchants among his avowed patrons in Strassburg and Basel. The Trojanerkrieg, Konrad's last work, managed to mix the story of Troy not only with Arthurian themes but also with the saga of Dietrich von Bern. Chivalric love and adventure joined with the crusading spirit in the syncretic romance Wilhelm von Österreich by Johann von Würzburg (1314), where the Third Crusade had become a test to conquer the beloved.
Most of the epigones imitated Hartmann, down to Ulrich Füetrer, who closed the cycle. Sharing his friend Jakob Püterich von Reichertshausen's enthusiasm for Wolfram von Eschenbach, Füetrer (connected since the 1460s with the court of Munich, d. after 1492) managed to express his appreciation for German romances by gathering the stories of Merlin, Titurel, Parzival, Diu Crône, Lohengrin, Wigalois, Iwein, and others in his 41,500-line Buch der Abenteuer der Ritter von der Tafelrunde (ca. 1473–1490).
All the narrative streams had been coming together, but without unity of inspiration or a convincing message. Boiardo and Ariosto would see to it that this mixed recipe produced more inspiring results.