LLT 180 Lecture Serious stuff. "The Love Potion." Trying to get through this someday. We're

Transcription

1 LLT 180 Lecture 25 1 Serious stuff. "The Love Potion." Trying to get through this someday. We're really doing really well. I hope you're keeping up. I know these are longer pages with a fair number of words on 'em, and it can kind of get bizarre once in awhile so you can lose your focus. It's like you stop reading. All of a sudden you're daydreaming about your date for last weekend, and you say, "Oh, wait. Where am I?" The love potion is a central device, and so it's important whether to view it as something real or simply something symbolic representing their change of attitude toward one another. Isolde's basic feeling at this particular point is that she hates Tristan. Tristan is taking her away from the world she loves. It's all her fault. And the Queen is concerned -- you know, when we think back to Arthur's -- to White's book on Arthur, we have these made marriages or whatever, and they aren't good. So she wants to have love between her daughter and Mark, and so she makes this love potion. And she entrusts it to Isolde the younger's cousin, the Queen's niece, who is going to be our wise female. As we talked about last time, our source of wisdom in the book. She's gonna start off advising Isolde and then she's gonna end up advising Isolde and Tristan. We're told specifically what's supposed to happen. Nobody is supposed to drink this, only Mark and Isolde. We're told, on page 192, just the second page into that chapter -- kind of helps having chapter headings, Take care that nobody drinks any! When Isolde and Mark have been united in love, make it your strict concern to pour out this liquor as wine for them, and see that they drink it all between them.

2 LLT 180 Lecture 25 2 And nobody else is to share it or we're gonna have a lot of people in love. Tristan, even though Isolde hates him, he's really nice. He goes in, tries to console her consistently, and she kind of consistently hates him. The women are not used to being on a ship and so they start wimping out on 'em. And so they put into shore and everybody goes ashore, and so Tristan and Isolde are left with some novice ladies-in-waiting. As we read on the bottom of 194, Now, apart from the Queen, there was nobody in the cabin but some very young ladies-in-waiting. "Look," said one of them, "here is some wine in this little bottle." No, it held no wine, much as it resembled it. It was their lasting sorrow, their never-ending anguish, of which at last they died! So we keep being told that this work's gonna have a tragic outcome. Tristan and Isolde are going to die. They drink of the bottle and the immediate effect is Isolde's hatred is gone, and they both start off fighting their attraction for each other. But then slowly, as we move toward the end of the chapter on "The Love Potion," they start to yield to their feelings for each other. The avowal -- this is Tristan and Isolde's commitment to one another. We're not getting to Mark yet. And they start talking to each other, kind of chillin' out toward each other. And we have this silliest part here, and obviously playing with the language here, that Isolde complains about lameir, love. And it's unclear to Tristan whether she's talking about love or bitter or the sea, and so they get into this extended conversation until they straighten it out.

3 LLT 180 Lecture 25 3 They finally -- you know, how many pages did it take? Well, finally, on page 200, so three pages into this chapter, they kiss: "He kissed her and she kissed him" [it works well that way], lovingly and tenderly." So sweet. They are so, so caught up in each other. It's just sickening. It's just "Days of our Lives," "The Hot and the Horny" or -- oh, no -- "The Young and the Restless." I mean, you know, gee. "They were so lost in thought that they neglected all nourishment" [yeah, they're dying of love]. Her cousin is sympathetic toward their plight, maybe because she screwed up by leaving the love potion, and so she wants to help them out. So they start being together. They are gonna remedy each other's pining. And the author says, over on 202, toward the end of this chapter, that, you know, it's all right to talk a little bit, to have a discourse on love, as long as it doesn't get too long-winded. Once it gets too longwinded, it's boring. But if people are interested in this stuff, a short conversation is enough. I think it was plenty long as we got toward the end of that chapter. And it talks about fidelity. It says, on the bottom of 203, "I mean heartfelt Fidelity, lies beneath our feet in misery all the time. In vain does she address us--we look the other way and without a thought tread the sweet thing underfoot." That's toward the end of the chapter. Actually, it's kind of interesting -- and we might've mentioned this before, but in some recent surveys they said what's most important in marriages and stuff in the United States, and those surveys -- you know, they surprised me, but fidelity was number one. And they had like a very high percentage rating, like 90 percent, thought that was, you know, essential for a long-term relationship.

