Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World: Epistemological Explorations, Orientation, and Mapping in Medieval Literature 9780367459697, 9781003098867

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“Albrecht Classen’s Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World does for literature what Albert Einstein did for physics with his General Theory of Relativity. Just as Einstein suggested that spacetime is curved by the mass and acceleration of physical bodies and their gravitational forces, Classen allows us to see the constellation that we call the Middle Ages as an event carved out of spacetime by authorial agencies and literary forces, enduring for a thousand years, and still affecting the ways in which we understand our present and our future. Focused on accounts of travel, journeys and movements in real and imagined spaces, by authors and fictional characters, the book establishes the primacy of stepping forth and venturing out, as the acts by which the world and the traveler come into being. Ontology and epistemology, in that way, are posited as effects of the kinetics and the serendipitous meanderings that make them possible in the first place. The four dimensions of spacetime, however, are not the only realms of interest to this study. Just as post-Einsteinian physics has endeavored to establish the existence of dimensions beyond those of sensory perception, Classen too proposes that the metaphorical effects inherent to literary language become passageways into a spiritual dimension, running as it were parallel to the tracks of our own world. Astrophysics translated into literary scholarship, cosmology rendered as cultural history, Tracing the Trails opens up entirely new ways of understanding how literature not only represents, but shapes, the universe in which we live, in effect prescripting and blazing the trails of our destinies and identities, also shedding light on the metaphysical and transcendental dimensions of our journeys.” —Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, Creighton University

Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World

Every human being knows that we are walking through life following trails, whether we are aware of them or not. Medieval poets, from the anonymous composer of Beowulf to Marie de France, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Guillaume de Lorris, and on to Petrarch and Heinrich Kaufringer predicated their works on the notion of the trail, and elaborated on its epistemological function, while numerous artists created labyrinths in Gothic cathedrals as a proxy passageway to the divine. We can grasp here an essential concept that determines much of medieval and early modern European literature, the arts, religion, and philosophy, addressing the direction which all protagonists pursue, as powerfully illustrated also by the anonymous poets of Herzog Ernst and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Dante’s Divina Commedia, in fact, proves to be one of the most explicit poetic manifestations of the fundamental idea of the trail, but we find strong parallels also in powerful contemporary works, such as Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, and in many mystical tracts. Dr. Albrecht Classen is a University Distinguished Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona, focusing mostly on medieval and early modern literature and culture. He has published well over 100 scholarly books and over 700 articles. He is the editor of the journals Mediaevistik and Humanities Open Access, and has received numerous awards for teaching, research, and service. In 2017, the rank of Grand Knight Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Three Lions was bestowed upon him.

Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture

Disability and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur Tory V. Pearman From Medievalism to Early-Modernism Adapting the English Past Edited by Marina Gerzic and Aidan Norrie Avid Ears Medieval Gossips and the Art of Listening Christine M. Neufeld Zöopedagogies Creatures as Teachers in Middle English Romance Bonnie J. Erwin Before Emotion The Language of Feeling, 400–1800 Juanita Feros Ruys Forging Boethius in Medieval Intellectual Fantasies Brooke Hunter Sanctity and Female Authorship Birgitta of Sweden & Catherine of Siena Edited by Unn Falkeid and Maria H. Oen Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World Epistemological Explorations, Orientation, and Mapping in Medieval Literature Albrecht Classen

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Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World Epistemological Explorations, Orientation, and Mapping in Medieval Literature

Albrecht Classen

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Albrecht Classen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-45969-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09886-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

Introduction: Epistemological Explorations, Orientations, and Mapping: Forging Ahead ‒ Trailing and Orientation in Medieval and Early Modern Literature 1 Beowulf’s Ways to Denmark, to the Monster, Home Again, and the Path to the Dragon’s Lair 2 Herzog Ernst: A Traveler Explores the Eastern World: Herzog Ernst and His Efforts to Find Himself through Travel. Or: Trails through a Political Jungle and an Exotic World in the East 3 The Lovers in Their Quest for the Right Trail and the Trail of Love: Marie de France’s Lais 4 Right Paths, Wrong Paths, Circuitous Paths, Dead Ends, and Religious Epiphany in Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius. Crossroads in a Christian Narrative 5 The Passage toward Happiness: Trailing through the World in Search of Love Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan (Together with Some Comments on Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach). Where There Is a Trail, There Is Love! 6 The Walk through the Garden of Love in Medieval Literature, with a Focus on Le Roman de la rose by Guillaume de Lorris. Dreamful Trailing and Awakening with Surprises 7 Dante and the Infinite Way Down to Hell and Beyond: Hope or Despair, Just as the Trail Takes Us 8 Petrarch’s Search for His Own Self, Climbing Mont Ventoux: Trails Leading Upwards, not Downwards 9 The Experience of the World in Narrative and Graphic Form Trailing through a Medieval Depiction of the Entire Earth Literary Explorations and Medieval Maps (Ebstorf) and Charts Epilogue

Bibliography Index

Introduction Epistemological Explorations, Orientations, and Mapping: Forging Ahead ‒ Trailing and Orientation in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad, the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages. Leo Africanus

Theoretical Reflections Human life is determined by many external factors and categories, but most important would certainly be time and space, which provide us with the fundamental framework for our identity and activities. We operate with and through both, although there is fairly little critical reflection on how we impact time and space through our actions and how both those aspects determine our existence with the help of language, despite many philosophical investigations (from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, Buridanus, Nicholas of Cusa, Jacob Böhme, Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein).1 The article on ‘identity’ in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy highlights, for instance, this approach: Perdurance theorists, as Quine puts it, reject the point of view inherent in the tenses of our natural language. From that point of view persisting things endure and change through time, but do not extend through time, but only through space. Thus persisting things are to be sharply distinguished from events or processes, which precisely do extend through time. One way of describing the position of the perdurance theorist, then, is to say that he denies the existence of a distinct ontological category of persisting things, or substances. Thus, Quine writes, “physical objects, conceived thus four-dimensionally in space-time, are not to be distinguished from events, or, in the concrete sense of the term, processes. Each comprises simply the content, however heterogeneous, of some portion of space-time, however disconnected and gerrymandered. . . .”2

(1960:171) Our personal world is further determined by the differences between inside and outside, or, put differently, by the boundaries that separate us from other individuals both horizontally and vertically. In the wake of the Spatial Turn,3 we are now rather sensitive to all those elements in any narrative or poem, medieval or modern, which signal any kind of movement by the protagonists because each movement carries epistemological significance for our concept and understanding of both categories and especially for the self. The theoretical and methodological implications of the Spatial Turn are of great significance for literatures of all cultures and periods because the conceptual approach offered now sheds more light on the spatial operations of the individual and focuses on the correlations and coordinates of all figures within a narrative, operating all by themselves (rarely, if ever) or in relationship with many others (most commonly).4 Life can be defined by an infinite number of signals that we emit ourselves and that we receive from the outside, and then also by our ability to decipher those signals and hence to communicate with the world. In the future, we might go one step further and talk only of algorithms as the all-determining mathematical formulas describing and defining energy, life, and movement, but for the time being suffices it to recognize how much all our senses make it possible to exist. In other words, we could even describe all life as a form of communication, first on a very simple chemical-biological level, then by means of the exchange of information (semantic), and finally in a spiritual (anagogical) manner.5 To adapt a fundamental medieval notion of epistemology as first identified by Henri de Lubac regarding the individual’s ability to perceive the world in its material, but then in its spiritual dimension, every organic being itself can be comprehended, first, on a historical, or literal, subsequently on a moral, then on an allegorical, and finally on an anagogical level.6 Each individual explores and conquers its own space and quickly determines itself by that range of operation, which takes us back to the basic elements of all existence, time and space. Without movement, that is, energy, there is no action, and without action, there is no life. Or, differently formulated, we exist in a three- or rather four-dimensional space (including time), and this space is, of course, deeply determined or semantically defined by culture, history, geography, attitudes, and values, as Yi-Fu Tuan has already outlined in his study Space and Place (1977).7 This means, we perceive ourselves through vertical, horizontal, and temporal tangents. Literature in all of its fictional manifestations illustrates this fundamental aspect in a unique fashion by tracing the lives of the protagonists, or by shining a light on ideas as they evolve in time and space. In most cases, however, whenever those categories come into play, the focus immediately turns to travel and chronicle literature, which exists, of course, in large quantities throughout time and certainly allows us to recognize the strategies by medieval or early modern authors to structure their social and natural spaces.8 Spaces are not semantically void; instead, each individual space is telling its own story, and the trails through those spaces interact with the spatial meaning, contributing, receiving, changing, and modulating it according to a multitude of narrative functions. However, it does not matter so much where the events take place, whether the heroes really travel to Iceland

within 12 days, or whether the Nibelungen hoard is brought down from an enigmatic location to Worms. What matters is the pathway which traverses the mental landscape and underscores the events, the characters, and the message conveyed by the anonymous poet.9 The notion of the Spatial Turn comes in handy in this context, but we have to also exercise a bit of caution not to overdraw from the theoretical framework because spaces appear everywhere. By contrast, as this book intends to investigate, the central question ought to rest on the phenomenon that the protagonists all pursue their own paths and trails, and create tracks through a narrative wilderness, as perhaps most intriguingly expressed by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his Middle High German Parzival romance (a Grail romance; ca. 1205) and in his Titurel fragments from ca. 1220.10 While Parzival’s father Gahmuret freely roams throughout the Mediterranean world, especially in the Middle East, where he will eventually also die as the result of treason – goat blood is poured on his helmet made out of diamonds which softens it completely – his son grows up in a solitary sylvan location, the forest Soltane, and it later takes him a lot of time to find the way out of that isolation. On his way to King Arthur, and later to the Grail castle, Munsalvaesche, Parzival faces numerous challenges and at first leaves behind a trail of tragic developments affecting particularly noble ladies,11 before he has learned enough, both in pragmatic and spiritual-ethical terms to find his true trail that allows him to ascend to the Grail throne and thus to heal the world.12 In his Titurel, however, the poet pursues a rather negative perspective regarding the potential for success here in this world in following one’s proper trails. Despite the clear message inscribed on a dog leash brought to the two lovers, Sigûne and Schionatulander, while spending time together in the midst of a forest, which is like a locus amoenus, they fail to understand how to pursue the right path, and, as we know already from Wolfram’s previous work, Parzival, experience a tragic outcome. Out in the Arthurian world he dies in his effort to satisfy the request made by his beloved to retrieve the lost dog with its fabulous leash, being killed by the knight Orilus in a joust for the dog, while she, becoming an anchorite after his death, eventually passes away out of grief and sorrow.13 All literary agency is determined by a deliberate interaction of time, space, and individual performances, and all these three categories are held together by the notion of trails on which the heroes move along.14 Trails create, in short, meaning and provide direction, a goal, a destiny, and those who fail to follow them will not make it through life in a good way. As Joachim Bumke alerts us, however, Sigûne does not necessarily bear all the guilt, because she really needed to learn about her own destiny as outlined in the text inscribed on the dog’s leash: “Das Verlangen nach dem Brackenseil wird zu einer Chiffre für die Suche nach der eigenen Identität” (The desire for the dog leash turns into a cipher for the search for the own identity).15

The Operative Term ‘Trailing’

The word ‘trailing,’ perhaps a little unusual at first, carries numerous meanings, such as “Dragging along, hanging down as a robe so as to drag, etc.,” “The following of a trail, hunting by the trail,” or “A trailing branch or shoot of a plant, a ‘runner’; a trailing part or appendage.”16 Here I use it more specifically to indicate an individual’s efforts to make his/her way through life, pursuing a path, whether known to him/her or not. To trail or to pursue a trail thus constitutes a fundamental movement on a specific track or path, leading the individual from point A to point B, a movement which seems to be almost too simplistic to be discussed, but which certainly guides all human life. Medieval poets, as we will see, were deeply concerned with this notion and employed the trail or the act of trailing as fundamental epistemological instruments. To illustrate what I mean with this concept, I add a photo of the deep bark of a cottonwood tree which is marked by countless possible paths from the bottom to the top (Fig. I.1). What trail would be the best along this trunk to reach higher levels? Are there dead-ends, detours, straight lines (no, never), highways, sideways, ignored or neglected tracks? Only trailing through this ‘jungle’ of meaningful bark can ultimately tell what life really means.

Figure I.1 Cottonwood bark, at the eastern edge of Tucson, AZ, May 2020 (© Albrecht Classen)

Beyond Travel Literature: Spiritual Travels This study aims at transcending the traditional framework of travel literature and examining in greater detail what the notion of movement by itself implies, what directions the protagonists take, how they interact with the space surrounding them, and what space means in the first place. This must be understood not only in concrete physical terms, with a body moving through space, but also in spiritual terms because the mind wanders even more than the body, and mystical and other religious texts commonly project the movement of the soul through huge realms far beyond the material entity. While research on medieval and early modern travelers/pilgrims is still growing in leaps and bounds, introducing us to ever new travelers and travel texts,17 including the connections between island kingdoms (Ireland, Scotland, England),18 among the Viking kingdoms, and across the Mediterranean, we have also to consider spiritual travels, the movements of the mind, the soul, or the spirit, which were of central concern in the Middle Ages and the early modern age, but continues to be of central importance today as well, though then mostly in somewhat different manifestations, here disregarding explicitly religious narratives. Major theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor composed treatises about De gradibus amoris, tracing the wanderings of the soul, driven by love, through the various layers of spiritual enlightenment toward the Godhead. Even though the various authors suggested different numbers of steps in that process, they all agreed that the soul had to follow a path upward in order to achieve the ultimate goal. The passage way to Paradise was cumbersome, difficult, challenging, and demanding, but the efforts were always described as being worthwhile. Hedwicus Theutonicus’s (d. 1263) Decem gradus amoris (The Ten Steps of Love), from the middle of the thirteenth century, contained in his work De dilectione Dei et proximi (On the Love of God and Other Works), illustrates this concept most impressively (with many other contemporary theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas outlining the same gradation). Those ten steps receive very detailed descriptions and combine the interior and the exterior experience of affections, desire, longing, burning, listening, running, etc.: languere utiliter, querere incessanter, operari indesinenter, sustinere infatigabiliter, appetere impacienter, currere velociter, audere vehementer, stringere inamissibiliter, ardere suaviter, assimilare totaliter (to desire, to seek incessantly, to work constantly, to sustain indefatigably, to crave impatiently, to run quickly, to dare vehemently, to embrace undetachably, to burn sweetly, to unite completely). Hedwicus’s work has survived in 21 manuscripts, but the treatise on the Decem gradus amoris only in 14 of those.19 Medieval poets and theologians drew extensively from their ancient predecessors, and so also from their concept of life being a pathway toward the afterlife, such as in the case of Hercules discussed for the first time by the Sophist Prodikos in the fifth century B.C.E. and recorded by Xenophon in his Memorabilia (after 371 B.C.E.). However, the biblical text served as a much more influential source for this notion as explored deeply throughout the Middle Ages. Both Augustine and then especially Thomas Aquinas developed the metaphor of the pilgrimage through life, which secular authors such as Hartmann von Aue in his

Gregorius (ca. 1200) explored further in a highly dramatic fashion.20 Choices have constantly to be made as to what path to choose, toward virtues or toward vices, toward salvation or toward eternal condemnation.21 The narrator of Gregorius emphasizes accordingly: Yet sweetness that is very bitter forces his feet onto the more comfortable path. It has neither stones nor defiles, marsh, mountains, nor forest; it is neither too hot nor too cold. One travels it without bodily distress. But it leads to eternal death. The path of salvation is to a great extent both uneven and narrow. Along the entire length of it one must wander and climb, wade and swim, until it leads out to where it widens pleasantly, out of this banishment to a very sweet end.22 Both here and in many other theological works from the Middle Ages and far beyond, we observe the critical focus on how the soul will migrate from the body after this lifetime and transcend the material limitations. Human existence is, after all, certainly more than just physically determined. Virtually all pre-modern narratives, both ecclesiastical and laical, concerned with the afterlife, are predicated on the awareness that there is another dimension and another time zone, although both are inaccessible to human rationality. Consequently, this book will deal with a larger variety of relevant literary and other texts where the individual, or at least the narrative voice, migrates from one sphere to the other and experiences epiphanies depending on the spiritual awareness and cultural readiness, as we observe them much more intensively, but not exclusively, in the pre-modern world, compared to our postmodern existence.23 If we keep in mind that this text was the fundamental source for the universally popular sermon Deus caritas est (God is Love), to be delivered on the first Sunday after Pentecost, then we understand why there are ca. 300 medieval sermon collections containing this narrative as well. It was also translated into Dutch under the title X trapkijns vander mynnen within the framework of the Devotio moderna (fifteenth century), where it seems to have appealed primarily to a female audience.24 The message contained in this sermon, paralleled by countless other examples from throughout the entire Middle Ages and well until the modern age (e.g. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to That which is to come (1678/1684), clearly indicated that the individual ought to move beyond his/her material existence and to allow his/her soul to embark on a journey that would entail many stages of spiritual purification and enlightenment. Life is a journey, of course, as countless theologians, poets, artists, and philosophers have confirmed, so our critical task here really consists of examining the trail itself upon which this journey is even possible.25 For the various religious authors, the idea consisted of transcending the material confines and to aim for a glorious unification with the Godhead, an ideal which only the mystics were apparently able to accomplish. There was, however, always also the opposite danger, namely of the soul falling into the depth of hell, for which many different kinds of bridges, pathways, trails, or tracks existed as well, as most ominously illustrated in one of Hieronymus Bosch’s daunting paintings about the afterlife. In the right panel of the triptych called “The Garden of

Earthly Delights” (ca. 1504‒1505), horrifying scenes of hell leave a daunting impression on the viewer, shocked by the countless grotesque figures and features. But the top portion depicts a burning city, with some miserable individuals attempting to cross bridges between buildings and mountain peaks. The global inferno, however, makes it all look rather futile (Fig. I.2).

