Publisher's Synopsis
The pre-eminent role of Chrétien de Troyes in the formation of Arthurian
romance is reflected in the swift and brilliant response of German courtly poets
to his works. Within a few years of their composition, Erec et Enide
and Yvain were adapted for German audiences by Hartmann von Aue, initiating
the tradition of Arthurian romance in his country, while Chrétien's
unfinished Grail-story was taken up and brought to a triumphant conclusion in
Parzival, composed by the most influential of medieval German authors
of romance, Wolfram von Eschenbach. Chrétien's Cligés
and Lancelot, by contrast, had a less much distinct impact in Germany,
a circumstance which reveals significant difference in the literary configurations
east and west of the Rhine and in the expectations of French and German courtly
audiences.
This volume comprises a selection from those given at an international
symposium held at the University of London's Institute of Germanic Studies
which brought together distinguished specialists in medieval German, French and
comparative literature. The contributors explore diverse aspects of Chrétien's
reception in Germany, relating his works and those of his German adaptors to their
historical, social, intellectual and artistic contexts and tracing the interplay
of creative personalities, literary traditions and cultural preoccupations which
were involved in the process of accommodating the French romances to their new
German setting. Marked by a heightened awareness of the inherent ambiguity of
Chrétien's works and refreshing openness to the varied possibilities
of literary adaptation, the individual studies exemplify an appropriately wide
range of critical approaches and emphases. Collectively they underline the richness
both of Chrétien's work and of the imaginative responses which it
evoked and present a vivid picture of medieval romance in the period of its first
flowering in France and Germany.