4 LLT 180 Lecture 25 4 Whenever they have a chance to be alone, whenever Tristan and Isolde have a chance to be alone from now on, they're gonna be in ecstasy, they're gonna be in extreme pleasure as they are now for the remainder of the voyage, because they're being helped out. They're being helped out by the cousin. They, however, have a problem. Actually, they have two problems. When they get to shore, when they get to Cornwall -- remember, Isolde the fair maiden -- ha, ha, ha; no longer -- is supposed to marry Mark. And if she's not a maiden, she's in, as former President Bush would say, deep doo-doo. I have to be good and not say anything. "I mean" -- paragraph about 15 lines from the end of that chapter, I mean that fair Isolde was to be given to one to whom she did not wish to be given. And another cause for sorrow tormented them--isolde's lost virginity. They were deeply troubled about this [well, evidently not too deeply troubled] and it made them very wretched. Yet such cares were easily borne, for they freely had their will together many, many [many, many, many, many, many] times. No, not that many. Just wanted to see if you were listening. I'm trying to make it good for TV. So they're nearing Cornwall. So Isolde has an idea. What's her idea? Sacrifice virginal cousin. She's good looking, you know, and Mark's an idiot. He won't notice in the dark. To Mark -- Mark is non-discerning. One woman is just like any other woman to him. And so we read at the beginning of the next chapter, Let us not make a long story of it. Young though she was, Isolde devised the

5 LLT 180 Lecture 25 5 best ruse that she could at this juncture, namely that they should simply [Simply? You simply ask somebody to do this?] ask Brangane to lie at Mark's side during the first night in perfect silence and keep him company. He could be denied his due in no better way, since Brangane was beautiful and a virgin. She reluctantly says, "Okay. I'll do that. It's my fault that we're all in this mess, so I guess I owe this to you." She now tells them the whole story. They didn't know about the love potion, and she now tells them about the love potion, and Tristan sends a report. So the wedding's to take place. The wedding does take place and Brangane suffers her ordeal, is the term they use, in standing in for Isolde. And this all went just fine and they trade places. We read at the bottom of page 207, three pages into this chapter -- it says, When she had done duty for Isolde and her debt had been discharged [the debt she incurred by leaving the love potion available, I guess], she quitted the bed. Isolde was ready waiting there, and went and sat by the bed as if she were the same person. They then have, by custom, wine is brought. They drink the wine. And then just to show how easily duped Mark is, about 10 lines on further on page 208, they get back in bed and he resumes his pleasures. "To him one woman was as another: he soon found Isolde, too, to be of good deportment." However, this is not the end of Tristan and Isolde being together. In the meantime, about a couple of paragraphs on, Meanwhile Isolde and her lover [middle of 208] passed the time in varied

6 LLT 180 Lecture 25 6 pleasures. They had their joy morning and night, for nobody had any suspicion. I think we're in a rut here. Isolde, though, is concerned that the truth of this subterfuge will come out. And so two squires at court -- guys who are not yet knights -- two squires at court from England she gets to pledge to her -- she gets them to pledge that they will kill her cousin. And so they're supposed to bring back her tongue. And so they take her out, they take the cousin out, into the woods and attempt to kill her. And she tells them a story. And obviously this story is all symbolic. This stuff about the white ships is about their virginity, in case you were kind of half-watching TV and half-reading this. She says, at the bottom of 209, paragraph starts "Brangane clasped her hands." It says, When we two sailed from Ireland we each had a garment that we had chosen and laid apart from the rest, and these we took aboard with us; two shifts as white as snow! [so their virginity] When we got out to sea on our voyage to this country the sun grew so hot for the Queen during this time that she could scarcely bear anything on her body other than her pure white shift--and so she grew to like having it on. But while she was wearing her shift until she had worn it too often and had soiled all the whiteness of it, I kept mine in my coffer safely hidden away in pure white folds. Then she says, "I lent her mine when she needed a white one later." And so for those of us who know, since we read the book, what happened, we know she's talking about what happened with the subterfuge of Mark. But I think these guys are too dense to get it. She's saying, "I did nothing wrong, you know. All I did was