Figure I.2 Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, right panel (Wikicommon; public domain)

Nevertheless, the bridges still represent human attempts to make sense out of this world, even in hell, and to cross abysses, even if, as in the case of Bosch’s painting, all hope is apparently lost. Neither the central nor the left panel contains any bridges, roads, pathways, or streets; instead, there the scenes depict prelapsarian paradise (left panel) and a curious garden of delights, which art historians have discussed from many different perspectives. There are no children or old people, and the scores of nude men and women cavort, so it seems, without particular care about sinfulness or sexuality. The bizarre and also delightful scenery defies easy explanations, but for our purposes suffices it to note only that the global innocence and happiness conveyed here indicate that the individuals simply spend time in a garden world, and they are in no need of directions, trails, or tracks.26 Many clerical and secular authors throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern age additionally imagined the transformative experience of catabasis, a descent to hell or the underworld, as already developed in antiquity, where the deceased rest, to learn from their insights, and to return to this world in order to accomplish the journey as predestined by the gods, as most vividly illustrated by the Old French Roman d’Eneas, Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneit (based on the French source, and both actually going back to Ovid’s Aeneid), Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia, then Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.27 We could go so far as to claim that all spiritual experiences are predicated on traversing time and space, whether in a linear or in a circular movement. Undoubtedly, there is a certain danger to over-dramatize, or to over-simplify, the metaphorical meaning of boundaries and limits, of walls and fences, which we observe in numerous modern studies that pay only lip-service to those notions, but do not really have the spatial aspect in mind.28 Solid research still needs – and will never give up on that principle – the concrete material as outlined in a literary text, for instance, and cannot simply embrace the metaphorical and the symbolic exclusively while neglecting or ignoring the physical dimensions. Accordingly, every literary narrative, in verse or prose, situates its protagonist in a clearly marked space and makes him/her move around, which passes in time. We gain an understanding of that figure by gazing into this specific modus vivendi and tracing the operations that translate into communication, actions, reflections, and sensations. It would not be necessary here to recognize the physical framework, or to comprehend a different mode of time, such as in fairy tales or in science fiction novels, in Arthurian romances or in hagiographical accounts. However, we can never do without spatial and temporal categories, whether we are dealing with ancient, medieval, or modern narratives when we want to comprehend the structural and the metaphysical elements underlying all epistemology. Even, if not especially, mystical accounts by writers and visionaries such as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch, Catherine of Siena, and many others do not operate in silence, immutability, and in complete, crystallized introspection; instead they experience revelations, and those are predicated on movement, energy, light, voice, and transformation.29 Metaphorically speaking, we could also think about the movement of ideas transcending the narrow confines of women convents or women’s communities of Beguines, as Sara S. Poor has so powerfully illustrated with respect to Mechthild of Magdeburg. Ideas travel, even

when individuals cannot move from their narrow spaces because of the vow to the stabilitas loci, for instance.30 Late medieval pilgrimage accounts such as Felix Fabri’s Sionpilger (ca. 1492) or the numerous last wills by late medieval English testators underscore how much even the mental ‘travel’ to holy sites mattered for most people.31 In general, we can also include the global phenomenon of texts and ideas migrating across many borders by way of translations, so the individual does not really have to move in order to experience other cultures, ideas, concepts, values, and practices.32 On the one hand, John Mandeville’s famous Travels, written from the perspective of an armchair traveler,33 confirms this in terms of the geographic exploration of foreign lands. On the other hand, the travel of entire libraries, or scriptoria, coming along with a princess-bride who joined hands in marriage with her future husband in a different country, strongly confirms how much movements of ideas were very common, if not constantly in play already at that time.34 All those individuals, whether they actually traveled or only imagined it, certainly left traces; they created trails, and many others followed the same paths, or came along with them. The entire aspect of translating in the medieval and early modern history hence underscores most dramatically how much movements of ideas underlie the notion of travel in practical and metaphysical terms. While previous scholars have primarily focused on the linguistic and semantic aspects of translations, here we can approach translating as a cultural development introducing one culture to another. Those capable enough to render a Latin text into a German version, a Dutch romance into an English novel, an Italian novella into a French narrative actually moved people, minds, and ideas from one country to another. The aristocratic courts in premodern Europe served those purposes exceedingly well, while the same process then was picked up by the members of the urban intelligentsia.35 As Marc von der Höh, Nikolas Jaspert, and Jenny Oesterle observe, courts formed nodal points within large territorial networks that spanned the entire Mediterranean in pre-modern times. They effectively contributed to what modern research in the wake of Nicolas Purcell and Peregrine Horden has termed ‘connectivity’: the ability to link smaller territorial and self-sufficient units across the sea.36 Baghdad in the Abbasid Caliphate (in modern-day Iraq) was one of those major centers, and the number of books that traveled there to be translated during the ninth and tenth centuries created a whole movement, as Maha Baddar has recently observed.37 This encourages us strongly to consider the wandering of ideas formulated in manuscripts and other media as a critical process undergirding the establishment of intellectual, spiritual, but also concrete physical trails connecting many different worlds with each other.38 Of course, this travel of ideas concerned mostly only a small group of intellectuals, members of the cultural elites in the various countries both in East and West. But that is not much different from today, so we can generally identify this phenomenon as the establishment of a network of ideas shared by

more or less highly educated individuals who recognized and acknowledged the contributions to world literature and culture by their predecessors and contemporaries.

Historical Travels and Military Maneuvers Already long before those cultural developments, the early Middle Ages witnessed massive movements by Germanic tribes across Europe (Age of Migration, ca. fourth through sixth centuries), followed by intensive travels by Nordic (Scandinavian) people, the Vikings,39 but then also the nomadic armies of the Huns, the Avars, the Magyars, and the Mongols. The period from the seventh to the ninth and tenth centuries also witnessed major movements by Frankish, Arabic, and Saxon armies, so time and space were highly volatile, unstable, and flexible during the early Middle Ages.40 However, this study does not focus on historical travels or military operations; instead, it addresses the question of the metaphorical, spiritual trails, tracks, pathways, alleys, and venues as described in a wide array of medieval literary texts in order to identify the sense of time and space at that time. Just as in our existence today, all human life is determined by movements through time and space, which, in turn, are determined by trails that we pursue to reach our goals. Of course, it has been very important for previous research to examine closely how the literary protagonists move around and what travel routes they take, whether we are dealing with courtly romances or travelogues. We have also not exhausted the potentials of this research approach, as ever new studies indicate, and this almost ad nauseam.41 In fact, the focus on travel for military, economic, political, medical, artistic, and other reasons opens our eyes to the global network that existed already in the Middle Ages, if we think of the fabled Silk Road, the Hanseatic League, the Viking travel routes, and other systems, many times operating across major bodies of water, such as the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean, and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean, while the eastern world witnessed the rise of major networks in the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, or the Pacific Ocean.42 But now the time has come to gain deeper insights into spiritual travel, the move of the individual on a metaphysical plane, sending off the soul on the quest for the divine, or the ultimate raison d’être of all human existence.

Robert Moor, On Trails – a Practical, Modern Perspective with an Anthropological Foundation To illuminate this fundamental understanding and profound notion of and about life, let us begin with a non-medieval approach to the issue at stake here. Only recently, Robert Moor, after having spent years on the hiking trails across the Appalachian Mountains, published a book, On Trails, in which he ruminated about the meaning of just that, trails. This concept becomes the central motif of his reflections about his hiking experiences, as he reveals through his comment: “In bewildering times ‒ when all the old ways seem to be dissolving

into mire ‒ it serves us well to turn our eyes earthward and study the oft-overlooked wisdom beneath our feet.”43 His personal account has impressed the critics, especially those who are enthusiastic outdoor fanatics, but it can also serve well as an introduction to this book that falls into a very different category. Moor writes from an individual perspective and offers both concrete information about the trails he followed and reflective remarks about the meaning of his hiking in physical and metaphorical terms. As he emphasizes, “The trail was my only real source of navigation. So I clung to it, like Theseus tracing Ariadne’s unspooling ball of twine” (11). Following a trail normally means that one is aiming for a specific goal. The trail constitutes the path toward that goal. However, there is never just one trail, one track, one path, or one road. Some trails go straight to the finish line in a speedy and efficient manner. Other trails pursue deviant routes, allowing the hiker to discover beautiful sites or overlooks, and others again offer an easier ascent or descent; they require more time but are more comfortable to walk. Then there are the trails that only seemingly pursue the right path, and at the end, when the hiker is already exhausted, turn out to be wrong-headed, or end in a culde-sac, so to speak. Some trails allow the wanderer – another term of great metaphorical expressivity ‒ to experience an epiphany, while others lead to utter disappointment and frustration. We as people are wanderers throughout our lives, and we all are required, from birth, to choose paths in order to embark on our individual hike. There are many trails, some smooth and easy, others rough and rugged, but it is not clear from the start which one would be the best to choose from, as Petrarch quickly learned when he tried to wander to the top of Mont Ventoux in the Provence, Southern France, in 1336, as he explained in his Epistolae familiares (IV, 1) from ca. 1350.44 A pleasant ride or hike is not necessarily the right decision, and many medieval authors and poets had much to say about that deep insight. For Petrarch, at least, the exploration of the mountainous heights of Mont Ventoux amounted less to a physical conquest, and much more so to a form of self-examination within a natural context.45 Referring to the observations of various entomologists working with fire ants and termites, Moor draws some remarkable analogies to human life. Those insects are not simply free in their decisions regarding the trails they follow. Instead, they are profoundly determined by chemical compounds that other ants or termites have left behind, pheromones that serve almost like directives and command posts, and the insects just have to follow that trail. Moor wonders whether we as people are equally determined by such pheromones, following a path that is prescribed for us by a force some might call God, and others destiny: “Seen in a certain light, trails represent a particularly grim form of determinism” (12). How free are we in our decision-making process, and do we really choose the path throughout life? The modern world is deeply influenced by the belief in individualism and personal freedom, but Moor’s experiences as a hiker signal that this might not all be that clear or evident. In fact, Moor and many of his fellow hikers had to realize that “complete freedom, it turned out, is not what a trail offers. Quite the opposite ‒ a trail is a tactful reduction of options. The freedom of the trail is riverine, not oceanic” (14). The hike itself across the

Appalachian Mountains thus transformed into a metaphor of a universal, archetypal kind, and it transformed in turn the hiker, of course, as well. One of the major realizations that occurred to him was that paths are not fixed, they operate almost organically, just as people find their ways and forge ahead if they find an easier or shorter route (17), cutting across a field, a grassy patch, or a forest grove, so-called “desire lines” (17). Significantly, those enigmatic paths that evolved over time are actually paralleled by many other paths through the wilderness, for instance, maybe less trodden, but certainly right there, just as in real life, with people moving forward in one major direction, but there are countless other avenues or alley ways leading from point A to point B. While all beings make their way toward a goal, they either follow an old path or forge a new one, and in evolutionary terms this is identified as ‘optimization,’ which helps us to achieve a higher level of comprehension and the ability to handle any kind of challenges on the way (21‒23). In other words, taking us further along in the analysis of trailing as a universal metaphor, hardly anyone really walks on virgin land. All trails are the results of generations and generations of hikers, of people or creatures that came before us insofar as each individual or animal needs to figure out the easiest, most efficient way through the wilderness, both in physical and in metaphorical terms. Those who blaze a new path as the first ones in that effort have, of course, the hardest time, and everyone else follows them more or less closely behind. This also applies to the world of the Middle Ages during which many more people were regularly on the move than modern research wanted to recognize until a whole new school of scholars emerged and changed that wrong impression entirely.46 Anthropological investigations about individuals’ moves through life, as captured by the terms ‘trail’ or ‘trailing’ (in my definition), contribute deeply to our better understanding of the fundamental strategies pursued by many medieval poets. For Moor, after having completed his long Appalachian hike, there was a new understanding of trails and hence of life: “They fulfill a common need by balancing efficiency, flexibility, and durability. They streamline. They self-reinforce. They bend but do not break. So much of our built environment, by comparison, seemed terribly, perilously inelegant” (24). Trails, however, are much more than just pathways through the woods, for instance. As Moor concludes, trails are metaphors of life because they allow us, in whatever manifestation and shape and form, to navigate through our physical and spiritual existence. All learning, creative work, critical thinking, research, but then also trading, building, healing, and communication are the medium of trailing. For Moor, this means, In the maze of the modern world, the wisdom of trails is as essential as ever, and with the growth of ever-more labyrinthine technological networks, it will only become more so. To deftly navigate this world, we will need to understand how we make trails, and how trails make us. (27) Indeed, as I have noted already above, life can be defined as the effort to move through time and space and to gain understanding and perhaps even meaning in that process, so travel, globally understood, emerges as an epistemological effort. Much of what archaeologists,

paleontologists, hydrologists, and others pursue can be identified as determining ancient or more recent trails of change in nature, with people or culture.47 Trails, however, are not only horizontal lines; they also assume vertical directions and connect the Middle Ages with us today, both in practical and in metaphorical terms. The focus on trails, as Moor has done in his years of hiking, and in his book, On Trails, encourages us to think more historically and to accept the metaphor as the basis for a broader investigation, here focused on a wide range of literary texts. There is no question that medieval protagonists move around a lot; go traveling; journey to distant lands; are on a quest; and try to find the way toward higher goals, physically and spiritually.48 We commonly observe the phenomenon of the quest, whether for the Grail or for heavenly Jerusalem, for the Godhead or for the ideals of courtly love, and all those became the foundation upon which modern subjectivity was predicated, whether in religious or in material terms, as Fidel Fajardo-Acosta has argued convincingly.49 In post-modernity, however, I would suggest, the quest for the utopian ideal has lost its credibility and value, and with this also the symbolic relevance of the journey. The rise of modern tourism has deprived almost all traditional travels for military, political, economic, and especially religious reasons of their relevance in spiritual terms, and thus the metaphorical trails and tracks have been covered, lost, ignored, and simply forgotten. However, to the degree to which medieval literature remains available to us today, either through critical editions or modern translations, the pathways through life, as outlined there, remain accessible and invite us to return to the traditional spiritual mapping. This book will outline, by focusing on a large number of relevant texts, how much the notion of trailing, tracking, tracing, forging ahead, path-making, and the like underlies all aspects of human existence and continues to be of greatest epistemological relevance, also for us today.

Space, Time, and Movement Previous scholars have at times almost discouraged us to see beyond the ordinary movements by courtly knights and to recognize in them more than simple actions to get from one place to another in a simple narrative structure.50 Of course, many of the ancient and medieval philosophers have reflected upon the meaning of time and space, the combination of which the Russian philologist and critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895‒1975) has poignantly called ‘the chronotope,’ as best captured by the genre of the novel. Here Bakhtin explored how different authors throughout time operated with different configurations of time and space, which always create particular narrative features and principles. In his The Dialogic Imagination (first published as a whole in 1975), Bakhtin defines the chronotope as follows: We will give the name chronotope (literally, “time space”) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature. This term [space-time] is employed in mathematics and was introduced as part of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The special meaning it has in relativity theory is not important for our purposes; we are borrowing it for literary criticism almost as

a metaphor (almost, but not entirely). What counts for us is the fact that it expresses the inseparability of space and time (time as the fourth dimension of space). We understand the chronotope as a formally constitutive category of literature; we will not deal with the chronotope in other areas of culture. In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot, and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. The chronotope in literature has an intrinsic generic significance. It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary category in the chronotope is time. The chronotope as a formally constitutive category determines to a significant degree the image of man in literature as well. The image of man is always intrinsically chronotopic.51 Many scholars have begun to engage with these fundamental insights, which also appear to be quite applicable to literature from the pre-modern world, although the experience of time and space in the Middle Ages was certainly a different one from that experience in the modern world, as Aaron J. Gurevich emphasized most explicitly.52 After all, the individual has always been determined by the interstices of time and space as well as spatial dimensions and chronological constraints, although all those have hardly ever been the same over an extensive period of time, as many scholars have observed, once Gurevich had laid the foundation for this concept.53

A Structuralist Analysis: Uta Störmer-Caysa Uta Störmer-Caysa now argues, more or less pursuing almost the opposite perspective, that courtly romances were determined mostly by a very limited concept of time and space. The protagonists operate, as she perceives it, only on a linear platform without any clear sense of other trails parallel to it, although Moor had actually insisted that they have always existed and are a natural component of all spaces traversed by people or other living creatures. He commonly experiences a major failure in his early life and has to struggle for a long time to recover his previous position and to grow even beyond that, gaining highest honors in this life. According to Störmer-Caysa, however, Hier ist jedoch bereits grundsätzlich festzuhalten, daß eine gleichsam von außen angeschaute, objektiv wirkende und progressive Zeit verbrauchende Kausalität konfligierender menschlicher Angelegenheiten im Mittelalter weder vom Dichternoch vom Rezipientenstandpunkt erzeugbar ist, sobald sich der Text für Schuld und die Entschuldigung vor einer Gemeinschaft interessiert; und dann fehlt auch eine feste, mechanische, lineare Zeitordnung.54

