Introduction and a Brief Biography of Oswald von Wolkenstein

Abstract

The traditional canon of medieval German literature is commonly defined by the poets and writers from ca. 1200, more precisely between ca. 1170 and 1220. This was, indeed, a great time when, for instance, Heinrich von Veldeke composed his Eneit (ca. 1185), a Middle High German version of the Old French Eneas, thereby familiarizing his German audience with the famous classical theme, originally developed by the Roman poet Virgil, of the Trojan hero who, having fled from the burning city, ultimately founded Rome. Hartmann von Aue, more or less drawing from Old French poet Chrétien de Troyes when he wrote his Erec (ca. 1180) and later his Iwein (ca. 1203), introduced the Arthurian theme to the courtly audiences at the Hohenstaufen courts all over Germany. Gottfried von Strassburg established himself as the greatest poet of a Tristan version (ca. 1210), and he has enjoyed fame for this work ever since. Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom Gottfried, by contrast, does not seem to have respected highly, achieved extraordinary esteem with his Grail romance Parzival (ca. 1205, in part based on Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval), and then his Willehalm (ca. 1218), an epic in the tradition of the chansons degeste. An anonymous poet, or perhaps a group of poets, created the somber but magnificent heroic epic Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200), which concludes with the death of the entire Burgundian company at the Hunnish court of King Attila as the result of Queen Kriemhild’s revenge against her traitorous brother Gunther and his liege man Hagen who had killed her husband Siegfried.KeywordsSong TypeLiterary TextRoman PoetMedieval LiteratureMedieval TraditionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.