7 LLT 180 Lecture 25 7 good deeds." And so I don't know why in these tales or in fairy tales, but it always seems that if something goes wrong, animals have to suffer, you know. They kill a deer and cut out its tongue. Here they cut out one of the setter's tongues -- I mean, what'd the poor dog do -- and take it back. Now Isolde regrets her action and she's gonna punish the guys, but they say, "Oh, no, no. She isn't dead." They hung her up in a tree, they tied her up and hung her in a tree or something, to keep her safe. I mean, just some bizarre stuff. So anyway, Brangane is brought back and everybody is happy, and Tristan and Isolde are living large, and everything's fine. Obviously, we're gonna have a series of tests of their relationship, tests of Tristan -- he's the great knight, tests of Mark. And so the titles of the sections again are very helpful here because Gandin, there in Ireland, and what we see is we see a very active Tristan. So Tristan -- like Yvain, for example -- goes to all these tournaments. Even though he's sneaking away to Isolde all the time, he's still being a great knight and not bringing any suspicion upon himself. He -- it's kind of like the battle of musical instruments. Of course, Tristan we've seen benefit from the fact that he plays the harp many times, and here they refer to Gandin as the Knight of the Rote, R-o-t-e. And that's not even listed in my Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. I know it's a stringed instrument and that's all I know. I think it's an old three-stringed instrument. Anybody find this anyplace? This is when footnotes would be helpful. But it doesn't really matter in particular. It's not gonna be on the test. But anyway, what he does here is, the king -- you know, Mark, King Mark is --

8 LLT 180 Lecture 25 8 you know, definitely has some synapses if not a lot of synapses that don't particularly function well. His brain is just not all there. And so he wants to hear this guy play so well that he promises anything to him if he plays wonderfully. And the guy is here because he has a thing for Isolde. So after he plays so wonderfully, he claims Isolde. Mark is scared of him. Mark isn't seen as a particularly bright or particularly heroic figure by his personal actions, and so he surrenders Isolde. And, of course, Tristan is going to have to rescue her. But Tristan does not rescue her by a mighty deed. He rescues her by cunning. And so it's really how -- it's answering like with like, and he got her by cunning. All right. He didn't fight Mark. He offered to, but Mark didn't take him up on it. But then again Tristan rescues her by cunning rather than fighting him, too. We then get into the more involved part of the tale, which is -- are the next two chapters, where people are trying to ensnare them. So much like when we look back at White's book, when we had Mordred and Agravain trying to catching Lancelot and Guenevere together, here we have people trying to catch Tristan and Isolde together. And the first of these we see is Marjodoc, Chapter 19, the title of Chapter 19, so another quasi-evil character or maybe a totally evil character. And again, it seems we start off each of these chapters saying what a great knight Tristan is. And so we start off again in Chapter 19, Tristan's renown flourished more than ever at court and in the country. People praised his skill and intelligence. He and the Queen were gay and happy again. They cheered each other's hearts whenever they could best contrive it.

9 LLT 180 Lecture 25 9 Tristan has a new companion, though. He has a new roommate and this guy is Marjodoc. And all these people who attempt to get him in trouble have a secret attachment for Isolde. In other words, Isolde is so beautiful that all these guys are quietly lusting after her, and so he should know to be aware. But again, when we talked about those characteristics of a hero, one of them is being naive. And Tristan -- you know, he just kind of lives life bored. He doesn't really understand jealousy and envy people have of him nor is he particularly suspicious of stuff. We know he's a great liar, but otherwise, you know, he just kind of moves on through life. So they talk a lot. One night they're talking, Marjodoc falls asleep and he sneaks off -- you know, Tristan sneaks off. Right on that very first page, That night the path was covered with snow. The moon, too, was very bright and clear. But Tristan gave no thought to spies and ambushes, but went boldly to the place of his secret assignation. So he's let in. The Steward has a dream and this dream -- again, dreams in romantic material are important. Obviously, it's supposed to have some symbolic reference to Tristan. And so we read this dream, bottom of the first page, top of the second, While this was taking place the Steward saw in his dream as he slept a boar [so obviously, Tristan is supposed to be the boar], fearsome and dreadful, that ran out from the forest. Up to the King's court he came, foaming at the mouth and whetting his tusks, and charging everything in his path. And now a great crowd of courtiers ran up. Many knights leapt hither and thither round the boar, yet