[Here, however, we have to observe categorically that a causality based on a sense of time that operates outside and progressively, in which human conflicts take place, could not be created by the poets or the recipients as soon as the text was focused on guilt and exculpation in front of a community/audience; hence, then a fixed, mechanical, and linear sense of time was missing.] Many times, we see the protagonist operating in a magical garden where time is no longer passing (104), and where hence also no causality is at work. Neither the seasons of the year nor the change from day to night and back to day again follow the normal course and are mentioned by the poet only according to the particular needs of the narrative. This proves to be the case with the knight Mabonagrin in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec (ca. 1170),55 but this mighty warrior only waits to be freed from his ‘prison’ and to return to society, but only once he would have been defeated by an opponent. In fact, as he admits himself, his ‘imprisonment’ has robbed society from its “Joie de la curt” (v. 9601).56 He and his lady are stuck in the lovely garden or orchard (“boumgarten,” 8900) and can no longer move, which stifles everyone as well. It is, after all, an artificial locus amœnus, where the couple has been caught in a state of crystallization, frozen in time and space, although she calls it a “paradise” (9542). In that orchard she does not have to worry about the competition from other women, and she can fully enjoy her knight’s love without fail (9550‒ 56), but it has proven to be a catastrophic development, as demonstrated by the scores of cutoff heads whom Mabonagrin had decapitated on her behalf. This mighty warrior, now finally defeated by Erec, welcomes his own defeat and calls it a shameful act that has not hurt his honor (“schadelôse schande,” 9584) because Erec has freed him from his fetters (9585) and made it possible for him to leave the enclosure, going wherever it might please him (9589). In short, as he then formulates, freedom has been restored, and thus movement has been made possible, without which even the best courtly ideals cannot be realized (9599). After all, courtly love cannot be enforced, and the idea of voluntary imprisonment would never be possible. Hence, Mabonagrin is freed, and thereby courtly love, courtly society, and the courtly ideals. But Erec himself had suffered from a parallel problem at the beginning of the romance, having been caught by his overarching sexual desire for his newly wed wife Enite. Only once he had managed to liberate himself from the narrow confines of his personal dedication to married life, could he slowly recover his social identity, which involved many knightly adventures, including the defeat of Mabonagrin. Irrespective of the fanciful and imaginary direction which Erec then takes, always accompanied by Enite, he pursues the new trail through his life and can thus develop fully and discover his true social identity, which is determined by social responsibilities, commitments, duties, but also personal joys and happiness. Somewhat in contrast of all this, Störmer-Caysa argues that the courtly romance situates the protagonist in a highly unusual chronotope far removed from reality. Hence, there are no real trails through the forest, there is no ancient highway through the world from time immemorial, and things happen as they happen by circumstance. Neither cold nor heat affects

the protagonists (112), and we seem to observe them operating in a purely fictional space free from all external conditions.57 Störmer-Caysa claims that for the authors of medieval romance the church calendar was more important in its symbolic function for their narratives than the actual time (116). The reference to Christ’s Passion would have always to be kept in mind for the deeper interpretation of pre-modern texts (119): “Die Abwesenheit von Geschichte bedeutet in all diesen fiktionalen Welten oder Teilwelten, daß die Zeitrechnung der Handlung autonom bleibt und ihre Semantisierung primär textinternen Mustern folgen darf” (120; The absence of history means in all those fictional worlds or partial worlds that the time measurement of the events remains autonomous and that their semantic meaning can follow primarily text internal patterns). In terms of spatial dimensions, the protagonists of courtly romances move in spirals and experience the so-called double cursus, meaning that they have to go through two major stages, the first followed by a steep fall down from the apogee of their existence into despair, and the second concluding with the accomplishment of a harmonious balance between self and society, inside and outside, and between the individual and the world (174‒75). Hence, the two major principles at work in this genre would be contingency and coincidence (178‒ 79), and both are framed by the appearance of magical objects and forces (209‒11). Altogether, as Störmer-Caysa concludes, in contrast to the modern novel the medieval romance is lacking a realistic geography and a consequent temporal progression (238), which opens many doors for accidence and fortune to enter the narrative background: “Der mittelalterliche aktive Romanheld . . . entfaltet in seiner Bewegung den Raum und zieht den Perspektivpunkt der zeitlichen Orientierung an sich” (238; The medieval active protagonist in romances creates through his movement the physical space and takes control of the perspectival focus of the temporal orientation). There are many aspects here that deserve our full recognition and acknowledgment, but, both with regard to time and space in medieval literature, both in romances and in many other narratives, we observe alternative elements and strategies at work that deserve further examination. Störmer-Caysa pursues a strictly structuralist approach and reads the courtly romance from a modern perspective, ignoring, as I would argue, the metaphorical meaning of all traveling, whether the protagonist is aware of the direction s/he takes or not. Erec, for instance, does not need a compass or a world map, and later, Sir Gawain in the alliterative romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1370), although he finds himself rather lost in the wintry forest, or uncertain where he should turn to find his goal, ultimately reaches exactly the site where he is supposed to be at Christmas time, Castle Hautdesert, where they will direct him later to the Green Chapel. Both in the Middle High German and in the Middle English romance, traveling pursues a different goal than Störmer-Caysa assumes because it is not the specific geographic destiny, but the process of traveling that matters here above all. I will examine this phenomenon especially in a chapter dedicated to Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan (ca. 1210) where the protagonist’s life is deeply determined by his constant movements; without traveling, there would not be a Tristan, we could almost claim. As Ingrid Kasten notes, for instance, “Die Raumgliederung nach dem Prinzip der

Verschachtelung gibt hier Bewegungs- und Handlungsspielräume vor und hat mithin maßgeblich Anteil an der Bedeutungsproduktion” (The structuring of space according to the principle of interlacing preconditions here the spaces for movements and actions and thus plays a major role in the production of meaning).58 Most recently, Jan Mohr emphasized the relevance of social space semantically determined within the large genre of courtly love poetry where the dyad of the intimate lovers interacts regularly with other figures within the texts and with the audience of the respective courtly love poem.59 There is specific movement, either by the lovers or by observers, such as in Walther von der Vogelweide’s famous song “Under der linden” (39, 11; or: no. 16). The female voice emphasizes that she went to the meadow where her lover has prepared a bed out of flowers and grass for their love-making. The location is obviously removed from courtly society (pasture), but not in the forest (wilderness): “Vor dem walde in einem tal” (stanza 1, v. 7: in a dale next to the forest). However, the linden tree is not that far away either from the castle, village, or other kind of human settlement, hence not that isolated because later, as the singer comments, shamefully, “des wirt noch gelachet / inneclîche, / kumt iemen an daz selbe pfat” (stanza 3, vv. 5‒6; when someone walks down that path, s/he will smile happily [in realization of what had happened there under the linden tree]).60 Her love experience is explicitly presented as a form of movement, while the actual sexual intercourse finds practically no mention. She wanders away from her company, alone, to meet her lover, and both enjoy each other as is reflected in the past tense of the description. Other people later pass by that bed of flowers and realize what has happened there, which now the poetic discourse reveals to the courtly audience. For Walther, it proves to be more important as a performer to present the woman’s movement and the tracks used by observers than to reveal the actual love-making itself.

Trails in Medieval Life and Literature The whole notion of the trail traversing space, as indicated by Moor, is hence actually at work also in medieval literature, although those trails probably function differently than in modern texts. Recent scholarship has opened numerous innovative windows in that regard, but we continue to face serious resistance or ignorance because trailing is regularly viewed only in terms of a protagonist’s actual travels, based on an itinerary, crossing borders, frontiers, or barriers, explores foreign lands, and then returns home again.61 For our purposes, it suffices here to acknowledge these two strongly opposed positions and then to move forward with new questions. Of course, the comparison of Moor’s book, which is mostly essayistic and intentionally not scholarly, with the study by Störmer-Caysa does not do justice to either one. We cannot even criticize or approve of the latter’s observations because she focuses mostly on Arthurian romances and analyzes very specific elements in narratological terms, whereas Moor considers more philosophical aspects resulting from his personal experiences. The issue, however, what trails, trailing, forging a path, creating avenues, finding passages through the wilderness, and the like can all mean, remains an urgent desideratum, which this book intends to address.

After all, medieval protagonists, both in courtly romances and in heroic epic poems, both in travelogues and in scholarly treatises, constantly roam the world and establish their own identities. Moving throughout the world, spending time on travels, exploring different worlds, visiting foreign lands and people all create a matrix for epistemological investigations, and set the stage for the individual to find him/herself. Every travel entails at least two dimensions of experiences, one in concrete, physical terms, moving through a geographic space along well-trodden or new paths toward a goal, and the other in metaphysical terms. Pilgrimage authors mostly refrained from describing in particular details the material conditions of their journey, perhaps with the one major exception of the late medieval German friar Felix Fabri.62 Instead, the voyage, both in a religious and a literary context, assumes a spiritual character transforming the individual in the process of ‘travel’ into a more enlightened person, as was obviously the case of the Italian Dominican Riccoldo da Montecroce who visited the Holy Land in 1286–88. As Marianne O’Doherty, Alison L. Gascoigne, and Leonie V. Hicks remark, Riccoldo’s narrative takes its reader on a journey both physical and mental. It entails following in the footsteps of Jesus; being inspired to think of the Passion and its locations in light of Riccoldo’s surroundings; making physical interventions in the landscape with wider eschatological and theological significance. Through the medium of writing, Riccoldo represents his journey along an established medieval pilgrimage route to the conceptual and geographical centre of the medieval world as simultaneously a journey in time and space.63 The term ‘trails’ could also mislead us, and it has actually been used in a variety of contexts, mostly without any consideration of its metaphysical significance. R. D. Jameson, for instance, employed the term to trace the mobility of the troubadour poets during the twelfth century.64 Of course, merchants, pilgrims, missionaries, diplomats, scientists, medical doctors, or teachers followed specific trails across the world, but this does not help us much to deepen the understanding of the true meaning of this concept.65 The massive stream of pilgrims from the entire Middle Ages commonly followed the same trails to reach the various goals, that is, holy sites, holy cities, and the Holy Land.66 On the one hand, they aimed for the three major destinations, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, and Jerusalem, but on the other hand, they frequented countless other pilgrimage sites all over Europe, close to their own home, or farther away, thereby creating an astoundingly complex network across the continent, with countless major and minor arteries determined by religious sites.67 The same applies to innumerable other travelers, who roamed the entire Continent and also explored the neighboring countries and continents. For all of them, space and time proved to be the fundamental categories and perimeters of their existence.68 Traveling thus creates sense, meaning, and relevance, as Reinhold Münster outlined recently in his massive two-volume study on the role of the Iberian Peninsula in travel literature, mostly from the early modern age onward.69

Of course, one of the most fascinating phenomena with regard to trailing and tracking proves to be pilgrimage, as I have indicated fleetingly above. On the one hand, the pilgrim has to cover a long distance to reach the holy site, which constitutes a considerable effort, even if the site is not terribly far away. Moreover, the pilgrim has to pack his luggage, has to take money with him/her, s/he needs to find the direction, either alone or in a group, s/he requires accommodations, food supplies, modes of transportation, security, and also spiritual guidance, i.e. regular opportunities for confession, absolution, and mass. Once the pilgrimage site has been reached, a new travel begins, which is better characterized as trailing because the individual has to approach the grave, the relic, has to undergo a ritual, maybe cleansing, praying, meditating, and touching. This is beautifully illustrated in the lower church of St. Francis in Assisi, where the saint’s grave can be visited. The entire space down there is surrounded by images, sculptures, and building elements, so the pilgrim becomes, if properly prepared, integrated into the entire setting, aesthetically deeply pleasing, theologically profoundly teaching. Not enough with paying respect to the grave, the pilgrim also needs to attend mass, which at first requires confessing the sins, doing penance, and receiving absolution.70 Most important, however, as Anselm Rau has recently illustrated, proves to be the immanent presence of the dead saint whose spiritual powers promise help for the seeker because the relics are there to build direct connections between the human individual and the divine figure hidden within the remaining material objects, or the container, the reliquary. Fundamentally, the pilgrim’s experiences consist of sensory exposure, of haptic contacts, and the realization of the space itself around the grave. The pilgrim has to walk and transcend the physical distance between him/herself and the saint. Both time and space are thus transcended in a rather spiritual manner, facilitated by movement. In short, the notion of trailing, tracking, or traveling gains epistemological significance in mythical and spiritual terms and proves to be a very useful hermeneutic instrument especially for pre-modern literature and other texts.71

Guillaume de Deguileville One very influential and noteworthy example would be the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine from 1331 by the Cistercian author Guillaume de Deguileville (ca. 1295–1358), which became extremely popular throughout late medieval and early modern Europe, copied and translated numerous times, and this by such famous poets as Thomas Hoccleve or John Lydgate. William Caxton published in 1483 a Middle English translation from 1413 under the title The Pylgremage of the Sowle. There are ten manuscript copies of the translation alone, and three further print versions apart from Caxton’s.72 Altogether, there are 82 French manuscripts containing Guillaume’s pilgrimage narratives, with 53 of them holding a version of the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine.73 This allegorical poem, which consists of 13,540 verses, describes how the narrator, after he has read with great enjoyment the Roman de la rose, which is critically determined by the

dream allegory, also falls asleep and then embarks on a dream journey to Jerusalem. The purpose here cannot be to engage at length with Guillaume’s text, its religious content, and the allegorical method used by him. Much evolves according to rather standard concepts, with the soul departing from the body, being immediately attacked by the devil, then rescued by an angel, taken to Heavenly Joy, whereupon many spiritual moments follow that reflect extensively on the entire religious concept of the afterlife as taught by the Catholic Church.74 Instead, what we can learn from Guillaume’s long French poem is that the narrator places primary emphasis on the ensuing judgment at the heavenly court, where Mercy intervenes intensively on the soul’s behalf, and ultimately rescues it from the worst possible destiny. In the second book, the soul traverses Purgatory, in the third, which is briefer, Hell, whereupon it reaches, in the fourth book, an allegorical orchard of diverse trees which all signify individual virtues. As to be expected, after all the preceding events and movements, in the fifth book the soul is allowed to reach Heaven and enjoy the glory, but soon enough, the dream comes to an end, and the narrator wakes up again: So thenne I awoke, and found my self lyeng in my bedde, wherof I was ful sory that I was so soone departid fro so mochel ioye as I was nyhe toward, as me thoughte after so moche peyne & in heuinesse whiche I had lyued so many thousand yeres, as me semed. And by this tyme the Horologe had fully performed half his nyghtes [110v] cours, shewynge that the sonne was comen to the angle of the Erthe, and hastyd hym vpward toward the eest orysone to brynge ageyne the day. And sodenly the belle gan sowne the houre of mydnyght. And I me remembred that I had not yet slepte fully thre houres.75 In fact, we could rightly argue that the spiritual experience by itself represents tracing a trail taking the individual from the body through the various spheres toward the Godhead and then back again into the material existence. Guillaume outlines most explicitly that he identifies life as a pilgrimage, but he differentiates between the material and the spiritual journey: “Thenne come cruel Dethe and smote me with his venemous darte, thorugh whiche stroke bodye and sowle were partyd a sonder” (Book I, ch. 1, fol. 15). With the help of various allegorical figures (Lady Misericord and Lady Prayer) the soul is put on its path toward “the Souerayne Lord of grace and of mercy” (ibid.). Of course, the soul is first imprisoned, needs to go to court, defend itself against Satan, which sets the entire discourse into motion, but the outcome is most fortunate because the soul is ultimately graced with the comprehension of the divine cosmos: “As I thus beheld this merueylous tornyng of these forsaid spyeres that moche delyted me, myn Angel ledde me heyer, and abouen al these spyeres he shewed me a water whiche that beclypped them in compas al aboute” (Book V, fol. 89v), although the soul is also disappointed at the end of Book V because the glorious experience in the other world, having seemingly spent thousand years in the out-of-body state, has abruptly come to an end, the dream is over, and the pilgrim has to return to his ordinary life:

And by this tyme the Horologe had fully performed half his nyghtes cours, shewynge that the sonne was comen to the angle of the Erthe, and hastyd hym vpward toward the eest orysone to brynge ageyne the day. And sodenly the belle gan sowne the houre of mydnyght. And I me remembred that I had not yet slepte fully thre houres. (Book V, fol. 110r‒110v) The similarities to many of the contemporary mystical accounts are striking, and each time the narrator operates intriguingly with the categories of time and space to outline the trails which it had pursued in Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven, and then throughout the divine cosmos, guided by an angel.76 As Guillaume emphasizes in the prologue to his book, here drawing from the modern English translation, “Everyone can learn from it which path to take and which to leave and abandon. This is something very necessary to those who are pilgrims in this wild world” (3).77 Reaching the heavenly Jerusalem, as the dream informs us, proves to be difficult, but the narrator observes many of the Church Fathers and some of the great medieval theologians and saints situated on the wall of that city, offering their assistance to the pilgrim on his arduous path which ultimately promises him eternal joy and glory: “I have told you briefly how I saw the fair city in a beautiful mirror and how I was inspired to go there as a pilgrim, if I could, by any means” (5). In fact, there is no alternative path, and the pilgrim’s trail takes him straight to Jerusalem. But, as is always the case with allegorical narratives, he encounters many dangers and helpers, deals with numerous symbolic figures, and ultimately achieves his goal because he can follow the right path through life. He is, like all of us, as the narrator indicates, a “wayfaring pilgrim” (5). This powerful allegorical text, very similar to William Langland’s later Piers Plowman (ca. 1370/1380), envisions the span of human life as a pilgrimage in the form of a dream, but it is really a journey, a constant move from one spatial domain to another.78 However, in close parallel to Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage, we also could consider such philosophical treatises as Godfrey of Saint-Victor’s Fons Philosophiae from ca. 1176 where the protagonist/author awakens from a dream and then sets out on a pilgrimage through a physically concrete and yet also highly metaphorical world toward the goal of the soul’s salvation. In James L. Smith’s words, “Through the mediating influence of water, the connector of everything, the pilgrim is given the image of a destination, a target for the pull of his heart towards God.”79 In fact, if we also draw from Hugh of Saint Victor’s more or less contemporary Didascalicon (ca. 1120) or Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259) or The Journey of the Mind to God, we can identify the true extent to which high medieval philosophers and theologians embraced the concept of travel, or pilgrimage, to formulate their spiritual message that life is a passage, preferably to God.80 Little wonder that they were subsequently followed by a host of allegorical secular writers such as Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun in their famous Roman de la rose because the quest for knowledge and the epiphanic realization of the divine message have always required the transcendence of all physical barriers.81 Their erotically determined narrative, in turn, spawned Guillaume de

