Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Germany. The Works of Hartmann von Aue.

Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Germany. The Works of Hartmann von Aue. By W. H. Jackson. Woodbridge and Rochester: D. S. Brewer, 1994. Pp. xiv + 320. $71.

In recent times chivalry and its relation to literature have increasingly occupied the attention of scholars. The most recent book is by Maurice Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages (1996), which treats, among others, ideas about nobility. In 1992 an entire academic conference was devoted to "Fiktionalitat im Artusroman," and a year later the proceedings appeared under the same title, edited by Volker Mertens and Friedrich Wolfzettel. One of the essays concerns fact and fiction in the twelfth-century "Artusgeschichte" (J. O. Fichte). Already in 1980 the topic of the relations between literature and life had inspired the book Chivalric Literature, edited by Larry D. Benson and John Leyerle, which was published in the same year as the first paperback printing of Georges Duby's Chivalrous Society. In 1985 appeared the magisterial book by C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness, which prominently treats "Courtliness in the Romance."

Among the poets Jaeger treats is Hartmann von Aue (fl. 1200), adaptor of the Arthurian romances of Chretien de Troyes and author of Gregorius, Der arme Heinrich, and lyric poetry. For many decades scholars have debated the extent to which social reality informs Hartmann's work, in other words, to what extent there are connections between his poetry and the chivalric world he knew. The relation of his fiction to the contemporary scene is significant since Hartmann was a knight …