Gary C. Shockey Neil Thomas (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.2, 2005 545 secondary works (in his extensive bibliography he is laudably at home in the German, French, and English languages). In short, while this book makes great demands of the reader, it repays every effort,even though the approach adopted can be criticized. To discuss the author's detailed, often dense, interpretations in the detail they demand would call for more space than a reviewer can expect, but to criticize them without careful argument would be unjustified. Instead, I shall concentrate on a wider aspect, on the way in which the author organizes his book and presents his argument. To start with a small but nagging point. We may be thankful for the author's declared intention to replace Genette's ugly neologisms by more traditional terms, but still regret that he by no means succeeds in dispensing with them. Greater weight, however, attaches to the theoretical top-heaviness of this book in mere terms of space. More than a quarter is devoted to terminological discussions and a lengthy review of past scholarship, an imbalance which seems to have caused even the author some unease, to judge by his repeated apologetic tone ('etwas pedantisch', 'unerfreuliche Dichte'). Over a hundred pages concerned with a complex narrative technique, but also with a wide range of scholarship, have the unhappy result of a terminological inflation in which the reader, far from attaining clarity,can all too easily lose his way. For long stretches we are confronted with varying views of other scholars, which keeps us frustratingly at a double remove: first,from Hiibner's own view (largely retrievable only piecemeal in his reaction to others), but also from the primary texts themselves (other than in isolated passages adduced for illustration). While the author's concern to place his focalization technique in its historical set? ting is welcome, the question arises how this is best served not merely by placing Iwein before the Eneasroman, but by omitting Erec altogether, a work which comes up only occasionally for brief discussion of isolated examples. (We are told, but cer? tainly not shown, that in this work the focalization technique does not perform the overall function it does in other works.) Iwein may well provide a good example of the technique, but Hiibner still leaves untreated the relative position of Veldeke and Hartmann's firstromance. With the other obvious absentee from the works discussed here, Wolfram's Parzival, I must declare an interest, having published a book dealing with 'point of view' in this work. But is it enough for this work to be excluded on the grounds that Wolfram's technique is similar to Hartmann's? (Again we are simply told this.) Even if the technique may be similar, the purposes it is meant to serve are quite different,and Wolfram reacts intertextually not merely to Iwein, but also to Erec. If the effects achieved by Gottfried are differentenough to qualify him for inclusion, the same is also true of Wolfram. It may seem unfair to criticize an already lengthy book fornot including more, but the justification forthis lies in my earlier criticism ofthe imbalance caused by the first quarter's devotion to theory, terminology, and past research in such detail. Pruning of this would have created worthwhile space. As it is, however, enough work remains to be done for the future. Trinity College, Cambridge D. H. Green Homo Viator, Katabasis and Landscapes: A Comparison of Wolframvon Eschenbach's 'Parzival' and Heinrich von dem Turlin's 'Diu Crone'. By Gary C. Shockey. (Goppinger Arbeitenzur Germanistik, 674) Goppingen: Kummerle. 2002. vi + 455 PP- ?64. ISBN 3-87452-921-6. 'Diu Crone' and the Medieval Arthurian Cycle. By Neil Thomas. (Arthurian Stu? dies, 50) Cambridge: Brewer. 2002. x+152 pp. ?40. ISBN 0-85991-636-7. Heinrich von dem Turlin's Diu Crone has been enjoying an increasing amount of attention in recent decades. Selecting from the extensive bibliographies to both works 546 Reviews here under review, I find that Gary Shockey lists forty-fourbooks and articles which have Diu Crone in their titles,and Neil Thomas forty-six(thirtyare common to both); and productivity is increasing: nine in the 1970s, eighteen in the 1980s...