Deguileville’s dream allegory, the Pèlerinage, so we can draw the conclusion that the notion of the trail was indeed a fundamental premise for pre-modern epistemology.82 As peculiar as all those aspects might appear to a reader from the twenty-first century, they really prove to be nothing but a religious version of the same universal human experience of moving through life by means of trails, tracks, paths, and wider or narrower roads and streets through an unknown and yet alluring world of matter and the spirit. Postmodern people face an infinitude of opportunities to travel, to move around, and to develop within their own space or elsewhere. But we tend to forget, however, as most medieval writers emphasize so explicitly, how important the awareness of the pathway or passage toward life’s goal really is. Every religiously sensitive person who understands at least the inklings of meditation and spiritual voyage would concur with these observations,83 as Thomas Merton, one of the greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century, formulated in many of his essays and critical studies.84 As he emphasizes: Yet our purpose in life is to discover this meaning and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is.85 For this Trappist author, the search aims for the discovery of one’s own salvation, which has to go through a process of losing oneself and the rediscovery of meaning in a mystical unification with the Godhead.86 In our context, we can develop this further and claim his insights as a further inspiration to regard the purpose of human life as finding one’s tracks, developing trails, and follow the path outlined by our predecessors, who composed, for instance, medieval romances, heroic epics, mystical accounts, or religious allegories.87 Regarding the spiritual travel, however, as outlined by Guillaume de Deguileville, full realization and perspicuity might never be possible because the trail has no ending, so to speak, and meanders from death to life to death. As Eugene Clasby comments, The allegory of his pilgrimage is marked by strange disjunctions as well as unexpected likeness: apparent opposites are complements; virtue and vice are somehow linked, although they are radically at odds . . . . But this decoding of the world and the self is, in a way, a further encoding, one that approaches more closely, but never wholly attains, the transcendent reality it represents.88 To this we could also add the monumental treatise on good government by Christine de Pizan, her Le chemin de lonc estudes from ca. 1402‒1403, in which the writer predicates her political, ethical, moral, and philosophical teachings on the notion of a pathway through life which promises, ultimately, to illuminate the proper trails through human existence, particularly on the highest political levels.89 Although Christine does not specify the trail in an overly detailed fashion, she also draws intensively from the notion of the dreaming individual (Christine herself) being taking on a tour through the world to experience and

learn about good versus bad government. Insofar as she utilized Dante’s Divina Commedia as a model that helped her immensely and yet which she herself then superseded, we recognize here a universal medieval interest in epistemology realized through the notion of travels, of following tracks, and pursuing pathways through life.90

Boccaccio: Trails within the Narrative World There is hardly any medieval or early modern narrative where the protagonists, or narrators, do not claim new spaces, move away from their old location, and discover the value of the spatial distance to their former life, such as in the ‘classical’ framework story of Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1350), Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (ca. 1400), and ultimately also in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptamèron (1558/59), among many other examples of this genre.91 To illuminate this point more specifically, let us briefly turn to Boccaccio’s approach, especially because I do not intend to dedicate a special chapter to his work, as important as it would be for virtually any study on the culture and mentality of the late Middle Ages.92 Life in Florence has come to a standstill because of the effects of the Black Death. In fact, the city seems empty, and hardly any individual is to be seen, not even in the churches. However, in Santa Maria, maybe by accident, seven young ladies have assembled who are all somehow related, belong to the same age group, and the same social class (13). At first, they are lost in thought and given to praying, but soon enough the conversation begins, and they realize that they need to do something to avoid wasting their young lives in simple passivity and silence (14). As Pampinea, the eldest of them all, observes, ‘Here we linger for no other purpose, or so it seems to me, than to count the number of corpses being taken to burial, or to hear whether the friars of the church, very few of whom are left, chant their offices at the appropriate hours, or to exhibit the quality and quantity of our sorrows, by means of the clothes we are wearing, to all those whom we meet in this place. (14‒15) She poignantly summarizes what they all experience, a near-death state of being, with no points in furthering their own existence. Death has taken complete control of their lives and robbed them of all joys and meaning. Consequently, Pampinea suggests that they leave the city and try, by means of this move, to recover their energy, their youth, and joy of life (16). The country folks are, as she comments, equally subject to the effects of the epidemic, but the houses are situated further apart, the air out in the country would be fresher, there would be less horrible spectacles of dead people, and most of their own relatives and family members were dead anyway or had fled. In short, she regards her proposal as entirely legitimate and appropriate. Not doing anything would be tantamount to self-defeat and submission under imminent death (17). By contrast, leaving town and spending time on their various country estates would recover their spirits and renew their happiness: “We can move from place to

place, spending one day here and another there, pursuing whatever pleasures and entertainments the present times will afford” (17). The entire company agrees, accepting the notion that staying in the city, not pursuing a new path through life, would leave them with no choices, no breathing room, no energy. Granted, Filomena warns them about going all by themselves, without the guidance of a man, and Elissa agrees to the implications of this patriarchal worldview (17); yet, just at that moment, three young men arrive who are quickly chosen as their companions, although Neifile voices considerable concerns about their own honor and public respect because one of those men is pursuing her as his mistress. Those concerns, however, are dismissed, and so the preparations for the journey can be made. And indeed, as soon as they have turned their backs to the city, in two miles distance, they encounter a virtual locus amoenus, with utopian features in the architecture and the landscape design: “Perched on its summit was a palace, built round a fine, spacious courtyard, and containing loggias, halls, and sleeping apartments, which were not only excellently proportioned but richly embellished with paintings depicting scenes of gaiety” (19). All their material concerns are met out there, and they enjoy all freedom to dedicate themselves to merriment and happiness, as they all agree amongst themselves, and can thus live a life of liberty and joy. Not only do they perform songs and dances, they also turn to storytelling, which thus constitutes the essence of the entire Decameron, and through these activities they avoid the horrors of the Black Death in the city, but they also create much entertainment both for themselves as fictional characters and for subsequent audiences of Boccaccio’s most successful literary masterpiece.93 The storytelling, however, does not set in immediately; instead, Pampinea, the ‘queen’ of the first day, at first dismisses the company to search for their own diversions in the gardens and the park, before they all assemble again to start with the narrations (21‒22). Ambulation is thus identified as a medium of reflections and preparation for the literary process, entertaining the audience with stories about a specific topic chosen for every day. But beforehand, they delight each other by playing music instruments, singing, and dancing, and only when they all have come to a rest has the time arrived to turn to the storytelling. In short, the figures increasingly center on the one shady spot where they find a pleasant atmosphere for relaxation and comfort, all preconditions for listening to the various accounts, mostly about love, funny situations, foolish people, adventures, tragedies, and comedies. Moving from here to the very end of the tenth story on the tenth day, we discover once again how much the storytelling itself occupies a stable location, and once that is over, the seven women and three men depart from the last estate and return home (797). No further story is told, obviously because the situation in Florence does not lend itself to this activity due to the raging of the epidemic. The poet then offers an epilog in which he explains the impetus for his effort, and examines where and how such storytelling would be possible, that is, neither in the church nor in the school of philosophers; instead: They were told in gardens, in a place designed for pleasure, among people who, though young in years, were none the less fully mature and not to be led astray by

stories, at a time when even the most respectable people saw nothing unseemly in wearing their breeches over their heads if they thought their lives might thereby be preserved. (799) Gardens, however, are exclusive spaces and have to be sought out first, so they are the endpoint of a certain trail that leads the individual from the exterior to the interior, or, from chaos to cosmos in an allegorical fashion, as mirrored, for instance, in a sermon by the twelfth-century Cistercian monk, Aelred of Rievaulx.94

Trails through the Labyrinth We will observe this much more clearly when the topic will turn to Guillaume de Lorris’s first part of the Roman de la rose from ca. 1230 to ca. 1240. But the pre-modern world was filled with concrete gardens that served as a kind of labyrinth or maze, inviting the visitor to trace the trail through a confusing world which is, nevertheless, carefully organized and represents, in a way, God’s own creation that defies easy understanding and yet is perfectly structured.95 As Penelope Reed Doob has already alerted us, such labyrinthine gardens appear both in concrete, physical form and in allegorical terms in literary texts, and in floor designs of some Gothic cathedrals. According to the chronicler Ralph Higden, as Reed Doob then points out, all “would-be scholars have to make their way through the labyrinth of invention . . . before they can even begin to write.” Following Geoffrey of Vinsauf, “writers are architects, aspiring to design a well-crafted Daedalian domus. This is the labyrinth of disposition of conceptual order.” Finally, as the preacher Robert of Basevon emphasized, “one man’s artistry is another man’s inexplicable maze. This is the labyrinth of words and of the reception of texts.”96 Anyone who enters a labyrinth has to follow a certain trail, some of which mislead entirely, while others take one directly to the long-awaited goal. In the spiritual context, many Gothic cathedrals such as the one in Amiens, France, display a labyrinth in the ground on the west end of the central nave. Other famous cathedrals with such a maze are the ones in Chartres, Reims, Saint-Omer, Saint-Quentin in Aisne, Lucca, Italy, or Magdeburg, Germany.97 Significantly, the notion of the labyrinth continues to have a deep impact on modern individuals as well searching for meaning in their lives, as similar designs in the floor plans of modern churches or cathedrals indicate (for example, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco). Modern authors, such as Jorge Luis Borges (“The House of Asterion” in The Aleph), Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose), Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves), or Sara Douglass (The Troy Game), have picked up this epistemological thread and translated it into a central motif of their works. The labyrinth also figures prominently on modern art works, such as Piet Mondrian’s Dam and Ocean (1915), Joan Miró’s Labyrinth (1923), Pablo Picasso’s Minotauromachy (1935), M. C. Escher’s Relativity (1953), Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s Labyrinth (1957), Jean Dubuffet’s Logological Cabinet (1970), Richard Long’s Connemara sculpture (1971), Joe Tilson’s Earth Maze (1975), Richard Fleischner’s

Chain Link Maze (1978), István Orosz’s Atlantis Anamorphosis (2000), Dmitry Rakov’s Labyrinth (2003), and drawings by the contemporary American artist Mo Morales.98 Modern material labyrinths exist, for instance, in the Neues Rathaus in Munich (inner courtyard), in the Thorvaldsen-Museum in Copenhagen, in the palace gardens of Schönbrunn in Vienna, on the Zeughausplatz in Zürich, in the grounds of the former monastery Helfta near Eisleben, Germany. There are also mazes at Grace St. Paul and St. Philip’s in the Hills in Tucson, Arizona, among many other places, that invite the modern seeker, pilgrim, or simply curious person to embark on his/her own trail.99 Just as in the case of Guillaume de Deguileville, but now cast in stone, the Christian was supposed to find his/her trail through life and walk it all the way until the symbolic endpoint, the heavenly Jerusalem was reached. Particularly because the labyrinth was not at all an exclusively medieval phenomenon, but has strong roots in classical antiquity, and because even many modern cathedrals such as in San Francisco display the labyrinth, we face here one of the most impressive indicators of how much the notion of the trail as the guiding principle of all human beings has mattered both in philosophy and theology, and to some extent also in literature from antiquity until today.100 Anyone who enters such a maze knows perfectly that there is an entrance and an exit, and that the walk through it promises to lead to the center, but everything else remains a mystery. As Penelope Reed Doob reminds us, “In labyrinths and learning alike – in the world-labyrinth as in the text-labyrinth – the longest way round may be the best. Complexity – moral, spiritual, physical, intellectual – requires subtle, careful tracing rather than direct statement . . . .”101 However, the labyrinth is only one visualization of the more fundamental concept of the evolution of life, and Reed Doob seems to pursue sometimes a too narrow concept, trying to identify labyrinth wherever intellectual challenges emerge. The emphasis on trails, without necessarily examining the ultimate goal, situated within the categories of time and space, provides us with much more interpretive freedom and allows us to integrate many more texts where the movement from one location to the other, and throughout time, mirrors more precisely the meaning of trailing. The maze proves to be only one of many spatial configurations for the individual, whereas the notion of trails appears to be more accurate in the further analysis of literary accounts where the protagonist has to maneuver through a complex and difficult world and might easily fail.102 “Verbal labyrinths” were actually rejected by a major medieval authority figure such as Hugh of Saint Victor who in his De arca Noe morali (ca. 1125‒1130) insisted that a labyrinth tends to mislead people, whereas crystal-clear texts should aim for the opposite. In Reed Doob’s words: good texts should not be called labyrinths because they are not inextricable or impenetrable. So generally were mazes and inextricability linked in the popular imagination that the idea of the labyrinth may inform a good text, but the name should be omitted.103

A first-rate medieval poet, such as Marie de France, however, insisted in the prologue to her lais on the very opposite, favoring obscurity as a learning tool, a metaphor for a maze: “It was the custom of the ancients, / as Priscian bears witness, / in the books that they once used to make / to speak quite obscurely.”104 However, trying to detect the idea of a labyrinth in many very different philosophical or literary texts, although the poets or writers do not even mention the word, complicates the entire matter unnecessarily because the real process in human life is trailing, following tracks, moving forward, if not falling backward, so making one’s way through time and space, with all the pitfalls and challenges, dangers and triumphs. In many cases, medieval writers might even apologize for having turned their work into a labyrinthine jumble and having left their audience rather confused or confounded, such as Arnulf of Milan (d. 1077) or William of Moerbeke (d. 1286), not to forget Hugh of Saint Victor, who lamented his own failure to protect the reader from the poorly developed treatise which he identified as an “inextricable labyrinth.”105 Ordering text material, ideas, concepts, or syntactical elements does not constitute the creation of a concrete labyrinth, as Reed Doob rather suggests, though the idea of such a maze as a metaphorical expression of the mental map with its countless trails works rather well.106 There is some truth to her conclusions, but I still would distance myself from them and argue, rather, that the phenomena that she describes fall much more into the category of trailing, or, in modern parlance, means of creating a world map: “the labyrinth is repeatedly seen as the most illustrious example of sublimely complicated artistry and hence an apt metaphor for magnificent poetry.”107 As we will observe in our subsequent discussions, even if many times the protagonists achieve their goal, they are not caught in limited systems of thought and spirituality. There are many bumps in the road, and circuity is not the automatic model which medieval poets or writers pursued. Life does not, as I would say, simply follow a rigorous path which guarantees, if closely followed without deviation, directly to the heart of a labyrinth. Instead, there are many curves in the road, unexpected detours, parallel tracks, alternative trails, and also cul-de-sacs, so to speak. The medieval poets and artists have much to say about that!

One More Time: Boccaccio: The Trail Home This allows us to return to Boccaccio’s Decameron one more time where many of the actions in the 100 stories are constantly determined by movements and actions taking place at changing locations. Good storytelling appears to be deeply characterized by trailing through the world, and some of the most profound human experiences such as love and hatred, life and death, find themselves precast in a form of universal world map, the paths of which are still unknown to the life travelers, though the tracks are all there to be seen. In the eighth story of the fifth day, Nastagio degli Onesti wastes all of his money in wooing a lady, but she does not pay attention to him, which leaves him deeply frustrated. The lady is ranked considerably above him, so there is no real chance for him to reach out to her.

Eventually, his friends urge him to depart from the city, which would save him from the potential danger of suicide. He travels for three miles outside of Ravenna and then pitches his tents in the middle of the forest as a pleasant change of location. As is commonly the case in medieval literature, he has hardly settled there when he experiences an extraordinary adventure, namely of a naked lady being pursued by hunting dogs and a knight. Of course, Nastagio is horrified, but when he tries to intervene on behalf of the poor woman, the knight reprimands him, explains the reasons for their ghostly appearance, then kills the victim, and cuts out her cold heart because she had refused him her love when both still had been alive, whereas he had committed suicide as a consequence of his bitter feelings. Both are now condemned to carry out this grizzly hunt, and as soon as he has cut out the heart, she jumps up again, and the hunt continues. For Nastagio, this scene proves to be most convenient for his own purposes, so he arranges a major feast right at that location, inviting his beloved lady and her family to just that specific spot in the forest and at that time of the apparition. So, the entire company becomes a witness of the horrifying scenario, and the young woman among the guests quickly realizes what the lesson truly means for herself, so she changes her mind and soon thereafter accepts Nastagio’s love, and marries him. The poet makes it completely clear that the arrangement of the banquet tables fits exactly the ghostly appearance so that the guests would be the spectators of this horrendous scene most dramatically taking place right in front of their eyes: he “had the tables placed beneath the pine-trees in such a way as to surround the place where he had witnessed the massacre of the cruel lady” (423). The lady whom he loves is placed at the central seat and is thus confronted most directly with the events, thus learning very quickly the lesson that she is supposed to be confronted with. In a way, we could blame Nastagio for blackmailing her, but even her parents are greatly pleased when they learn of her change of heart and readiness to marry her wooer (425). Modern readers might certainly be repulsed by the patriarchal view with which this story concludes because all the ladies of Ravenna henceforth “were so frightened by it [the ghostly appearance] that they became much more tractable to men’s pleasures than they had ever been in the past” (425).108 As Boccaccio indicates, however, and which moves beyond this certainly valid point and addresses our larger concern here, major events or paradigm shifts are possible when the right time and space parameters are brought together. Nastagio had to move away from Ravenna in order to learn about this ghostly appearance. He quickly understands the great opportunity of this new situation, and organizes the feast accordingly. If he had not left the city out of desperation, he never would have been able to change the course of his life, and hence the lady never would have changed her mind. Significantly, this curious, certainly hellish scene takes place in the middle of a forest (420), without the protagonist having understood where he had wandered off. Only when Nastagio hears the screaming of the miserable woman in the distance does he realize the sylvan environment as a critical staging ground (421). As the ghostly appearance, Guido degli Anastagi, informs him, he pursues the cruel lady at other locations and other times as well, but the hunt and the killing take place only in this forest at this specific time of the day on Fridays (422). Accordingly, Nastagio selects that opening in the forest under the pine trees for his own purposes (423), and his