10 LLT 180 Lecture none of them dared face him. [So everyone is afraid of Tristan, all right?] Thus he plunged grunting through the Palace. Arriving at Mark's chamber he broke in through the doors, tossed the King's appointed bed in all directions, and fouled the royal linen with his foam. Mark's vassals all witnessed this, yet none made it his business to interfere. So obviously, it's supposed to be a brief summary of the fact that Tristan and Isolde are together, and people know this just like they knew about Lancelot and Guenevere, but nobody is up to saying it for fear of Tristan just as they had fear of Lancelot. Marjodoc, after this dream, awakens and he follows the tracks through the snow, and comes into the room and sees the man and the woman but doesn't know who it is. He leaves. He thinks it's Isolde but, like the dream on that last page of the chapter, the paragraph ends, "But his fear of Tristan--that he might do him some injury--restrained him." So he knows this is Tristan but his fear, just like in the dream, keeps him from saying anything. But Tristan up to this point, you know -- so we're beyond halfway in the book -- nobody knew. So up to this point, the relationship was a secret but now somebody knows and it's Marjodoc. And he's not a good character. He runs and tells the King. Since he wants Isolde for himself, I don't see particularly what that accomplishes. But again, what's one of the things that Tristan always struggles against? You know, we've talked about these qualities of jealousy and envy. Jealous Marjodoc took the King privately aside and told him that a rumour had sprung up at court concerning Tristan and Isolde which did the land little credit,

11 LLT 180 Lecture and that he should take note of it and seek advice as to what to do about it, for it compromised his marriage and his honour. So he's gonna watch -- he's gonna watch them. At the very end of the chapter, Tristan had acquainted Isolde with the Steward's suspicions and asked her to be on her guard. Nevertheless, Mark put it to the test most stringently, and was on the watch night and day. So we have plot and counterplot. What's gonna happen, how is this gonna move forward? And basically, Mark, kind of scuzzy guy that he is, is trying to ensnare his wife in some relationship. And so he has suspicion and doubt, the words they use, but he has no proof. And yet, does he really want proof? He thinks -- he's so whacked in the brain because he's so jealous and so suspicious that he first says, you know, something like, "Well, I'm gonna go away" -- kind of like Arthur and Guenevere, you know -- "I'm gonna go away. Who should I put in charge?" And so Guenevere would say Lancelot, and Arthur would think, you know, "Bad idea." And so she says Tristan, and so this immediately makes him suspicious. She then goes and talks to her cousin and this is where the cousin becomes a more and more important figure as far as giving advice. You know, like, "Bad answer. I'll tell you how to answer this stuff in the future." And so she, Brangane, gets a larger and larger role, telling her what to say and subsequently telling Tristan what to say, and arranging their meetings. He talks here a lot -- our author, Gottfried -- about doubt and suspicion, and what role they play in a relationship, what role they play in love. And, you know, we've all

