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I N T R O D U C T I O N One of the most enduring legacies of the Middle Ages is the storybook world of bold knights and incomparably fair ladies, a world first and best described by the poets of the age. Their greathearted heroes ride off fearlessly in search of adventure and, though severely tried in the process, nevertheless show their mettle and emerge ultimately victorious, whether the enemy be an evil knight, a wild beast, or a monstrous and magical creature. Yet these same knights, who display great virility in such encounters and on the jousting fields at their tournaments, have hearts and minds enthralled by love. They strive in all they do to attain the love of a woman so fair and virtuous that she embodies all one could hope for in a soul mate. How did this idealized world come into being? What were the social and cultural conditions that gave rise to it? For a variety of reasons—among others, innovations in farming methods, relative peace, and possibly a change in climate—living conditions improved in most of Europe from about the year 1000 onward. As basic survival became less and less a major concern, people, at least many of those who were above the class of the unfree serf, began to devote much of their attention to what we generally term culture . In the church this led to an increase in intellectual activity and artistic expression . Scholasticism, the pursuit of philosophical and theological knowledge through rational inquiry, replaced the earlier monastic theology with its greater reliance on church authorities, such as Augustine (354–430). The movement culminated in the founding and flourishing of universities. In art we owe to these times the marvels of high Romanesque and early Gothic architecture and sculpture which we find embodied in the medieval cathedral. During this same period, the lay nobility consolidated itself into a class with its own self-awareness and self-confidence. Though throughout the Middle Ages all segments of society remained permeated with religious values and were greatly influenced by theological points of view, here was an island of secular culture with its own values and viewpoints that could not simply be reduced to seeing things sub specie aeternitatis (in the light of eternity). This knightly-courtly culture often allied itself with religious goals and ideals, as happened, for example, in the H A R T M A N N V O N A U E x Crusades. In other ways, however, this culture existed in tension with the religious point of view. It saw the world in a more positive light and found that it offered many things that were of value in their own right, such as the beauty of women, human love relationships, and the valorous and unselfish deeds of knights. How to reconcile these two value systems became the preoccupation of those endowed with powers of insight and reflection. This new secular attitude found expression chiefly in literature, especially in the narrative and lyric genres. But we must not imagine that this literature presents us with a realistic view of the everyday lives and experiences of the knights and ladies of the feudal court any more than a Hollywood western depicts the daily lives of people in the Old West. It is hard to imagine that knights really spent most of their time off in search of adventure, at tourneys, or pining away for some lady sadly and definitively out of their reach. It is the ideals and values of this society that we see reflected in the actions and attitudes expressed in this literature. This knightly-courtly culture and the literature resulting from it first arose in France. Though some love lyrics in German poetry existed previous to and probably independent of French influence, the poetry expressing “courtly love” in the more proper and restricted sense of the term entered the German-speaking world from its neighbor to the west. Middle High German Arthurian romances show an even greater debt to France, more particularly to the narratives of Chrétien de Troyes (fl. c. 1170). Most of the construct of the world of King Arthur as it appears in German literature was his creation, and the plots and structure of the individual German Arthurian romances are in large part reworkings of his narratives. The classical period of medieval German literature spans the relatively brief time from 1170 to 1250. Those with even a nodding acquaintance with medieval...

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