The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective by Albrecht Classen (review)

The Forest in Medieval German Literature treats thirteen major narrative works of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries in just 144 pages. The otherwise notably heterogeneous works are selected for inclusion based on the presence of episodes that both take place in a forest setting and act as a catalyst for character development and/or narrative progression. They are, in order of appearance: Erec, Iwein, and Gregorius (Hartmann von Aue); the Nibelungenlied (anonymous); Parzival and Titurel (Wolfram von Eschenbach); Tristan (Gottfried von Straßburg and others); Melerantz von Frankreich (the Pleier); Partonopier und Meliur (Konrad von Würzburg); Königin Sibille (Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken); and Melusine (Thüring von Ringoltingen). With the exception of chapters analyzing multiple works by Hartmann and Wolfram and one treating multiple versions of Tristan, each of the eight chapters discusses one work. The chapters are organized around chronological plot summaries highlighting the sylvan episodes for which the texts are selected. Within the chapters, the episodes are categorized according to their meaningfulness. The distinction between meaningful and nonmeaningful roughly follows the common logic of distinguishing between integral and background settings: those episodes in which the forest setting influences character and/or plot development are said to matter or be meaningful, those that do not are said not to matter or not to be meaningful. Meaningful sylvan episodes are analyzed. Nonmeaningful sylvan episodes are acknowledged but not further analyzed. The analysis of the meaningful sylvan episodes examines the degree to which they matter. The intraliterary analysis thus represents a refinement of the selection criteria. More often than not, the intraliterary analysis further determines that the episodes selected both for inclusion and for analysis matter greatly. These very meaningful episodes are submitted as evidence for extraliterary historical analysis, which establishes that the forest also mattered greatly or was very meaningful to medieval and early modern poets.

The methodology is described as combining “the theoretical concept of the history of mentality with ecocriticism,” whereby the latter refers to the intraliterary analysis and the former refers to the extraliterary analysis (p. 11). Contrary to the expectation created, for example, by the organization of the readings into chapters according to works and authors rather than a systematic division, the body functions as a catalog of literary evidence submitted in support of the book’s primary extraliterary historical thesis that “the forest truly mattered considerably for many medieval and early modern German poets” (p. 213). The sylvan episodes deemed to matter greatly in the readings are interpreted as historical actions of poets that are indicative of their attitudes toward the forest. Because Hartmann, for example, set such meaningful episodes in the forest in his classical Arthurian romances Erec and Iwein and his courtly legend Gregorius, the logic goes, the forest was therefore meaningful to Hartmann. Because the anonymous author of the heroic epic known as the Nibelungenlied set Sigfried’s murder in the forest and not, for example, at court, the forest was therefore meaningful to the poet. Because the Pleier set multiple meaningful episodes in the forest in his postclassical Arthurian romance Melerantz von Frankreich, the forest was therefore meaningful to the Pleier. Some version of this argument is repeated in each chapter. The conclusions regarding the individual authors are bundled in the primary historical conclusion quoted above, which is presented as a repudiation of previous scholarship on the one hand and as an opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of medieval literary studies to contemporary concerns thereby legitimizing the discipline on the other.

Previous scholarship is characterized as having erroneously assumed “that medieval and early [sic] poets had no clear sense of or interest in natural spaces such as the forest” (p. 10). At least since E. R. Curtius famously established the forest as one of the most important topoi in the European medieval courtly romance in the mid-twentieth century, scholarship...