12 LLT 180 Lecture been in relationships or are in relationships, or want to be in relationships probably. And so you read some of this stuff and, you know, you kind of think, "Is that true? Is that really how people are?" And so it says here, "... love must breed doubt. Doubt should have part in love." This just gets too Oprah-esque for me. I'm just like, "Naaah," you know. "I just can't think that much. It's destroying my brain, it's rotting my brain." Mark, though -- is Mark a nice guy? You know, first of all, he's a chickensomething. He doesn't seem to be particularly bright, even though he's King and even though Tristan says all these things about him. What's the Mark we really see? You know, he's afraid to stand up to Gandin, to rescue Isolde. He seems easily manipulated by other people. And now he tries to trap his wife to prove that she is guilty of something. So we read on the top of 224, a little over two pages into that chapter, "So long as Love has doubt there is some hope for her, [so that's where he is now, all right? Mark has doubt, suspicion.] but when she sees the truth [that is, when love sees the truth], she is suddenly past all remedy." Mark is just obsessed, you know. He's basically obsessed to prove that his wife is a slut. It says, Mark persevered in this same senseless habit. Day and night he bent his whole mind to ridding himself of doubt and suspicion, and was most eager to arrive through proof positive at his own mortal sorrow. And so he wants to find out that he's right, that his suspicion is justified, that his doubt is

13 LLT 180 Lecture justified. But his cunning, the cunning that Marjodoc -- you know, his advice from Marjodoc, how he acts, is completely nullified, completely counteracted by the advice of Brangane because she keeps telling Isolde how to respond to these questions so that he won't be suspicious, he won't be doubtful. And certainly every time she says what she's instructed to tell, Mark is sorry. He regrets acting the way he does. You know, basically she says, "Oh, I don't want to be left with Tristan. I just said that because I know how much you esteem him. I'm not trying to be one of those women who doesn't like any of her husband's friends. But if the truth be known, I can't stand the guy. He's the last person I'd marry. I'd go with you and be killed in some adventure than stay with this jerk." And so Mark -- you know, again being low-brain activity person that he is, says, "Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I was wrong about you." The Steward -- and I don't know why Stewards here tend to be bad characters, but they are. The Steward doesn't buy it; Marjodoc doesn't buy it. He just thinks, you know, that this is all deceit. And so he instructs Mark to test her further. And he says he's gonna dismiss Tristan from court. And again, the response is, "Well, boy, if you do that," Isolde says, "that's gonna reflect poorly on me. And so it's like you're doing it because I complained about something, and so is that what you want to do?" And so basically, what's gonna happen is from event to event, from discussion to discussion for the next little while, Mark is gonna go from feeling bad that he's suspicious to immediately, after his fears are allayed, being suspicious again. Queenie-baby -- of course, that was just Queen Isolde to confuse things, but this

14 LLT 180 Lecture is Princess Queen Isolde -- Isolde the middle, Isolde the younger -- is not above using her body to get her way. On the bottom of 227, At night, when the Queen went to bed with her lord [that is, Mark], she took him in her arms and, kissing and embracing him and pressing him close to her soft smooth breasts [God, my page is crumpled right here], resumed her verbal stalking by means of question and answer. What is this, you know? Gosh. What happened to feminism? Anyway, Tristan and Isolde, they're just hurting for each other. They're really struggling. Because why? They are one heart and one soul. We're writing about an ideal relationship and they are one. They are each other's joy and pain. One doesn't really exist without each other. So Mark, kind of perceiving that they're hurting, devises yet another test and he says he's gonna be gone for 20 days on this big hunt. And Tristan says, "Well, I'm too sick. I ain't going." And so what's gonna happen here? Again -- now, Brangane is advising Tristan, too, so she's becoming totally in charge of the activity and they're wondering how they can be together. So Brangane develops this bizarre thing, which I don't know exactly how to make sense out of it, but she's supposed to cut pieces of wood from what kind of tree? An olive branch. And put his initials and her initials only, just her -- like a T and an I on them, and float them down this brook in the garden. And they'll go out and look for them. And if they find them, they'll know he's in the garden and they'll come and see him. So this works. They see each other for eight straight days.