theatrical plans come to full fruition because the macabre hunt appears at the right place and at the right hour (423‒24). We need to keep in mind that the change of location, the move of everyone involved from the city to the forest, proves to be the decisive framework for the lady’s change of heart, whether she is ultimately driven simply by sheer terror or because she loves Nastagio after all. In spatial terms, hence, the city proved to be an iron fortress where the protagonist could not achieve any of his goals. Once he has left, has settled in the forest (or nearby, whereas the banquet takes place amidst the pine trees), and once all the guests have arrived, they all find themselves in a setting characterized by the hellish appearance, so place and time change, and that change transforms the young lady, which thus leads to their marriage and their mutual happiness. The forest thus proves to be all their destiny, as we might say in a slight adaptation of this famous formula.109 Within the urban structures, firmly built and encrusted, so to speak, the lady rejected Nastagio as not worthy of her social status, but in the forest, in face of the horrifying scene, she finds herself outside of her usual elements and thus mellows in her stern resolve, and accepts her lover after all, and this to the satisfaction of everyone. Another famous Boccaccio story – if not virtually all of them – also deserves to be mentioned here briefly, which demonstrates striking parallels and confirms further how much this late medieval or early modern poet understood and argued for the great need to comprehend and accept the energies at work when narrative figures move out of their traditional, comfortable, and yet stifling circumstances – either voluntarily or forced by external circumstances – and suddenly experience a radical transformation of their life conditions. In both cases, the protagonist moves from the city to the country, both times out of deep frustration because their lady has not responded to their wooing. Desperation is already at work, but because the hero pursues innovative trails, he suddenly finds himself in a new framework in which the relationship with the desired lady can develop much more constructively and lead to their mutual happiness. Not surprisingly, this second example simply follows the previous story; it is the ninth story of Day Five, and here Federigo degli Alberighi suffers from virtually the same problem because his lady, Monna Giovanna, who is married and has a little boy, does not respond to his wooing, although he wastes away all of his fortune by giving gifts to many people, organizing sumptuous feasts, and participating in tournaments. Eventually, Federigo is so impoverished that he must leave the city and retire to the only property left to him, a little farm in the countryside. He spends his time not as a farmer; instead, he goes hunting with his falcon, a prized bird of prey, consigned to his life of poverty without any means to achieve his erotic goals. This story has received a huge amount of attention by scholarship, and an entire theory concerning the nature of the ‘novella’ was based on it, but this does not concern us here. Once Monna Giovanna’s husband has suddenly died, she also leaves the city and retires to one of her country estates, which happens to be close to Federigo’s farm. Her son strikes up a friendship with the latter, and desires nothing more than this famous falcon, which is, of course, Federigo’s only treasure left without which he could not live. The boy, however, falls ill, and eventually admits to his mother that he believes that he would recover if only he could get the falcon as his own. Even though she is fully aware of Federigo’s deep love for

her, she decides to go the next day to ask for it on behalf of her son. However, once she has reached his farm, she only pretends that she wants to grace him with her presence at a meal: “As a token of my esteem, I should like to take breakfast with you this morning” (428). Federigo is more than happy to comply with this request, but due to his poverty he has nothing to offer her. In his desperation, he simply kills his falcon and has it prepared for a meal, which the lady enjoys. We easily recognize here the very parallel motif of the ‘eaten heart’ (see, for instance, Konrad von Würzburg’s Herzmære, ca. 1280).110 More important, however, proves to be the spiritual and emotional transformation resulting from this unsuspected meal because the lady, though deeply shocked about Federigo’s action on her behalf, realizes “his magnanimity of spirit, which no amount of poverty had managed to diminish, nor ever would” (431). Tragically, her son then dies as well, whether out of disappointment not having gained this precious falcon, or because of a serious illness, and soon, Monna Giovanna faces great pressure by her brothers to remarry. Although she would prefer to stay a widow, she finally gives in and now opts for Federigo whom she deeply esteems for his nobility of heart and his profound character as a gentleman (432). In contrast to the previous story, however, Federigo does not change his heart and mind once he has left the city. However, there at his little farm he can demonstrate more poignantly how generous he truly is and how much he is prepared to do for his beloved lady, killing even his most treasured falcon in order to serve her a meal. By the same token, only once she has left the city has the right situation set in to create the necessary framework for her to perceive truly what he is prepared to do to pay her respect and treat her honorably. The passing of time is also of crucial significance here, with her husband dying, then her son falling gravely ill, while Federigo passes his life on the little farm. We as readers/listeners are granted various perspectives, once from within the city and then in the countryside. Monna Giovanna also perceives things differently, once she finds herself forced to visit Federigo to ask for the falcon as a gift for her son. In short, there are numerous movements, from the city to the countryside by both protagonists. Then the lady has to walk to Federigo’s farm, where the tragic killing of the falcon happens, though for the wrong purpose. Both Federigo and Monna Giovanna, however, experience their new happiness once she has moved back to the city and then chooses him as her future husband. Without the systematic changes of location, the narrative would not have developed, and time and place thus interact most intimately, which finds actually an intriguing parallel with the very last, highly complex and contested story, told by Dioneo at the end of the tenth day, where the reverse situation is presented, but the very same movement takes place, from the country to the court, from the court to the country, and then back again, as a reflection of Griselda’s infinite patience, humility, honor, and submission.111 The change of scenery always proves to be of critical importance, because each one initiates also a new time period and introduces new characters, such as in the long history of sexual abuse of the Arabian princess, Alatiel, daughter of the Sultan of Babylon (story seven on Day Two). She suffers shipwreck on her way to her future husband in the western Mediterranean, is then rescued by a nobleman, who is then murdered because of her, and so it

goes on, until finally, having gone through many experiences as the mistress of many different men with whom she can never communicate, she is able to return to her father, who then sends her off a second time to her overjoyed fiancé, the King of Algarve: “despite the fact that eight separate men had made love to her on thousands of different occasions, she entered his bed as a virgin and convinced him that it was really so” (147).112 As much as the storytellers are moving from the city to the countryside, as much do their protagonists experience this change of place as well and thereby realize the vagaries of all life, of the impact of fortune on their destinies, and the power of their own will, character, ideals, and emotions. More specifically, however, even if the stories themselves do not necessarily reveal this phenomenon explicitly, the figures follow specific trails and return on them as well. Sometimes the movement is linear, and sometimes circular, but there is always a track guiding the narrative along. We also need to keep in mind that in most cases the protagonists do not move extensively and only travel a short distance out of the town, the castle, or whatever settlement they had been in before. This might be characteristic of the early Italian Renaissance, or the situation in Italy at large, but even most Arthurian romances from the earlier period do not allow their protagonists to roam hopelessly in a wilderness from which there is no return.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Trails through the Wintry Forest – the Recovery of New Life at the Darkest Moment This is intensively illustrated by the alliterative romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late fourteenth century) where the protagonist, as I have indicated already above, does not know where to find the Green Chapel, the meeting point for the second round of the decapitation game.113 Granted, the protagonist does not know what road to take, and the poet makes him enter a truly frightening and frozen wilderness of northern Wales. However, there appears to be quite a number of people whom he can ask about the Green Knight at the Green Chapel, even though no one has any knowledge about either one (703‒08). Yet, the narrator wants us to accept that Gawain “tok gates straunge” (709), followed perilous paths (710), faced horrible monsters that he had to fight and then defeated them with God’s help (720‒ 24). Moreover, he leaves no doubt that Gawain’s life is constantly threatened by the harsh weather conditions in winter, a rather unusual natural setting for an Arthurian knight (729).114 In fact, the poor and suffering hero has to spend numerous nights all by himself in the cold of the winter landscape, with no protection for himself and his horse, certainly far away from all courtly civilization and entirely unsure about the trail that he is following. While riding through an unknown landscape, he encounters swamps, quagmires, frozen trees, and nearly dead birds. Nevertheless, hardly has he prayed thrice to God and the Virgin Mary asking for help in this life-threatening wilderness, when, almost miraculously, a castle appears before his eyes, Hautdesert, where he is warmly welcomed and can then spend three days in luxury, pleasantries, and the joys of an elegant and wealthy household. This castle is located “on a prayere, a park al aboute” (768), in a strange contrast to the rough nature

around it. Gawain is most pleased about this discovery, but it seems a bit of a poetic exaggeration to project the land surrounding the castle hill as a completely chaotic, destructive, and life-threatening world with no trails or tracks.115 How did Sir Gawain find his way straight toward that location? How is it even possible for him to arrive almost at the exact time necessary to meet the Green Knight just three days before the arranged date? And later, once he has accomplished his task, has been ‘punished’ by his opponent and laughed at for his minor infraction triggered by his very understandable fear for his life, he quickly manages to return home to King Arthur’s court, then without facing any difficulties along the way. What trails did Gawain follow? Was he truly completely at a loss, and did he not know where to go? The narrator proves to be rather loquacious as to the map of Gawain’s route to Castle Hautdesert, providing us with specific geographic markers, taking the protagonist to the realm of Britain into Northern Wales, leaving the Isles of Anglesey behind, reaching the Holy Fountainhead, before he enters the wilderness of Wirral (691‒701). In short, this hero follows a specific trail, where there are wild animals, monsters, or even dragons, and he reaches a highly developed location, Castle Hautdesert, which brims with all kinds of excitements and proves to be very well provisioned. Despite the author’s best effort to project his hero into a complete wilderness, a careful analysis of the text highlights a sophisticated map of tracks that allow Gawain to make his way through an admittedly difficult winter landscape. Similarly, on his way home, he is still challenged, but we suddenly learn of many more housing opportunities for him, despite occasional nights with no shelter (2481). He has to fight dangers once again, but the poet declines to give us further details because, after all, Gawain’s wound at his neck has healed, he is back on track, so to speak: “Þe hurt wat3 hole þat he hade hent in his nek” (2484), and can thus return home to the court of King Arthur without further delay. Finally, even the Green Chapel is not that difficult to find, despite the fact that a servant has to take Gawain to that ominous location. People outside of the castle appear to be ignorant of that location, at least those further away, but the inhabitants of Castle Hautdesert are obviously quite familiar with it; otherwise, the owner of the castle, Bercilak, would not have invited him in such a jolly fashion to stay with him during the Christmas season and only afterwards to go seek the Chapel, which is only two miles away (1078). In other words, there are many trails traversing the literary landscape of this romance, and while the narrator attempts to make us think of pure wilderness with no tracks or roads anywhere, the development of the tale actually reveals quite a different situation. For Bercilak, the entire set-up with the decapitation wager proves to be a laughable affair, and he immediately suggests a game between them two, with himself going on a hunt in the forest for three days, while his guest would stay at the castle, rest, enjoy meals, and the wife’s company. In the evening, then, they both would exchange their winnings, whatever they might be. Of course, Bercilak can easily laugh about the whole affair since he himself is the Green Knight and does not intend to kill Gawain at all. Instead, he is playing a game, as deadly as it might sound, and he has no difficulties at all in finding his way around the forest. This is more difficult for Gawain, but he has already reached Castle Hautdesert, and he will later

retrace his passage out of Wales back to Britain, that is, to the court of King Arthur. The poet does not project a very clear outline of the roads taken by the protagonist, but there are enough trails throughout the romance landscape to recognize here a kind of literary roadmap that certainly exists. Gawain does not only have to reach his goal in a distant and unknown territory, he also has to observe a precise date in time to meet his own pledge to face the Green Knight exactly a year later. All of his worries are focused on the demands to find that specific place, the Green Chapel, and to reach it exactly on the morning of New Year’s Day. One of his great accomplishments, which is not untypical of virtually all courtly knights in literary narratives, is exactly this ability to achieve his goals and to combine the forces of time and space to meet his demands, upon which all of his life and his honor rest.

Worldmaking The issue here, however, does not rest so much on the actual travel, in parallel to the more traditional travelogues by pilgrims or merchants, such as Marco Polo, John Mandeville, Margery Kempe, Felix Fabri, or Arnold von Harff. Instead, our interest pertains to the ordinary movements by the various fictional characters in courtly romances or heroic epics, to the mystical realization that the soul is called upon by its bridegroom and must move out of the physical body, and also to the tracing of routes on some of the common medieval mappae mundi, such as the famous Hereford Map and the Ebstorf Map, both from ca. 1300, a topic I will return to in the last chapter.116 Altogether, this amounts to a form of worldmaking, as Nelson Goodman has already called it, and which means the intellectual, especially epistemological, conquest of the material existence in order to allow the spiritual dimension to grow far beyond its own limitation. In his study, Ways of Worldmaking (1978), in which he heavily draws from Ernst Cassirer’s (1874–1945) concepts of myth making,117 Goodman observes, for instance, “Repetition as well as identification is relative to organization. A world may be unmanageably heterogenous or unbearably monotonous according to how events are sorted into kinds” (9). Then: “Worlds not differing in entities or emphasis may differ in ordering; for example, the worlds of different constructional systems differ in order of derivation” (12). But without the human impact, there would not be any specific perception at all: “All measurement, furthermore, is based upon order. Indeed, only through suitable arrangements and groupings can we handle vast quantities of material perceptually or cognitively” (13–14). Truth, however, does not necessarily emerge in that process because it all depends on the receiver of truth claims and the system where those claims are made: “a version is taken to be true when it offends no unyielding beliefs and none of its own precepts” (17). However, we might also have to question Goodman’s global assumption that Truth, moreover, pertains solely to what is said, and literal truth solely to what is said literally. We have seen, though, that worlds are made not only by what is said literally but also by what is said metaphorically, and not only by what is said either literally or

metaphorically but also by what is exemplified and expressed—by what is shown as well as by what is said. (18) Could we hence agree that everything we observe is the result of constructionism, which would be a rather problematic position? Goodman states explicitly: “This world, indeed, is the one most often taken as real; for reality in a world, like realism in a picture, is largely a matter of habit” (20). And finally, as he suggests, if worlds are as much made as found, so also knowing is as much remaking as reporting. All the processes of worldmaking I have discussed so far enter into knowledge. Perceiving motion, we have seen, often consists in producing it. (22) Much of world travel literature might support such notions, constantly hovering between a mimetic representation of the world as witnessed on the travel and the image of the world as imagined or constructed. However, neither the extreme perception of constructivism nor radical positivism allows us to gain more accurate access to pre-modern mentality and the specific phenomenon of travel through time and space.118 It seems to matter much more essentially how the individual first operates in his/her narrow physical framework, then transcends it, and finally establishes an identity in that process, especially when the dimension of time joins that process. In light of this it makes good sense what Marcia Kupfer has to say about the famous Hereford mappa mundi from ca. 1300: It self-consciously, and cleverly, exploits perspectival conceits that play with and through the genre of the mappa mundi in order to mount a theological critique of humanity’s fallen vision. Proper conduct in the world depends on seeing/judging correctly what things lead the soul to everlasting life and, moreover, on knowing that the divine Judge beholds all.119 In other words, already the late Middle Ages was aware of the need to distinguish between human and divine understanding of this world, where many trails traverse, but not all lead to the desired outcome. Following Andrea Glaser, medieval narrators commonly projected three types of spaces, that is, those where order is established, those where the protagonist moves around, and those where a transgression or a transition takes place.120 Such a structuralist approach can indeed reveal much information about the spatial coordinates of the people and events in courtly romances, but it does not inform us about the trail pursued by the protagonist, which specifically connects the various spaces and creates meaning. Armin Schulz uses the terms ‘insularity’ and ‘linearity’ to capture this spatial phenomenon according to which the various types of depth of the surrounding space can be defined more specifically.121

But can we really go so far as to claim, as Schulz does, that the properties of the respective spaces are entirely irrelevant for the courtly poets? He claims: “Die Protagonisten vormoderner Erzähltexte durchqueren einen Raum, der beinahe genauso gestaltlos ist wie derjenige, der von zeitgenössischen Reiseanleitungen, eben den genannten Itineraren, entworfen wird: Reisestrecken sind bloße Linien, die insulare Kultur-Orte miteinander verbinden” (302; The protagonists of pre-modern narratives cross a space which is almost just as featureless as that one which contemporary travel instructions, the itineraries, project: Travel routes are only lines that connect insular culture-spaces with each other). Curiously, he emphasizes that nothing matters for the heroes but the time that it takes them to traverse the spaces. Drawing from Czerwinski, he claims that there are only aggregate spaces relevant for the individuals that are placed next to each other without being truly connected (302– 03).122 This is the same abstract approach to medieval literature as pursued by Uta StörmerCaysa, but here as well I would suggest that this structuralist perception ignores major aspects often not very visible, and yet of great significance, the trails. However, Schulz eventually changes his argument almost by 180 degrees and then assumes that there was, after all, despite the discontinuities, linearities, and insularities, a line or track upon which the protagonists manage to operate and which provides a guideline of great significance. When a hero loses his way in the forest, such as when Erec in Hartmann von Aue’s eponymous romance (ca. 1190) or when Petrarch faces great difficulties in climbing Mont Ventoux (see above), this experience is not only a problem of finding one’s way through space but also a symbolic expression of his/her problems gaining an orientation in this world. The external path emerges thus, according to Schulz, as an internal path (303), which I prefer to call a trail which always exists, whether visible or not. And as a trail, or a system of trails, as Moor had outlined through his anthropological investigations, those never abandon the wanderer, even when the individual is unaware of the direction. Losing this track tends to symbolize a personal crisis, as at the beginning of Dante’s Divina Commedia when Virgil must appear to guide the lost and desperate pilgrim through the horrifying landscape of the underworld. Schulze also refers to Augustine’s Confessiones (303), and there would be many other options to confirm this observation and to deepen our understanding of the notion of the trail. The subsequent chapters will pursue that goal and thereby outline a new approach to the study of pre-modern literature that will sensitize us to many small steps taken by the protagonists that heretofore seem to have been rather irrelevant, but which ultimately prove to be seminal in their meaning because they reveal the trailings (or network of trails) that permeate the entire work, and an entire courtly or heroic world. This study will focus on European medieval literature and will offer innovative epistemological perspectives, bringing together new philosophical and analytic viewpoints, combining anthropological and sociological insights, all based on close readings of the literary texts. Some recent scholars have already made considerable efforts to examine the history of pre-modern literature from such perspectives, addressing its fictionality, poetic self-awareness, the relationship between the poetic text and history, the interaction of aesthetics and ethics, and artistic perfection.123 Others have looked at the significance of the

literary paradigm, the historiographical paradigm, the relationship between the literary material and the sens (matière and sen), the role of the miracle and adventurous, the tension between verité and senefiance, and the social structure and order depicted in the various texts.124 It also makes good sense to view literature as a medium for political legitimization.125 Most famously Ernst Robert Curtius had viewed literature through the lens of topoi and their dissemination from antiquity through the age of the Baroque and beyond, adding the aspect of rhetoric, the ideal landscape, the role of philosophy and theology.126 We could also cite numerous valuable feminist studies injecting gender as a critical approach for all literary analysis.127 Here, however, the focus will rest on trails, the activity of trailing, on tracks, and world mapping as all that appears in a wide range of pre-modern texts, both in allegorical and in very concrete, pragmatic terms. After all, maybe much more than today, and deeply relevant even for us today, every individual defines his/her existence through the passage to another world, in spiritual, physical, metaphorical, or symbolic terms. Medieval and early modern art depicting the journey to the afterlife (hell or heaven) and also countless medieval and early modern narratives in verse and prose reflect deeply on this timeless, universal quest. The trail is what determines human life.128 This promises us to gain a new understanding of what that literature truly means and what epistemological messages are encoded everywhere because time and space, that is, the individual’s movement and actions, matter centrally everywhere. These preliminary thoughts will have to be elaborated much more at length when I will investigate specific texts where the focus rests on how the protagonist manages to trail his/her way through life. In separate chapters I will examine the following texts in which the act of following trails and forging ahead into the unknown constitute meaning in a profound sense of the word: the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the Middle High German Herzog Ernst, the Anglo-Norman lais by Marie de France, Hartmann von Aue’s courtly narratives (especially his religious narrative Gregorius), Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan, Dante’s Divina Commedia, Petrarch’s famous report about his climb up the Mont Ventoux, and the Ebstorf mappa mundi. I am not so much interested in structural analyses, but rather in the epistemological instrumentalization of the trail as the ultimate pilot light through the map called human existence.

