Wer die worheit gerne mynn / Und sich güter dinge versynn, / Der müsz der besten einre sin

Abstract

Abstract Lutwin’s late 13th century account of the lives and deaths of the protoplasts and their first descendants, ‘Eva und Adam’, employs traits and literary techniques usually associated with vernacular courtly literature to convey its religious message to an audience of German speaking nobility. Such techniques include the amplification of the source material by adding newly invented sequences to the narrative’s plot as well as a highly self-conscious narrator, reflecting on his role as a mediator of divine revelations while, at the same time, openly exhibiting his ability to orchestrate the events and characters within his narrative. For decades, the scientific community has been split over the question whether these features may present evidence that contemporaries might have viewed the majority of courtly epics and romance as purely fictional. However, considering the religious nature of Lutwin’s themes and statements, it seems unlikely to assume that a medieval audience had to actively suspend their disbelief in order to accept courtly adaptations of biblical stories. Applying the modern dichotomy between factuality and fictionality therefore leads us to regard Lutwin’s ‘Eva und Adam’ as a paradoxical text riddled with inconsistencies. The concept of ‘fideales Erzählen’, recently introduced by Elke Koch, provides an alternative and potentially more adequate means of describing the historical modes of conceiving and perceiving premodern religious literature. Accordingly, instead of empirical verifiability being the main criteria in determining the status of factual or fictional texts respectively, faith, divine inspiration and adherence to common orthodoxy could, in the notion of a medieval audience, enable authors to present truthful insights into otherwise unattainable religious truths. Based on Koch’s deliberations, this paper re-evaluates several aspects of Lutwin’s ‘Eva und Adam’ – most notably the conception of its narrator – which in the past would have been considered as traits of fictional literature. It can be shown that, although Lutwin acts as a conscious arranger of his narration, his account’s proclaimed verisimilitude remains unchallenged.