15 LLT 180 Lecture But Melot, we read in Chapter 21, Melot le petit of Aquitaine -- so Melot's a dwarf and so they call him, in French, "the little one of Aquitaine, the little male of Aquitaine," is now the spy for Marjodoc. And he is somebody who's been important in court, Mark knows him, and so he's brought into this watching. And so we have what I call the M Boys, I put in the corner of my book. We have the M Boys, on the first page of Chapter 21 it says, And so Melot... had soon ascertained that they were lovers... and told King Mark without loss of time that it was assuredly a case of love. Thus they all three--melot, Mark, and Marjodoc--pursued the matter, till by joint consent they settled on this ruse: that if my lord Tristan were forbidden the court, then the truth would be clearly revealed to them. So Tristan is asked to stay away from the ladies -- we've kind of jumped ahead -- and he does that. Mark leaves. We have these secret meetings and Melot perchance - - perchance sees Tristan one evening as he's headed to the garden, and sees Tristan and Isolde meet. He rides out to the hunt, reports this to Mark, and he and Mark come back. They come into the garden and they make the point they're gonna try to catch 'em in the act of being together. And there's no place to hide, and so they climb up a tree. And so this is the meeting by the brook, on page 232, they climb up a tree. But as Tristan is coming, he sees their shadows. And yet he's already let, you know, his little engraved chips float down the brook, so Isolde is coming. He doesn't know quite what to do. She comes. She notices he's acting really strange and then she also sees the shadows.

16 LLT 180 Lecture And so what we do is, we have this long discussion which deceives Mark yet again into thinking that they are pure, they are simple, they are just. And it really upsets him that all these people are plotting against him, all these people are trying to ensnare them in some kind of lie that they're being together. And, of course, some of the truths they tell, which totally do Mark are the truth, but not as they are perceived by Mark. So, for example, when she says stuff, about three pages in on page 236 in our edition, "For I declare before God that I never conceived a liking for any man but him who had my maidenhead, and that all others are barred from my heart, now and for ever."and, of course, Mark thinks "that's me," but it's not. It's Tristan. So one of the things that convinces him that she's telling the truth and makes him feel good is this statement. And so they basically then slander everybody else. They're gonna be slandering Morold, Marjodoc, all these people who have made assertions that things are not as they should be. And Mark is totally taken in. Top of page 238, about a page and a half from the end of the chapter, Sorrowful Mark [so what's Mark's reaction? He's now sorrowful because he had any suspicion] sitting in the tree was moved to sadness by it, and was deeply distressed for having suspected his wife and nephew of infamy. He called down a thousand curses on those who had led him into it--in his heart and also aloud. He roundly accused Melot the dwarf of deceiving him and of slandering his wife. Et cetera, et cetera. So the King who was between suspicion and doubt, what he thinks is

17 LLT 180 Lecture confirmation, and regret and sorrow that he acted in this way. And at this particular moment, he's gonna regret, you know -- like, "Oh, you know. My wife obviously loves me a thousand times over. How could I ever have had these horrible thoughts about her?" So now what he does to make recompense for his suspicion toward the two of them, which he now feels is so totally unfounded, he once again puts Isolde totally under the supervision of Tristan and no one but Tristan is to have access to her apartment. Good deal for Tristan and Isolde, all right? As we end on 239, what we were supposed to read today, Thereupon Tristan was summoned, and suspicion was buried at once in amity and sincerity. Isolde was entrusted to Tristan's keeping with all due form, and he guarded and advised her in every way. She and her apartment were at his sole discretion. Tristan and his lady enjoyed a pleasant life again. The measure of their job was full. Thus, following after their troubles, they now had a life of bliss again, however short-lived [so this keeps being a cycle for them, all right -- joy, sorrow, joy, sorrow -- because you can't have one without the other] it was before fresh woes [this is what I wrote in my book, "Days of Our Lives"] were on them. What I want you to do for next time is read to the end of what is Gottfried's material. You'll come to a break where we pick up Thomas. And what Thomas is -- remember, this is a fragment, but it's based on Thomas's version. And the fragment we have from Thomas picks up where this leaves off, you know, which works out pretty slick. So what we'll do is, we'll read there and then the next time we'll be able to finish

