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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2022
To those accustomed to thinking of medieval literature in terms of the modern medievalist canon, it may be surprising to discover that after Tristan, Parzival and Arthur himself, the most commonly represented material from German romance in German art is the story of Wigalois.
The early thirteenth-century Wigalois (recte Gwîgalois)2 by Wirnt von Gravenberg (the modern Gräfenberg near Bayreuth) exerted as great an appeal for medieval audiences as did the ‘classical’ Arthurian romances of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Since Wirnt's romance is not so well-known in our own age as those of Hartmann and Wolfram, a brief overview of its main stages is here given at the outset.
Wigalois begins with the account of how Gawein is taken from the Arthurian court by Joram, the denizen of a distant realm where the goddess Fortuna is said to be the tutelary deity. Having arrived in Joram's kingdom, Gawein is married to Florie, Joram's niece, and presented with a belt of Fortune held to confer valour and well-being on its possessor. Without the belt (or having Joram as his guide) it is not possible for Gawein to return to Joram's kingdom, and the story of Gawein's son begins after his father has ridden back to Camelot but omitted to take with him the girdle of Fortune (which is later passed to his son). Gawein, who leaves knowing Florie is pregnant but not that she is bearing a son (who is to be named Wigalois), tries but fails to return to his wife, hence he and his family remain cut off from each other. Having heard many honorific stories about his father, however, when Wigalois reaches early manhood he seeks out his father at the Arthurian court where Gawein (whom, we are told, the son does not recognise by his name and reputation) is appointed as his chivalric mentor. Here the son, in an action portending his future preeminence, is able to sit on Arthur's ‘stone of virtue’. Thereafter, in an initial series of skirmishes with sundry adversaries under the censorious gaze of a female emissary (Nereja), he manages to convince his sceptical guide that he is the equal of his father (whose services she had requested in preference to those of the youth).
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