Single Combat and Warfare in German Literature of the High Middle Ages: Stricker's Karl der Grosse and Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal (review)

Individual and group combats play an important role in medieval German literature; from the highly stylized and performative jousts in tournaments to the deadly encounters between warring armies, combat is a staple of medieval narrative. Rachel E. Kellett's Single Combat and Warfare in German Literature of the High Middle Ages provides a thorough introduction to the historical practices surrounding individual encounters and mass warfare, and creates a framework for approaching combat in medieval (German) literature through her analysis of the encounters in Der Stricker's Karl der Große and Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal.

Single Combat begins with a brief introduction (pp. 1-4), which includes some mention of previous scholarship—expanded at the beginning of chapters two and five—and a cursory justification for basing her study on Der Stricker's Karl and Daniel (p. 2). The introduction is followed by three chapters on single combat; three chapters on warfare; a brief conclusion (pp. 200-202); a bibliography; extensive appendices (pp. 221-71), which summarize each single combat and battle in Karl and Daniel; and finally an index (pp. 273-77). Kellett explains in her introduction that her intent is "to investigate the depiction of single combat and battle in Der Stricker's Karl and Daniel, in the light of other literary texts as well as of contemporary martial influences" (p. 4), and her careful analysis of these encounters provides manifold insights into Der Stricker's narratives.

The main body of Single Combat is divided between chapters analyzing single combats (chapters two through four) and chapters analyzing warfare (chapters five through seven). Chapter two examines previous scholarship on single combats and notes a lack of a comprehensive system for analyzing these encounters. This chapter also provides a thorough discussion of "judicial combats," "juridical combats," and "combats of champions," terms which Kellett applies to her analysis of the individual combats in subsequent chapters. In chapter three, Kellett explores the single combats in Karl, noting that an "[e]xamination of the fifty-three short single combats in Karl reveals the existence of thirty-five motifs which appear more than once, and which have been combined to form a combat scheme" (p. 35). She lists the recurring motifs (motif A through Z and motif AA through AI) and applies the resulting scheme to the short single combats and the two longer combats in Karl. Kellett demonstrates that the combat between Dietrich and Pinabel is a true "judicial combat" and that the encounter between Karl and Paligan lacks the specific legal trappings to make it a "judicial combat." She concludes that all of the combats in Karl demonstrate "the superiority of Karl, Roland and their men over the Saracens" (p. 54).

Chapter four is devoted to the single combats in Daniel, which Kellett divides into three groups: combats between knights, combats against giants, and combats against monsters. She notes that "[t]he combat scheme established for the single combats in Karl can be applied only to a few of the combats in Daniel with any useful results" (p. 58) and adds that "the ethos of the shorter combats in Daniel bears almost no resemblance at all to the ethos found in Stricker's other work" (p. 59). This seems to indicate the need for a new system for analyzing the combats in Daniel. Kellett, however, applies the scheme devised for Karl to the combats in Daniel, simply adding bullet points for the new motifs necessitated by the new adversaries—giants and monsters. Under the subheading "List of motifs used in the combat between Artus and Matur," for example, Kellett begins with five bullet-point motifs, followed by "E: Matur approaches" (p. 68), a variant on "E: Protagonist approaches alone (horseback)" (p. 35). It is unclear why a more uniform system and list of motifs...