13 - German Medieval Romance

Summary

The late twelfth century witnessed the emergence of the Middle High German courtly romance, first introduced by Hartmann von Aue, who translated primarily Erec and Iwein from his French sources by Chrétien de Troyes. Other poets soon followed suit, especially Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, and The Stricker. These romances competed with the traditional bridal-quest verse narratives, and also with contemporary heroic epics, but soon established themselves independently. The thirteenth century witnessed a considerable expansion of the genre, though many romances either turned into more sentimental narratives or imitated much of the ‘classical’ poets from around 1200. In the late Middle Ages, the verse romance was substituted by prose novels, often simply technical adaptations of the traditional courtly narratives (then also printed). However, in the fifteenth century some of those early novels were predicated on innovative themes and reflected the changes of time.