Outline Several premises govern this study. First, it tries to leave behind traditional ‘national’ categories (history of French, German, English, Spanish, Italian etc. medieval literature) and will consider literary texts in a variety of languages, and this from the early Middle Ages to the early modern age, which most of the mappae mundi, charts, or local maps clearly indicate.129 Second, I am also not concerned with traditional attempts to demarcate somehow the late Middle Ages from the ‘Renaissance’ because the essential idea of the trail or of trailing can be identified in many different literary texts, consisting of a combination of

philosophical and epistemological elements undergirding the protagonist’s actions and experiences. Third, this investigation does not want to limit itself to specific literary genres and intends to view all narratives as relevant for this analysis, wherever the notion of the trail becomes noticeable. Granted, virtually every literary text entails the protagonists’ movements, and all actions take place within a movable location; thus, trails are unavoidable so that a narrative can even make sense. Nevertheless, there are distinctions, and sometimes the choice and pursuit of trails become truly central markers. This means here that both heroic epics, such as Beowulf, and allegorical romances (if that is the right term), such as Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia, both courtly verse narratives, such as Marie de France’s lais and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Grail romance, Parzival, will come into play (this one, though, not in a separate chapter). In my final chapter, I plan to study world maps and similar textual and graphic genres as an alternative method of outlining trailings, as I like to call this phenomenon (see above), and combine those with early modern novels such as the anonymous Fortunatus, along with many other medieval and early modern texts. Pursuing the concept of trails makes it possible to track the protagonists’ movements and to realize how much time and space truly mattered for them, which will move us considerably beyond traditional approaches to consider in this context only pilgrimage accounts and crusade reports. It makes good sense, as Peter Dinzelbacher now suggests, to identify the so-called “Twelfth-Century Renaissance” with a renewed awareness of time and space, which would parallel our approach to some extent.130 I am, however, not so much concerned with historical developments, and do not want to contrast the early Middle Ages, for instance, with the fifteenth century in terms of the awareness of time and space, determined by maps, clocks, travel, and large-scale communication. Each text and map or chart to be discussed here falls into its own cultural-historical period and language context, of course, so there could be the danger of comparing apples with oranges, as the proverb goes. My interest, by contrast, is focused on the sense of space and time, which are brought together by the notion of trailing, that is, the careful, planned movement from location to location, following tracks that are all meaningful or deceptive, goal-oriented or misleading.131 As different as the individual examples will be in terms of their genre and chronological placement, they all confirm the global observation that life follows tracks and is determined by the system of trails where people can move along and develop. Certainly, each trail looks different, as Roger Moor had also observed, and yet they are all of the same nature, allowing the wanderer to pursue his/her goal in life, though not guaranteeing being the correct one, or taking the individual to the desired goal. Some trails are very hard to perceive, some seem to mislead the walker or pilgrim, and others again do not seem to make sense at first sight. Combining the critical analysis of a wide range of texts from various genres and historical dates will allow us to recognize the major hermeneutic relevance of the concept of trails, leading the individual often to goals that s/he did not even imagine at the start. But both the trail and the goal always remain the same, whether the

individual is aware of this or not, because, at least within the spiritual framework of medieval and early modern literature, the path always leads to the Divine. The disaster falling upon those who lose track of their right trail, miserable death, is also clearly noticeable, whether we think of the Middle High German Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) or the second part of the anonymous prose novel, Fortunatus (printed first in 1509). Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight would have almost failed in his endeavor, but he manages to return to the right path where honor and humility combine to save him from virtually guaranteed death. Whether the storytellers in Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1350) succeed in overcoming the plight of the Black Death by means of their flight into literary creativity, or whether the pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (ca. 1400) really achieve their goal, remains rather questionable, particularly because the individual figures do not care much about their trails and replace their attention to where they are going with attention to their storytelling. In the Old Spanish El libro de buen amor (1343) by Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita regularly loses his direction and has to realize that “erre todo el camino commo quien lo non sabia” (“but I lost my way like a complete stranger”).132 Trying to cross the mountains, he is attacked by this mighty cowgirl, who basically ‘rapes’ him and prevents him from going further, yet at the end grants him leave: “She brought me out of the hut and led me towards two paths. / Both were well used and easy to walk” (stanza 985, vv. 1‒2). Whatever the outcome might be, finally the narrator returns to some point on his earlier voyage and then decides to put his experiences into poetic words, meaning that the trailing he has to carry out represents the path toward the creative act, addressing thereby the universal traveler (stanza 1021) who has to go through life like an individual who has to traverse the calendar year: “‘El tablero, la tabla, la dança, la carrera, / son quatro tenporades del año del espera” (stanza 1300, vv. 1‒2; “The two dining tables, the dance, the road, / are the four seasons of the solar year”). Not surprisingly, this response to the Archpriest’s questions comes from the lord of Love, who moves around all the time, visits all people: “The next morning, before daybreak, Love moved on with his company, / and left me in a state of both sorrow and joy” (stanza 1313, vv. 1‒3). Very concretely, and insightfully for our own reflections, “fue su via” (v. 2; went his way (my translation)). Life, love, and trailing prove thus to be closely interconnected, if they are not simply the different faces of the same phenomenon.133 While recent historians have examined more carefully the travel networks of the Teutonic Order, or the itineraries of medieval kings, the movements of crusading armies and the various mercantile operations (e.g. Hanseatic League),134 this study focuses on the actual trails and their spiritual meaning for medieval literary figures who meticulously reflect on or work with trails to reach their destiny. The critical approach to the protagonists’ trail-blazing within a narrative context facilitates a critical analysis of the mental horizon occupied by the contemporary audiences and gives us deeper insight into the epistemological dimension of medieval and early modern literature as a projection of cultural structures in philosophical, theological, emotional, and social terms.

Future research can then take up the baton and explore further what the spiritual travel, the trail-blazing meant for the individual, especially literary journeys through a world that was increasingly viewed as topsy- turvy, determined by fools, fanatics, and fantasizers. Both the rise of the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent conflicts with the Catholics spawned an endless series of wars which brought uncountable misery especially to the Holy Roman Empire. Many Baroque poets reflected upon these issues and observed with grave pessimism the consequences of fundamental misdirections, confusions, errors, and the collapse of a shared discourse and the loss of a set of common values. One of the most interesting literary reflections of this phenomenon, at least in early modern times, was the satirical novel Peregrini in patria errores (1618) by the ‘founder’ or inspirer of the Rosicrucians, Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654), which was finally critically edited and translated into German in 2020 at the very moment when I put the final touches to this book. This means that I could unfortunately not consult it yet for this study, apart from the fact that it falls outside of our broadly conceived chronological framework.135 However, as soon as we apply this analytic lens of the ‘trail’ to our subject matters, here medieval literature, narratives, images, and maps, we easily recognize the enormous potential of this cipher for many other approaches and methods in studying the pre-modern and early modern world. As Jamie K. Taylor now argues in light of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale,” crossing large bodies of water constitutes more than just covering distances, but, as in the case of the female protagonist Constance, it also demonstrates one’s humbleness and patient faith in God’s grace, and might make possible the establishment of new global connections, spreading Christianity through the female character’s role model.136 While Taylor recognizes here an opportunity to identify a more global perspective pursued by Chaucer, freed from the narrow silos of nationalistic thinking (167), we can take one step further and determine Constance’s travels across the ocean as the crisscrossing in her trailing through life and finding the right path. This epistemological-narrative strategy finds its confirmation also in Apollonius of Tyre, Flore and Blanchefleur, and Mai und Beaflor, to mention just a sampling of relevant texts with the same thematic emphasis. After all, trails lead not only over dry land but also across bodies of water. Each time, human life changes and takes the pilgrim or trailer, tracker, or simply wanderer, also to new shores and thus to a new existence, as I will observe in a number of the following chapters (Beowulf, Herzog Ernst, Marie de France, Gottfried von Straßburg, and others). Other examples would be the Nibelungenlied, Partonopeus de Blois, or Aucassin et Nicolette. Both mountains and oceans matter; they provide meaning for the one who embarks on a voyage or journey, and they beckon toward the individual ready to depart from home toward life’s goals.

Acknowledgments Before I begin with my actual investigations in detail, I would like to express my thanks to several colleagues who were kind enough to read individual chapters and to provide me with

feedback and corrections. After all, writing always requires another pair of eyes. So, my gratitude goes especially to Fabian Alfie (University of Arizona), Sarah Anderson (Princeton University), Christopher R. Clason (Oakland University in Rochester, MI), Fidel FajardoAcosta (Creighton University, Omaha, NE), Sharon Kinoshita (University of California at Santa Cruz), Daniel F. Pigg (The University of Tennessee at Martin), Marilyn Sandidge (Westfield State University, MA), Thomas Willard (University of Arizona), and, of course, to the anonymous reader/s and copy-editing staff of Routledge Press. I would also like to express my appreciation to the freshmen students in my honors colloquium on Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan und Isolde, which I offered at the University of Arizona in Spring of 2020. These 17 young students proved to be brilliant and were a sheer delight to teach. I do not think that I have ever experienced such deep conversations about the trailings as they occur in this romance in any other seminar.

Notes 1 For a brief but concise introduction to this huge topic, see Eva Binder, “Identität,” Lexikon der Geisteswissenschaften: Sachbegriffe – Disziplinen – Personen, ed. Helmut Reinalter and Peter J. Brenner (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2011), 354‒60. See also Handbook of Self and Identity, ed. Mark R. Leary and June Price Tangney. 2nd ed. (2003; New York: Guilford Press, 2012); Eli Hirsch, The Concept of Identity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Shape Shifters: Journeys across Terrains of Race and Identity, ed. Lily Tamai Anne Y. Welty, Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly, and Paul Spickard (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2019). There seems to be hardly any other topic of greater significance in the entire world of the Humanities, so the list of relevant studies is simply legion. For a survey of the major theoretical approaches, see Steven Schneider, “Identity Theory,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://www.iep.utm.edu/identity/ (last accessed on April 13, 2020). His research, however, seems to extend only up to 1993. 2 Harold Noonan and Ben Curtis, “Identity,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2004; Summer 2018 ed.), online at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/identity/ (last accessed on April 13, 2020). 3 Annette Gerok-Reiter and Franziska Hammer, “Spatial Turn/Raumforschung,” Literatur- und Kulturtheorien in der Germanistischen Mediävistik: Ein Handbuch, ed. Christiane Ackermann and Michael Egerding (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), 481‒516; Jörg Döring, Spatial Turn: das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008); The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Barney Wharf. Routledge Studies in Human Geography, 26 (London and New York: Routledge, 2009); Philosophie des Ortes: Reflexionen zum Spatial Turn in den Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Annika Schlitte (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014); New Directions in Social and Cultural History, ed. Sasha Handley, Rohan McWilliam, and Lucy Noakes (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). 4 The Question of Space: Interrogating the Spatial Turn between Disciplines, ed. Marijn Nieuwenhuis and David Crouch (London: Rowman & Littlefield 2017); cf. now Les Roberts, “The Question of Space: A Review Essay,” Humanities 7.2 (2018); online at: https://doi.org/10.3390/h7020042 ‒ April 24, 2018 (last accessed on September 29, 2019). He argues: What makes an interrogation of the spatial turn a productive and timely endeavour, is that it invites us to look askance, to question the durability of an orientational metaphor that, if it ever had traction, has surely now run its course. A turn that remains a turn is at some point destined to become a circle, or a circumambulation (a rhetorical shibboleth around which the faithful dutifully trudge). What is then called for, by way of intervention, is a consolidation: an inter-disciplinary stock-taking of how space is variously being theorized and workedthrough, and how its many performativities are shaping new ideas and critical agendas. (3)

See also, though from a more scientific perspective, Selina Springett, “Going Deeper or Flatter: Connecting Deep Mapping, Flat Ontologies and the Democratizing of Knowledge,” Humanities 4.4 (2015): 623‒ 36;https://doi.org/10.3390/h4040623 ‒ October 16, 2015 (last accessed on September 29, 2019). 5 Albrecht Classen, “Time, Space, and Travel in the Pre-Modern World: Theoretical and Historical Reflections. An Introduction,” Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Explorations of Worldly Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 22 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 1‒75. Previously, I explored already the fundamental significance of communication for human existence as reflected in medieval literature: Verzweiflung und Hoffnung. Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, 1 (Frankfurt a. M., Berlin: Peter Lang, 2002). 6 Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: le quatre sens de l’écriture. Théologie; études publiées sous la direction de la Faculté de théologie S. J. de Lyon-Fourvière, 41, 42, 59 (Paris: Aubie, 1959‒1964). Cf. also Hennig Brinkmann, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1980). 7 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1977); see also his earlier study, “Geography, Phenomenology, and the Study of Human Nature,” Canadian Geographer 15.3 (1971): 181‒92. See now his “Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective,” Raum und Ort, ed. Anton Escher and Sandra Petermann. Basistexte Geographie, 1 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016), 133‒66. 8 For a virtually complete overview, at least for Middle High and early modern German texts, see the vast number of entries in Reiseberichte und Geschichtsdichtung, in Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon: Das Mittelalter, ed. Wolfgang Achnitz. Mit einführenden Essays von Gerhard Wolf und Christoph Fasbender (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). See now also the profound reflections by Reinhold Münster, Raum – Reise – Sinn 1 (2017): 314‒25, et passim. There are, as he synthesizes the many different theories concerning the way in which we perceive our reality, many different approaches, but most relevant proves to be: “Der Realismus besteht nicht in einer naiven Beschreibung der Welt, auch nicht in einer naiven Koordination von Welt, Vernunft/Geist und Sprache/Modell, sondern ist sich seiner Abhängigkeiten von ganz bestimmten Formen der Erstellung des Modells bewusst: expliziert diese auch ausreichend” (325; Realism does not consist in a naive description of the world, and also not in a naive coordination of world, reason/spirit and language/model, but it is aware of its own dependency on very specific forms of creating a model, and explicates those also sufficiently). 9 Franziska Hammer, Räume erzählen – erzählende Räume: Raumdarstellung als Poetik. Mit einer exemplarischen Analyse des ‘Nibelungenliedes’. Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Winter, 2018); for a rather critical review, see Peter Andersen, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale Xe‒XIIe siècle 62 (July‒Sept. 2019): 294–97. 10 Ulrike Draesner, Wege durch erzählte Welten: Intertextuelle Verweise als Mittel der Bedeutungskonstitution in Wolframs “Parzival.” Mikrokosmos 36 (Frankfurt a. M. and New York: Peter Lang, 1993); Hendrik Lambertus, Von monströsen Helden und heldenhaften Monstern: zur Darstellung und Funktion des Fremden in den originalen Riddarasögur. Beiträge zur nordischen Philologie, 52 (Tübingen: Francke, 2013). See also Larissa Schuler-Lang, Wildes Erzählen ‒ Erzählen vom Wilden: Parzival, Busant und Wolfdietrich D. Literatur | Theorie | Geschichte, 7 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2014). For an effort to place Wolfram within the context of world literature, see Evelyn Meyer, “Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival: A Complex Reshaping and Expansion of a Source,” A Companion to World Literature, ed. Ken Seigneurie. Vol. 2: 601 CE to 1450 CE, ed. Christine Chism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 967‒77. 11 Helmut Brackert, “‘der lac an riterschefte tôt’: Parzival und das Leid der Frauen,” Ist zwîvel herzen nâchgebûr: Günther Schweikle zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Rüdiger Krüger, Jürgen Kühnel, and Joachim Kuolt. Helfant Studien, S 5 (Stuttgart: helfant edition, 1989), 143‒63. 12 Albrecht Classen, “Waterways as Landmarks, Challenges, and Barriers for Medieval Protagonists: Crossing Rivers as Epistemological Hurdles in Medieval Literature,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 78 (2018): 441‒67; id., The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective. Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, et al.: Lexington Books, 2015), 81‒101. 13 Albrecht Classen, Utopie und Logos. Vier Studien zu Wolframs von Eschenbach “Titurel-Fragmenten.” Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1990); Alexander Sager, Minne von maeren: On Wolfram’s Titurel. Transatlantische Studien zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); Larissa Schuler-Lang, Wildes Erzählen ‒ Erzählen vom Wilden: “Parzival,” “Busant” und “Wolfdietrich D.” Literatur – Theorie – Geschichte, 7 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), ch. 3.4.2. 14 Narratologie und mittelalterliches Erzählen: Autor, Erzähler, Perspektive, Zeit und Raum, ed. Eva von Contzen, and Florian Kragl. Das Mittelalter, Beihefte, 7 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2018).

