Erec
E R E C Introduction In the third decade of the twelfth century the Welsh (or possibly, Breton) teacher and poet Geoffrey of Monmouth incorporated his earlier Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin) into the expansive, and largely fictional, Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). One of the kings Geoffrey wrote about was Arthur, a quasi-historical figure who led the indigenous seventh-century Britons against the invading barbarian Saxons. Much as medieval illustrations provide biblical and classical scenes with a medieval backdrop, so does Geoffrey have Arthur preside over what looks like a twelfth-century court. With the names of Guinevere, Merlin, Caerleon, Mordred, and Avalon, among others, Geoffrey set up the Arthurian court, which over time would accrue figures and places and endure to the present day without losing popularity. In the second half of the twelfth century, the French poet Chrétien de Troyes took up what he had read and heard of Arthur and his court and covered it with the golden patina of French courtly society, then at the apex of power and resplendence . Chrétien wrote five Arthurian romances and two lyric poems on Arthurian subjects. Two of these works, Erec et Enide and Yvain, were adapted by Hartmann. As their titles imply, King Arthur is not the major character in Chrétien’s romances. Rather, Arthur’s court, in all its transposed twelfth-century splendor and with its chivalric code, serves as the meeting place of the present and future knights of the round table (the invention of the Norman poet Wace in his 1155 Roman de Brut) as they set out and return from their knightly “adventures.” Chrétien’s Erec et Enide must have immediately and decisively influenced the young poet Hartmann, who probably from an early age had been surrounded by the flowering courtly culture of the Hohenstaufen era. Hartmann most likely composed Erec between 1175 and 1190, when he was in his twenties, some short time after the Lament, and contemporaneously with some of his lyric poetry. While the legend surrounding King Arthur had to a large degree a nationalistic underpinning H A R T M A N N V O N A U E 52 in England and France, mirroring the court of Henry II Plantagenet, king of England and also of large parts of western France through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, this nationalism gave way to a focus on the external and internal trappings of courtly society itself and of chivalry when Hartmann introduced the largescale Arthurian romance in Germany. While Hartmann obviously based Erec to a large degree on Chrétien’s Erec et Enide—though he may have also used other sources, written and oral—and acknowledges the fact in line 462912,1 it would be more appropriate to call Erec a reworking or an adaptation rather than a translation, for Hartmann took great liberties with his French model, among other things expanding it by over three thousand lines (10,192 versus 6,958). The differences between the two Erecs, which can be used very well as an interpretive tool, are too numerous to be recounted here. What might strike the reader of both works is Hartmann’s focus on courtly society , and the concomitant etiquette of chivalry, and on the relationship between Erec and Enite. The development of these two themes goes toward making Hartmann a great writer and not just a narrator of entertaining knightly adventures. To be sure, Hartmann was an entertainer, as a court poet had to be, but in Erec he rises high above the typical minstrel. One can justifiably call Hartmann didactic , moralistic, and possibly even preachy—and not just in regard to Erec—for behind the Arthurian façade he had a point to make. Hartmann lived in a courtly society and wanted to show how a young knight ought to comport himself within that society, and how deviations from the right path, as Hartmann saw it, could lead to trouble. When Hartmann looked around, he must have seen examples of both exemplary and not-so-exemplary knightly behavior. While one cannot call Erec a Fürstenspiegel (a sort of primer for the education of a prince), one has to believe that Hartmann would not have been disappointed had all knights turned out like Erec. Readers of Hartmann’s Erec can enjoy the trappings of an Arthurian court, the knightly contests and prowess, the unusual characters, the irony and humor, but they can also...
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