Wolfram von Eschenbach

Bumke, Joachim

doi:10.1007/978-3-476-05091-5

Cited by 19 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Blackness no longer matters here at all, and Gahmuret suddenly demonstrates his soft side, feeling bashful and embarrassed when she serves him at a dinner as a sign of her gracious hospitality. 16 Wolfram, however, continues to inject facetious remarks about their racial difference, which cannot be denied altogether, and which plays no real role in their subsequent love-making: "Then the queen practised noble, sweet love, as did Gahmuret, her heart's beloved. Yet their skins were unalike".…”

Section: Wolfram Von Eschenbach's Parzivalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blacks in the Middle Ages – What About Race and Racism in the Past? Literary and Art-Historical Reflections

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2023

Current Research Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities

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Undoubtedly, racism is a deeply-anchored problem that continues to vex our world. There is a long history behind it, which can easily be traced back to the Middle Ages and beyond. This article, however, takes into consideration a number of medieval narratives and art works in which surprisingly positive images of Blacks are provided. The encounter with black-skinned people tended to create problems even for the best-intended white intellectuals or poets during the pre-modern era, but the examples studied here reveal that long before the modern age there was already an alternative discourse to embrace at least individual Blacks as equals within the courtly and the religious context. Since Europe did not yet know the large-scale form of slavery, as it emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were much less contacts between Blacks and Whites. Nevertheless, the evidence brought to the table here clearly signals that we would commit a serious mistake by equating modern-day racism with the situation in the Middle Ages, as much as modern research (Heng) has argued along those lines. It would be more appropriate to talk about the encounter of races within the literary and art-historical context. Even the notion of Black diaspora would not fully address the issue because the evidence brought to the table here engages mostly with black or half-black knights and other individuals who enjoy considerable respect and appear to be integral members of courtly society both in the East and in the West. Instead of working with theoretical models developed for the analysis of racism in our own times, such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study offers close readings of literary examples of personal encounters between members of different races in medieval German and Dutch literature, and of the representation of Blacks in late medieval and early modern art history, concluding with some comments on the first Black philosopher in eighteenth-century Germany.

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Section: Wolfram Von Eschenbach's Parzivalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blacks in the Middle Ages – What About Race and Racism in the Past? Literary and Art-Historical Reflections

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2023

Current Research Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities

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“…[The wounded man rode back to him again / and said, 'Are you Gawan? / What you loaned me / has been paid back now' (524, [9][10][11][12]]. 29 Urjan's reference to the kinship between Gawan and Arthur underscores the revenge pattern he invokes since kin were one's natural allies in a feud.…”

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confidence: 94%

“…His rhetoric is strong and his words have cosmic overtones. He regrets seeing the light of the day on which the nôt, the illegitimate use of force, took place (526, [12][13]. He states that the vermaldîte mein, the accursed injustice of the rape, will cause die werlt [humankind] to have sorrow and regret.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…First she speaks to the king, asking him to empathize with her (526, 28) and to give her justice (527, 5-6). She also addresses the fellowship of the Round Table, asking it to join her in petitioning the king (527, [12][13][14]. In making her case the maiden explains the harm of rape as something that impacts both her as an individual as well as the social groups to which she belongs or, to use the exact terms of the text, 'on account of whom' the court should act.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…The point of view of the rape survivor is one of Wolfram's significant innovations over his source text, Chrétien's Conte du Graal, where in the parallel scene the raped maiden remains silent. 12 Wolfram's characters use several different words and phrases for what I am calling sexual assault. This diversity of words for sexual assault is to be expected in a medieval text.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Orgeluse and the Trial for Rape at the Court of King Arthur: Parzival 521, 19 to 529, 16

Westphal-Wihl¹

2010

art

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Wolfram von Eschenbach'sParzival: A Complex Reshaping and Expansion of a Source

Meyer¹

2019

A Companion to World Literature

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Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is based on Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval, le Conte du Graal , but is not merely a translation of the source text. Wolfram works with his source and reshapes it in significant ways, thus making his narrative style, content, and message far more complex by infusing them with his own vast learning and by taking the common narrative structure of medieval Romances, the double cycle, and multiplying it throughout the narrative. At the same time, Wolfram links this structural complexity to his thematic interests about the Orient and the Christian West, the secular Arthurian and the spiritual Grail realm, the story's two main heroes, Parzival and Gawan, Christianity and heathendom, and the peoples of black and white races. Wolfram weighs in on contemporary issues throughout his narrative, sometimes critically, sometimes favorably, but always reshaping contemporary discourses.

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Wolfram von Eschenbach

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Blacks in the Middle Ages – What About Race and Racism in the Past? Literary and Art-Historical Reflections

Blacks in the Middle Ages – What About Race and Racism in the Past? Literary and Art-Historical Reflections

Orgeluse and the Trial for Rape at the Court of King Arthur: Parzival 521, 19 to 529, 16

Wolfram von Eschenbach'sParzival: A Complex Reshaping and Expansion of a Source

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