18 LLT 180 Lecture what probably would've happened in this by reading the fragment we have of Thomas. Be careful out there. See you next time. ADDITIONAL MATERIAL We're dealing with German material now and we -- the course has gone through three phases in that sense, in that we started off with a good modern summary of this material by T. H. White, in The Once and Future King, a book that was written in English and we obviously read in English. The second thing we did was, in a general sense, we went back to Chrétien de Troyes, somebody who wrote in medieval French, and we obviously read an English translation. At the same time as Chrétien and these other people were writing in French, people were also writing in German. And we're only reading one embodiment of that as we read Tristan. And so I wanted to mention an older book and a few other authors who wrote in German because we're not taking the time to read them, even though I do mention one when we look at Percival. And there's an older book -- it's in the SMS library -- it's an anthology of German literature, edited by two very, very famous people in medieval German studies, by the name Demetz, D-e-m-e-t-z, and Jackson, just like the name sounds. And it's an anthology of German literature, 800 to The reason I mention this is that -- you know, professors have to have resource materials like everybody else and this is an excellent resource material -- it's excellent resource. All the introductions to the different sections in this book are in English. And

19 LLT 180 Lecture so even if you can't read German, and especially older German, you could go to this book and find good summary chapters about an overview of the history, an overview of the different periods, and it's just an excellent, excellent book. It was THE book that everybody used in medieval survey courses. Some of the authors that he treats in here, which I think I might've mentioned but I would like to mention again if you wanted to read more -- most of these people's works are available in English translation. One is Hartmann von Aue. Hartmann is H-a-r-t-ma-n-n, another v-o-n, and the last word is A-u-e. He's basically a contemporary of Chrétien, writing in German mainly about the same stuff. And so we read Yvain, he has one on the same thing -- in German it's I-w-e-i-n -- and he treats exactly the same material. And so it's interesting sometimes, if you just read works that treat the same material by different authors, living in different countries at the same time, if you're really interested in a detailed kind of cultural view of how these heroes are treated. Another author that I've mentioned, I will mention and I think I'll write his name on the board, when we read Percival, is a fellow by the name of Wolfram von Eschenbach. And these people are so important, if you're a medievalist, that usually they don't even refer to them by their whole names. You can see why. They're too long. They refer to Hartmann von Aue as Hartmann, they refer to Wolfram von Eschenbach as Wolfram. His first name is like Wolf, W-o-l-f-r-a-m, again von, and then Eschenbach, E-s-c-h-e-nb-a-c-h. And what he wrote -- and again, these introductions are wonderful. And he wrote the first completed grail romance. We'll be talking about this later. And we read

20 LLT 180 Lecture the fragment by Chrétien at the end of the course. Percival, actually the work by Wolfram Parzival, P-a-r-z-i-v-a-l, and that is available in paperback. I forget by what press, but it's available. We're, of course, reading Gottfried. Some of the clever things I say might be in here so I shouldn't be telling you my resource, but I feel that most people taking this course won't be reading medieval German material so I should be pretty safe. But there are great things in here. They define words. But the other thing I wanted to mention, and I think I can just squeeze it in, is part of this material that we don't talk about at all in this course is there's a tremendous amount of poetry. And there are tremendously important poets at this period, in this golden age of literature, medieval literature. And there's lyrical poetry. There are all kinds of people. But one person that I just would like you to hear his name because he's so important in medieval German literature is Walther von der Vogelweide. And everybody always refers to him, obviously, as Walther, W-a-l-t-h-e-r, v-o-n, another word, d-e-r-and then V-o-g-e-l-w-e-i-d-e. This guy is an unbelievably important poet. He treats all this same material from a poetic standpoint. And so he talks about the politics of the period, he writes for different patrons and so we see the politics, he writes poems about knights, he writes poems from the view of the people who are being affected by knights. This poet is just incredibly important. And there's a good overview book of him, The Twain World Author Series, which most of us refer to as TWAS, has books on all kinds of different literary figures and they

21 LLT 180 Lecture do have a book on Walther. And it's a wonderful place to go if you're interested in poetry and you want to look at poetry in another language, poetry of another period. It gives you a good, critical overview. And so that would be something that certainly could be a segment of this course if it were taught slightly differently.