Wolfram von Eschenbach: Titurel. Mit der gesamten Parallelüberlieferung des, Jüngeren Titurel (review)

The new millennium has been kind to researchers of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Titurel and Albrecht von Scharfenberg's Jüngerer Titurel. After decades of relative inactivity, a new edition of Titurel (2002) edited and commented on by Helmut Brackert and Stephan Fuchs-Jolie appeared and now, four years later, this edition by Bumke and Heinzle follows. The editions, although significantly different, complement each other nicely. Due to the limited and fragmented transmission of Titurel a critical edition had always been considered a daunting, if not impossible, task. In their edition Bumke and Heinlze provide, much like Bumke's 1996 edition of Die Klage, the parallel transmission of all available Titurel manuscripts. In addition, this new addition provides all of the strophes from Albrecht's Jüngerer Titurel as well.

Titurel comes down to us in three different manuscripts containing two fragments: G (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cgm. 19, 13th century), H (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien, Cod. Ser. Nova 2663 [Ambraser Heldenbuch] 16th century), and M (Universitätsbibliothek München 8° Cod. Ms. 154, 13th century). Manuscript G contains 125 strophes from the first fragments and 39 from the second with 164 strophes in total. Almost all extant editions (Lachmann 1833, Bartsch 1871, Piper 1890, Martin 1900, Mohr 1978) use G as the main manuscript. Manuscript H has 68 strophes from the first fragment. The 46 strophes from the M manuscript are also from the first fragment. The strophes of M appear on three different sheets and have been shredded into strips, as shown in the facsimiles that appear at the end of the Bumke-Heinzle edition. Together, H and M contain 11 strophes not in G and appear to be from a different tradition than G. All of the 175 strophes of Wolfram's Titurel were worked into the so-called Neuer Titurel or Jüngerer Titurel and distributed as the work of Wolfram himself by Albrecht von Scharfenberg towards the end of the thirteenth century. Bumke and Heinzle draw from the 18 available manuscripts of the Jüngerer Titurel as well as an early print edition (Johannes Mentelin, Straßurg, 1477) but rely primarily on A (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wien 2675).

The Bumke-Heinzle edition begins with an introduction with reference to each manuscript and fragment. An explanation of the transcription methods used for each work follows. The introduction concludes with a discussion of the problem of meter in the poem. The long-awaited synoptic or diplomatic presentation of all three Titurel manuscripts appears first. The G manuscript is presented on the right hand page with the H, M variants or nothing on the left. Translations and notes appear at the bottom of both facing pages, with corrections marked in italics. The parallel transmission of the Jüngerer Titurel and Älterer Titurel reproduces all coincidental text in bold as well as marking all word variants, syntactical variance, meaning carrying variance, and mistakes. The commentary that follows the text presentations relies on Heinzle's commentary from 1972. A register of names in the texts and a list of abbreviations and literature follow. A series of 8 manuscript photos from the G, H, M Titurel manuscripts as well as the A manuscript of the Jüngerer Titurel completes the volume.

This new edition of Titurel certainly stands as one the greatest products and tools of research to have appeared in generations. However, the text begins to swim before the eyes of a reader faced with a parallel presentation, including the modern German translation, of the three manuscripts. The inclusion of variants marked on the same page with bold and italics and, in some cases, with a cascade of notes, certainly makes the work far less friendly as a reader's edition. The Bumke-Heinzle edition provides the diplomatic presentation of the Titurel fragments that some missed in the Brackert-Fuchs-Jolie edition, which has...