15 Joachim Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach. 8th, completely rev. ed. Sammlung Metzler, 36 (1964; Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2004), 414. 16 Here I rely on the definitions offered by the Oxford English Dictionary, online, at: https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/204398?rskey=YOeQMd&result=3#eid (last accessed on April 6, 2020). 17 Shirin A. Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages. Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245‒1510. Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Shaine Aaron Legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Lire Marco Polo au Moyen Âge: Traduction, diffusion et réception du Devisement du Monde. Terrarum orbis, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015); for more theoretical reflections, see Nicole Chareyron, Éthique et Esthétique du récit de voyage à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. Mean Meyers. Essais sur le Moyen Âge, 57 (Paris: Champion, 2013); Le Voyage au Moyen Age: Description du monde et quête individuelle. Le Temps de l’Histoire (Aixen-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2017); for an excellent review, see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, in The Medieval Review, online, 19.10.19. 18 Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, ed. Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 30 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019). 19 Katrin Janz-Wenig, Decem gradus amoris deutsch. Entstehung, Überlieferung und volkssprachliche Rezeption einer lateinischen Predigt. Untersuchung und Edition. Texte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 56 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2017). 20 Peter Dinzelbacher, “Die mittelalterliche Allegorie der Lebensreise,” Monsters, Marvels, and Miracles: Imaginary Journeys and Landscapes in the Middle Ages, ed. Leif Söndergaard and Rasmus Hansen (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2005), 65‒112. 21 See Peter Dinzelbacher, Die Jenseitsbrücke im Mittelalter. Dissertationen der Universität Wien, 104 (Vienna: Verband der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1973). See now his vast expansion of the same topic in his Vision und Magie: Religiöses Erleben im Mittelalter (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019), 99‒128. Cf. also his studies, “Allegorische Jenseitswanderungen in Mittelalter und Renaissance,” Symbolon 21, Neue Folge. Himmelsreisen und Höllenfahrten. Klang und Kosmos. Zeit und Zeitlosigkeit, ed. Werner Heinz (2020): 95‒118; id., “Il viaggio allegorico per il mare del mondo nella letteratura medioevale,” Poeti e poesia a Genova (e dintorni) nell’età medievale: atti del Convegno per Genova Capitale della Cultura Europea 2004, ed. Margherita Lecco (Alessandria: Ed. dell’Orso, 2006), 101‒25; id. “Die mittelalterliche Allegorie der Lebensreise,” Monsters, Marvels, and Miracles: Imaginary Journeys and Landscapes in the Middle Ages, ed. Leif Söndergaard and Rasmus Hansen (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2005), 65‒112. I would like to thank the author for alerting me to his contributions to this important topic. 22 Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius der gute Sünder. Mittelhochdeutsche / Neuhochdeutsch. Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der Ausgabe von Friedrich Neumann. Übertragung von Burkhard Kippenberg. Nachwort von Hugo Kuhn (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1986), vv. 79‒86; the English trans. I have borrowed from The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, trans. with commentary by Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 186‒87. As Vivian emphasizes in his introduction, what matters here is not so much the sexual crime of incest and Gregorius’s arrogance and many shortcomings but the journey that Gregorius undertakes, both physically and spiritually, on the path that is mentioned both in the prologue and toward the end of the tale, when Gregorius seeks to do penance in the ‘wilderness.’ This path may be seen as the path we all take in life, or can and should take. (166) Cf. also Erhard Dorn, Der sündige Heilige in der Legende des Mittelalters. Medium Aevum, 10 (Munich: Fink, 1967); Bernd Lorenz, “Das Bild der zwei Wege im carm. II 1, 45 des Gregor von Nazianz und der Widerhall im ‘Gregorius’ des Hartmann von Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch Ser. NF, 20 (1979): 277‒85; Olga V. Trokhimenko, “Der sælden strâze: Sprichwörter in Hartmanns von Aue Gregorius,” Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 18 (2001): 329‒51; Hartmut Freytag,“diu seltsænen mære/von dem guoten sündære: Über die heilsgeschichtlich ausgerichtete interpretatio auctoris im Gregorius Hartmanns von Aue,” Euphorion 98.3 (2004): 265‒ 80; Markus Greulich, Stimme und Ort: Narratologische Studien zu Heinrich von Veldeke, Hartmann von Aue und Wolfram von Eschenbach. Philologische Studien und Quellen, 264 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2018). I will return to Gregorius’s destiny in the last chapter dedicated to mappae mundi.

23 See, for instance, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia perennis: historische Umrisse abendländischer Spiritualität in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998); João J. Vila-Chã, Filosofia e espiritualidade: o contributo da Idade Média = Philosophy and Spirituality in the Middle Ages. Revista portuguesa de filosofía, 64.1 (Braga: Fac. de Filosofía da UCP, 2008); Krijn Pansters, Franciscan Virtue: Spiritual Growth and the Virtues in Franciscan Literature and Instructions of the Thirteenth Century. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 161 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2012); see now the contributions to Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 15 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2014); for negative perspectives, see Thomas A. Fudge, Medieval Religion and Its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). I will investigate much more thoroughly the relevance of trails in Hartmann’s Gregorius in a separate chapter. 24 Janz-Wenig, Decem gradus amoris (see note 19). Here I rely primarily on the review by Ralf Lützelschwab in Mediaevistik 32 (2020): 409–12. 25 Peter Dinzelbacher, “Il viaggio allegorico per il mare del mondo nella letteratura medioevale” (2006); cf. also the contributions to Travel, Time, and Space, ed. Albrecht Classen (2018). See also Kathryn M. Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages. Disciplina monastica, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011); Jacek Grzybowski, Cosmological and Philosophical World of Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy as a Medieval Vision of the Universe. European Studies in Theology, Philosophy and History of Religions, 9 (Frankfurt a. M., Bern, et al.: Peter Lang, 2015). 26 There is much research on this triptych; see, for instance, Peter Glum, The Key to Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” Found in Allegorical Bible Interpretation, Volume I (Tokyo: Chio-koron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2007); see also Keith Moxey, “Hieronymus Bosch and the ‘World Upside Down’: The Case of The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations. Theory and Interpretation in the Visual Arts, ed. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 104–40. 27 Warren Tormey, “The Journey within the Journey: Catabasis and Travel Narrative in Late Medieval and Early Modern Epic,” Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen (2018): 585‒621. 28 See now the contributions to Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World: Essays in Honor of Paul Freedman, ed. Thomas W. Barton, Susan McDonough, Sara McDougall, and Matthew Wranovix (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017); for an indepth review, see Hussein Fancy in The Medieval Review online 19.08.22. 29 There is a seemingly infinite amount of relevant research on mysticism; see, for instance, Elizabeth A. Andersen, The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2000); Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. Studies in Spirituality and Theology, 1 (Notre Dame, IN, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); see now also Lia Ross, “The Revealing Peregrinations of Margery Kempe,” Travel, Time, and Space (2018), 359‒78. I suggest that we might gain a new approach to this phenomenon if we recognize and acknowledge behind mystical visions a spiritual attempt to identify meaningful trails through an obscure world and to find the spirit behind the material confines as directed by the Godhead or another entity. 30 Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority. The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Hazrat Inayat Khan, Die Seele ‒ woher und wohin: die Reise der Seele, trans. Ischtar Marita Dvořák. 2nd rev. ed. (Polling: Verlag Heilbronn, 2019). 31 Gavin Fort, “‘Make a Pilgrimage for Me’: The Role of Place in Late Medieval Proxy Pilgrimage,” Travel, Time, and Space (2018), 424‒45. Felix Fabri, Die Sionpilger, ed. Wieland Carls. Texte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 39 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1999). 32 See, for instance, Maha Baddar, “Texts that Travel: Translation Genres and Knowledge-Making in the Medieval Arabic Translation Movement,” Travel, Time, and Space, ed. Albrecht Classen (2018), 95‒119. 33 Albrecht Classen, “Marco Polo and John Mandeville: The Traveler as Authority Figure, the Real and the Imaginary,” Authorities in the Middle Ages: Influence, Legitimacy, and Power in Medieval Society, ed. Sini Kangas, Mia Korpiola, and Tuija Aionen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 12 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 239‒48. 34 Most famously, see Susan Groag Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture,” Signs 7.4 (Summer, 1982): 742–68. Similarly, wedding negotiations were important opportunities throughout the Middle Ages to bridge contrasting cultures or to build connections over long distances; and in that process many letters traveled back and forth; see Christina Anthenhofer, Briefe zwischen Süd und Nord: Die Hochzeit und Ehe von Paula de Gonzaga und Leonhard von Görz im Spiegel der fürstlichen Kommunikation (1473–1500). Schlern-Schriften,

336 (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2007). See also Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks, and A. J. Minnis (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press with University of York, 2000); Alfred Thomas, Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer’s Female Audience. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Medieval Women and Their Objects, ed. Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017); Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate, ed. Heather J. Tanner. The New Middle Ages (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 35 The contributors to Transkulturalität und Translation: Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters im europäischen Kontext, ed. Ingrid Kasten and Laura Auteri (Berlin und Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2017) claim to address this issue, but on closer analysis, this is, unfortunately, hardly the case; see my review in Mediaevistik 32 (forthcoming). Some studies skillfully navigate between two cultures and illustrate for us what that really entails; others use the term ‘transculturality’ only as a fig-leaf for their narrow topic far removed from the larger issue at stake. Cf., as a contrast, the valuable contributions to Cultural Brokers at Mediterranean Courts in the Middle Ages, ed. Marc von der Höh, Nikolas Jaspert, and Jenny Rahel Oesterle. Mittelmeerstudien, 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013). 36 Marc von der Höh, Nikolas Jaspert, and Jenny Rahel Oesterle, “Courts, Brokers and Brokerage in the Medieval Mediterranean,” Cultural Brokers at Mediterranean Courts (2013), 9‒31; here 17. 37 Maha Baddar, “Texts that Travel” (2018). Cf. also the contributions to Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Tzvi Y. Langermann and Robert G. Morrison (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016). 38 See the important handbook for this huge topic: Germania litteraria mediaevalis francigena: Handbuch der deutschen und niederländischen mittelalterlichen literarischen Sprache, Formen, Motive, Stoffe und Werke französischer Herkunft (1100 ‒ 1300), ed. Geert H. M. Claassens, Fritz-Peter Knapp, and René Pérenne. 7 vols. (Berlin and New York/Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2010‒2015); cf. now also the contributions to Romania und Germania: Kulturelle und literarische Austauschprozesse in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Jahrbuch der Oswald von WolkensteinGesellschaft, 22 (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2019). 39 See, for instance, Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike, Vikings at War (Oxford and Philadelphia, PA: Casemate, 2016). 40 Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire, ed. Dzino, Danijel, Ante Milošević, and Trpimir Vedriš. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 50 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2018). 41 See, for instance, Pedro Martínez García, El cara a cara con el otro: la visión de lo ajeno a fines de la Edad Media y comienzos de la Edad Moderna a través del viaje (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2015); Legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel (2017); Albrecht Classen, “Time, Space, and Travel in the Pre-Modern World: Theoretical and Historical Reflections. An Introduction,” Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Explorations of Worldly Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 22 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 1‒75. 42 Susan Whitfield, Life along the Silk Road (London: John Murray, 1999); eadem, Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018); Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History. New Oxford World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Donald J Harreld, A Companion to the Hanseatic League. Brill’s Companions to European History, 8 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2015); Ulf Christian Ewert and Stephan Selzer, Institutions of Hanseatic Trade: Studies on the Political Economy of a Medieval Network Organisation (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2016); Jonathan Hsy, “Mobile Language-Networks and Medieval Travel Writing,” Postmedieval 4.2 (2013): 177–91. See also his earlier study, “Lingua Franca: Overseas Travel and Language Contact in The Book of Margery Kempe,” The Sea and Englishness in the Middle Ages: Maritime Narratives, Identity and Culture, ed. S. I. Sobecki (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), 159–78. As to the network in the Baltic Sea, now see the contributions to Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea Region Austmarr as a Northern mare nostrum, ca. 500‒1500 AD, ed. Maths Bertell and Frog Kendra Willson. Crossing Boundaries: Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019). See now also Mare nostrum – mare meum: Wasserräume und Herrschaftsrepräsentation, ed. Oliver Schelske and Christian Wendt. Spudasmata, 181 (Hildesheim, Zürich, and New York: Georg Olms, 2019). 43 Robert Moor, On Trails (New York, London, et al.: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2016), 3. 44 The Italian Renaissance Reader, ed. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Mark Musa (New York: Penguin, 1987), 14‒20. I will dedicate an entire chapter to this famous and truly important letter, so relevant both for the emergence of the Italian Renaissance and for the treatment of following a trail. See now, broadly for the history of the mountain in Western culture, the contributions to Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012).

45 Legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel (2017), 177. 46 Norbert Ohler, The Medieval Traveler (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell, 1989); trans. of his Germanlanguage study Reisen im Mittelalter (1986); Romedio Schmitz-Esser, “Travel and Exploration in the Middle Ages,” Handbook of Medieval Culture: Fundamental Aspects and Conditions of the European Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), vol. 3, 1680‒704; Klaus Herbers and Hans Christian Lehner, eds., Unterwegs im Namen der Religion/On the Road in the Name of Religion II: Wege und Ziele in vergleichender Perspektive – das mittelalterliche Europa und Asien/Ways and Destinations in Comparative Perspective – Medieval Europe and Asia. Beiträge zur Hagiographie, 17 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016); Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Explorations of Worldly Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 22 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2018). See also the valuable reference work, Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. John Block Friedmann and Kristen Mossler Figg (New York and London: Garland, 2000). 47 Palaeohydrology: Traces, Tracks and Trails of Extreme Events, ed. Jürgen Herget and Alessandro Fontana. Geography of the Physical Environment (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2020). For a very specific approach toward tracking and trails in the Middle Ages, see Brian Paul Hindle, Medieval Roads and Tracks. 3rd ed. Shire Archaeology, 26 (Princes Risborough: Shire, 1998); Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads, ed. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans. Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); Albrecht Classen, “Roads, Streets Bridges, and Travelers,” Medieval Culture: A Handbook. Fundamental Aspects and Conditions of the European Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen. 3 vols. (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), vol. 3, 1511‒ 34. 48 The concept of trails or trailing is used, of course, in countless other contexts, but they all boil down to the effort of achieving an epistemological epiphany; see, for instance, Camilo J. Cela-Conde and Francisco José Ayala, Human Evolution: Trails from the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Trails: Toward a New Western History, ed. Patricia Nelson Limerick (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1991); Robert Hendrickson, Happy Trails: A Dictionary of Western Expressions (New York: Facts on File, 1994). This list could be expanded infinitely. 49 Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, Courtly Seductions, Modern Subjections: Troubadour Literature and the Medieval Construction of the Modern World. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 376 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2010). 50 Uta Störmer-Caysa, Grundstrukturen mittelalterlicher Erzählungen: Raum und Zeit im höfischen Roman. de Gruyter Studienbuch (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007). 51 M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 84. 52 Aaron J. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. from the Russian by G. L. Campbell (London, Boston, MA, Melbourne, and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985); see also the contributions to Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames, ed. Brian Richardson (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2002); cf. now Störmer-Caysa, Grundstrukturen mittelalterlicher Erzählungen (2007); Space/Time Practices and the Production of Space and Time, ed. Sebastian Dorsch (Cologne: GESIS, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, 2013); Bakhtin and His Others: (Inter)Subjectivity, Chronotope, Dialogism, ed. Liisa Steinby and Tintti Klapuri. Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (London and New York: Anthem Press, 2013); The Ideologies of Lived Space in Literary Texts, Ancient and Modern, ed. Jacqueline Klooster and Jo Heirman. Open Textbook Library (Gent: Academia Press; Minneapolis, MN: Open Textbook Library, 2013); Ines Detmers and Michael Ostheimer, Das temporale Imaginäre: zum Chronotopos als Paradigma literaturästhetischer Eigenzeiten. Ästhetische Eigenzeiten. Kleine Reihe, 4 (Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2016). Bakhtin’s highly productive term of the ‘chronotope’ has influenced scholars in many different fields, both in medieval and modern literature; see, for instance, Bakhtin in Contexts: Across the Disciplines, ed. Amy Mandelker; with an intro. by Caryl Emerson. Rethinking Theory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995). 53 Albrecht Classen, “Time, Space, and Travel in the Pre-Modern World: Theoretical and Historical Reflections. An Introduction,” Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Explorations of Worldly Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 22 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 1‒75. 54 Störmer-Caysa, Grundstrukturen mittelalterlicher Erzählungen (2007), 103. 55 Hartmann von Aue, Erec. Mittelhochdeutscher Text und Übertragung von Thomas Cramer. 25th ed. (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1972); see also The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, trans. with commentary by Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson. Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry (University Park, PA:

The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); for a quick introduction to key research questions, see A Companion to the Works of Hartmann von Aue, ed. Frank G. Gentry. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005). 56 Siegfried Christoph, “The Language and Culture of Joy,” Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Albrecht Classen. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 347 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 319‒33. 57 Indeed, the description of winter with its uncomfortable cold temperatures is rather rare in courtly romances, but there are noteworthy exceptions to the rule, such as Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône (ca. 1280/1290) or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1370); cf. Albrecht Classen, “Winter as a Phenomenon in Medieval Literature: A Transgression of the Traditional Chronotopos?,” Mediaevistik 24 (2011): 125‒50. 58 Ingrid Kasten, “Raum, Leib, Bewegung: Aspekte der Raumgestaltung in Gottfrieds Tristan,” Transkulturalität und Translation (2017), 127‒44; here 132. 59 Jan Mohr, Minne als Sozialmodell: Konstitutionsformen des Höfischen in Sang und ‚rede ‘ (12.–15. Jahrhundert). Studien zur historischen Poetik, 27 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2019); for a review, see Adam Oberlin, in Mediävistik 32 (2020, forthcoming). 60 Walther von der Vogelweide, Leich, Lieder, Sangsprüche. 15., veränderte und um Fassungseditionen erweiterte Auflage der Ausgabe Karl Lachmanns. Aufgrund der 14., von Christoph Cormeau bearbeiteten Ausgabe neu herausgegeben, mit Erschließungshilfen und textkritischen Kommentaren versehen von Thomas Bein (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2013). 61 Mireille Schnyder, “Über Grenzen: Narrative des Mittelalters,” Transkulturalität und Translation (2017), 71‒83. She is one of the first to pay more attention to the subterranean trails, so to speak, the small tracks, the microscopic pathways, outlined in many medieval narratives, talking about the literary “Unterholz” (underbrush) and the “Nebenwege” (side trails). Those very small trails open a “Perspektivenvielfalt und Komplexität” (81; variety of perspectives and complexity). She appeals to the future generation of medievalists to follow those paths more close. I hope that this study will help to address her highly valid call to interpretive actions. 62 Albrecht Classen, “Travel by Ship in the Late Middle Ages ‒ Felix Fabri’s Pilgrimage Account as a Meticulous EyeWitness Report,” International Journal of History and Cultural Studies 4.4 (2018): 42‒ 50;https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijhcs/v4-i4/3.pdf (last accessed on April 13, 2020). 63 Marianne O’Doherty, Alison L. Gascoigne, and Leonie V. Hicks, “Medieval Routes: Journeys through Space and Scholarship,” Journeying along Medieval Routes in Europe and the Middle East, ed. eadem. Medieval Voyaging, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 1‒22; here 2. 64 R. D. Jameson, Trails of the Troubadours (1927; Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970). 65 See, for instance, Jenny So, “Scented Trails: Amber as Aromatic in Medieval China,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 23.1 (Jan. 2013): 85‒101. 66 Susan Signe Morrison, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety and Public Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 2000); From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety, ed. William H. Swatos Jr. and Luigi Tomasi. Religion in the Age of Transformation (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2002). The literature on this topic is legion. 67 For a simple outline of travel for the purpose of pilgrimage, see Janine Larmon Peterson, “Travel,” Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, ed. Larissa J. Taylor, Leigh Ann Craig, et al. (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2010), 770‒72. 68 Peregrine Hordon, “Introduction: Towards a History of Medieval Mobility,” Freedom of Movements in the Middle Ages, ed. id. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 15 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2007), xvii‒xxxiv. Cf. also the seminal study by Dick Harrison, Medieval Space: The Extent of Microspatial Knowledge in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. Lund Studies in International History, 34 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1996). 69 Reinhold Münster, Raum – Reise – Sinn: Spanien in der Reiseliteratur, 2 vols. (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2017), 114‒28. 70 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Pilgrimages, Travel Writing and the Medieval Exotic,” Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English, ed. Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 611‒28. 71 Janet Robson, “The Pilgrim’s Progress: Reinterpreting the Trecento Fresco Programme in the Lower Church at Assisi,” The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy, ed. William R. Cook (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2005), 39‒70; Anselm Rau, Das Model Franziskus: Bildstruktur und Affektsteuerung in monastischer Meditations- und Gebetspraxis. Neue Frankfurter Forschungen zur Kunst, 22 (Frankfurt a. M.: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2019), 320‒33. See also Romedio Schmitz-Esser, Der Leichnam im Mittelalter: Einbalsamierung, Verbrennung und die kulturelle Konstruktion des toten

Körpers. Mittelalter-Forschungen, 48. 2nd unchanged ed. (2014; Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2016), 65‒70. An English translation of this seminal study by Albrecht Classen and Carolin Radtke is forthcoming. 72 The Pylgremage of the Sowle: A Middle English Translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de l’Âme, ed. Fred van Vorsselen (available online at: http://pilgrim.grozny.nl/). I could not verify this publication further; last accessed on October 2, 2019); cf. also The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man Englisht by John Lydgate, A.D. 1426 from the French of Guillaume de Deguileville, A.D. 1330, 1355, ed. F. J. Furnivall, with Intro., notes, glossary, and indexes by Katharine B. Locock (1899; London: Early English Text Society, 1996); The Pilgrimage of the Lyf of the Manhode, from the French of Guillaume de Deguileville, ed. William Aldis Wright (London: J. B. Nichols and Sons, 1869); see the contributions to The Pèlerinage Allegories of Guillaume de Deguileville: Tradition, Authority and Influence, ed. Fred van Vorsselen, Marco Nievergelt, Stephanie A. Kamath, and Gibbs Viereck (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013). I have also consulted Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of Human Life (Le Pèlerinage de la vie humaine), trans. Eugene Clasby. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 471 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017). Clasby had originally published this as a prose translation of the first version of Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of Human Life (Le Pèlerinage de la vie humaine), trans. Eugene Clasby. Garland Library of Medieval Literature, Series B, 76 (New York and London: Garland, 1992), which is only indicated in the bibliography (under Clasby). 73 Maryjane Dunn-Wood, “El pelegrinage de la vida humana: A Study and Edition,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1985, 5 (this is an edition of the Spanish translation by Vicente de Mazuelo printed by Henry Meyer in Toulouse in 1490; as a basis, Dunn-Wood used the Incunabula 1300 of the Biblioteca Nacional [Madrid]); cf. also the introduction to the text by Clasby, Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of Human Life (1992), xv and xxxv‒xliv. 74 Marco Nievergelt, Allegorical Quests from Deguileville to Spenser (Cambridge and Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2012); The Pèlerinage Allegories of Guillaume de Deguileville: Tradition, Authority and Influence, ed. Marco Nievergelt and Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013); Andreas Kablitz, Mittelalterliche Literatur als Retextualisierung: das “Pèlerinage”-Corpus des Guillaume de Deguileville im europäischen Mittelalter. Neues Forum für allgemeine und vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, 52 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2014). 75 Again, this is borrowed from the edition published by Caxton in 1483, provided by Fred van Vorsselen, end of ch. XIV of Book Five, fol. 110r. 76 See, for instance, Anne L. Clark, Elisabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth- Century Visionary. The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). 77 de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of Human Life, trans. Eugene Clasby (1992). 78 Stephanie Kamath, “Deguileville,” Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, ed. Larissa J. Taylor, Leigh Ann Craig, et al. (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2010), 156–60; here 156. 79 James L. Smith, Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture: Case Studies from Twelfth-Century Monasticism. Cursor Mundi, 30 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 86. Godfrey of Saint-Victor, Fons philosophiae. Texte publié et annoté par Pierre Michau-Quantin. Analecta mediaevalia Namurcensia, 8 (Namur: Editions Godenne, 1956); id., The Fons of Philosophy: A Translation of the Twelfth-Century ‘Fons philosophiae’ of Godfrey of Saint Victor, trans. Edward A. Synan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972). 80 Amy Neff, A Soul’s Journey: Franciscan Art, Theology, and Devotion in the Supplicationes Variae. Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination 6. Studies and Texts 210 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2019); see the review by Linda Burke in Mediaevistik 33, forthcoming. 81 Alastair Minnis, Magister Amoris: The Roman de la Rose and Vernacular Hermeneutics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); see also the contributions to Debating the Roman de la Rose: A Critical Anthology, ed. Christine McWebb. Routledge Medieval Texts (New York: Routledge, 2007). 82 Susan K. Hagen, Allegorical Remembrance: A Study of The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man as a Medieval Treatise on Seeing and Remembering (Athens, GA, and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1990). 83 Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia perennis: Historical Outlines of Western Spirituality in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought. International Archives of the History of Ideas, 189 (1998; Dordrecht: Springer, 2004). 84 Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island (New York: Harcourt, Brace World, 1955). 85 Merton, No Man is an Island (1955), xi. 86 Merton, No Man is an Island (1955), xv. 87 John Bugbee, God’s Patients: Chaucer, Agency, and the Nature of Laws (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019).

88 Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of Human Life (Le Pèlerinage de la vie humaine), trans. Eugene Clasby (1992), xxvi‒xxvii. 89 Christine de Pizan / Cristina di Pizzano, Le chemin de lonc estudes/Il cammin di lungo studio, trans. Ester Zago. Foreword by Julia Bolton Holloway. De Strata Francigena: Studi e ricerche sulle vie di pellegrinaggio del Medioevo, XXVI.1 (Rome: Centro Studi Romei, 2018); for a solid review, see F. Regina Psaki in The Medieval Review, online, 19.11.12. As she summarizes, this ‘little poem’ comprises 6398 lines; it surveys the known world and the earthly and celestial paradises; it examines the current disastrously violent and volatile state of the world, engaged in endless war at all levels; and it stages a debate on the virtues necessary for a king to be able to bring peace and reason to a suffering world. One of the manuscripts with this text is London, British Library, MS Harley 4431 (ff. 178‒219v), now available in digitized form athttp://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=836 (last accessed on November 15, 2019). 90 As Psaki characterizes Christine’s work in her review as follows: “The Road of Long Study, in which she sees and reveals earth and heaven through a journey explicitly marked as scholarly. 91 For an introduction and overview of this genre, along with the relevant bibliography, see Erotic Tales of Medieval Germany. Selected and trans. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 328 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007), x, 176, pp. Rev. and expanded sec. ed. (2009); cf. also Klaus Grubmüller, Die Ordnung, der Witz und das Chaos: Eine Geschichte der europäischen Novellistik im Mittelalter: Fabliau – Märe – Novelle (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006); see also the contributions to Mittelalterliche Novellistik im europäischen Kontext kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven, ed. Mark Chinca, Timo Reuvekamp, and Christopher Young. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 13 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2006); most recently, see Antonio Catalfamo, Giovanni Boccaccio: tra letteratura “cortese” e letteratura “popolare.” Athenaeum, 34 (Chieti: Solfanelli, 2018). 92 For convenience’s sake, here I draw from Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. with an intro. and notes by G. H. McWilliam. Sec. ed. (1972; London: Penguin, 1995). See also the older English translation by J. M. Rigg (1903; London: Priv. Print. for the Navarre Society, 1921), which is very close to the original and so highly valuable for us; now available online; http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php? myID=nov1009&lang=eng (last accessed on December 18, 2016); see now Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism, trans. and ed. Wayne A. Rebhorn. Norton Critical Editions (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016). Unfortunately, this otherwise very welcome new translation is marred by the fact that it presents only a selection of Boccaccio’s complete work. 93 Robert J. Clements and Joseph Gibaldi, Anatomy of the Novella: The European Tale Collection from Boccaccio and Chaucer to Cervantes (New York: New York University Press, 1977); 700 Jahre Boccaccio: Traditionslinien vom Trecento bis in die Moderne, ed. Christa Bertelsmeier-Kierst and Rainer Stillers. Kulturgeschichtliche Beiträge zum Mittelalter und zur Frühen Neuzeit, 7 (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2015); Giovanni Boccaccio: Italienische-deutscher Kulturtransfer von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ingrid Bennewitz. Bamberger interdisziplinäre Mittelalterstudien, 9 (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2015); Katherine A. Brown, Boccaccio’s Fabliaux: Medieval Short Stories and the Function of Reversal (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014); Reconsidering Boccaccio: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts, ed. Olivia Holmes and Dana E. Stewart. Toronto Italian Studies (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2018). The literature on the Decameron is legion, of course. 94 M. W. Thompson, The Rise of the Castle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); here quoted from Sylvia Landsberg, The Medieval Garden (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, [2003]), 11‒12. 95 I will examine this topic, the maze or labyrinth, together with mappae mundi and intricate narratives as literary labyrinths in the last chapter. 96 Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1990), xii. Cf. now also Brigitte Burrichter, Erzählte Labyrinthe und labyrinthisches Erzählen: romanische Literatur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2003). 97 See, for instance, Pierluigi Lia, “Il Verbo si fa rima e ritmo: studio sul labirinto cristiano medievale,” Rivista liturgica: trimestrale per la formazione liturgica 101.1 (2014): 171‒207; cf. also Ulrike Zellmann, “Lusus erat; Tanz und Spiel auf dem Labyrinth in der Kathedrale von Auxerre,” Labyrinth und Spiel: Umdeutungen eines Mythos, ed. Hans Richard Brittnacher and Rolf-Peter Janz(Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2007), 36‒74.

98 Jeff Saward, Labyrinths and Mazes: The Definitive Guide to Ancient and Modern Traditions (London: Gaia, 2003); Cretomania: Modern Desires for the Minoan Past, ed. Nicoletta Momigliano and Alexandre Farnoux (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). Maria Cristina Fanelli, Labirinti: Storia, geografia e interpretazione du un simbolo millenario (Rimini: Cerchio Iniziative, 1997); Fabio Collonese, Il labirinto e l’architetto (Rome: Kappa, 2006); Bruno Hervé, “Avatars du labyrinthe de la protohistoire à la postmodernité,” id., Bruno Hervé, Le jardin comme labyrinthe du monde: métamorphoses d’un imaginaire de la Renaissance à nos jours (Paris: Musée du Louvre Éditions, 2008), 17–66; Matthias Hennig, Das andere Labyrinth. Imaginäre Räume in der Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015). 99 For many more, in Arizona alone, seehttps://labyrinthlocator.com/locate-a-labyrinth? state=AZ&simple_results=no&action=locate&offset=80 ; for global search, see https://labyrinthlocator.com/ (last accessed on April 13, 2020). 100 Albrecht Classen, “Die labyrintische Struktur des Nibelungenlieds. Literaturtheoretische Überlegungen zu einem alten Text,” La Chanson des Nibelungen hier et aujourd’ hui. Actes du Colloque Amiens, 12 et 13 janvier 1991, Wodan 7, ed. by Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok (Amiens: Univ. de Picardie, 1991), 43‒61; Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth (1990), ch. 6, identifies mazes in texts such as the Gesta Romanorum, Boccaccio’s Il Corbaccio, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the fifteenth-century Middle English The Assembly of Ladies. 101 Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth (1990), 187. 102 Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth (1990), 190, admits her own frustration with some of the medieval poets who do not use the term ‘labyrinth’ explicitly. Associating alleged heretics such as famous Peter Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers with failed attempts to master a labyrinth (190‒91) does not lead Reed Doob to good results. Trailing or tracking, by contrast, will serve us much more effectively. 103 Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth (1990), 197. 104 Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France, ed. and trans. Claire M. Waters (2018), Prologue, vv. 9‒12. 105 Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth (1990), 200‒01 106 Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth (1990), 204‒05. 107 Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth (1990), 211. 108 This story exerted a deep influence on Boccaccio’s contemporaries and posterity, as best expressed by Botticelli’s famous four panels illustrating this account, created on behalf of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1483 as a gift to Giannozzo Pucci at her marriage to Lucrezia Bini of that year. Scholars have often discussed it as well; see, most recently, Stefano Giazzon, “Nastagio degli Onesti (Dec. V, 8): una lettura junghiana,” Strumenti Critici: Rivista Quadrimestrale di Cultura e Critica Letteraria 29.3[136] (2014): 527‒41, 545‒46; Giorgio Bertone, “L’eros, il dono, la donna nuda squartata (Inf. XIII, Dec. V,8 e il Botticelli),” Dante e l’Arte 1 (2014): 179‒206. 109 Albrecht Classen, The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective. Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, et al.: Lexington Books, 2015); id., “The Role of the Forest in German Literature: From the Medieval Forest to the Grünes Band. Motif Studies and Motivational Strategies for the Teaching of the Middle Ages,” Journal of Literature and Art Studies 4.3 (2014): 149‒64 (online). 110 Julia Bohnengel, Das gegessene Herz: eine europäische Kulturgeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert: Herzmäre – Le cœur mangé – Il cuore mangiato – The Eaten Heart. Saarbrücker Beiträge zur vergleichenden Literaturund Kulturwissenschaft, 16 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016). See also the contributions to Eating Others: Symbolic and Actual Anthropophagy in Medieval Storytelling. Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 2019, online at: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal:210786 (last accessed on October 7, 2019). Important proves to be, especially for its wider anthropological perspective and its connection with the idea of courtliness, Fidel FajardoAcosta, Courtly Seductions, Modern Subjections: Troubadour Literature and the Medieval Construction of the Modern World. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 376 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2010), 57‒106. 111 Albrecht Classen, “Utopian Space in the Countryside: Love and Marriage between a Knight and a Peasant Girl in Medieval German Literature. Hartmann von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich, Anonymous, ‘Dis ist von dem Heselin,’ Walther von der Vogelweide, Oswald von Wolkenstein, and Late-Medieval Popular Poetry,” Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: The Spatial Turn in Premodern Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen, with the collaboration of Christopher R. Clason. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 9 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 251‒79. See also Judith Bronfman, Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: The Griselda Story Received, Rewritten, Illustrated. Garland Studies in Medieval Literature, 11 (New York: Garland, 1994); Sandra Carapezza, “Da Oretta a Griselda: Boccaccio nella trattatistica cinquecentesca sulla novella,” Parole Rubate: Rivista Internazionale di Studi sulla Citazione 5.10 (2014): 133‒56.

112 I have dedicated an entire chapter to this and similar stories in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Albrecht Classen, Water in Medieval Literature: An Ecocritical Reading. Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, et al.: Lexington Books, 2018), ch. 8, 175‒98. 113 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and trans. by William Vantuono. Rev. ed. (1997; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999). For some recent scholarship, see J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1965; London, Henley, and Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher (Notre Dame, IN, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968); Ad Putter, An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library (London and New York: Longman, 1996); A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson. Arthurian Studies, 38 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997); Cecilia A. Hatt, God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and the Green Knight (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015). 114 Albrecht Classen, “Winter as a Phenomenon in Medieval Literature: A Transgression of the Traditional Chronotopos?,” Mediaevistik 24 (2011): 125‒50. 115 Corinne Saunders, The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993); Robin Melrose, Warriors and Wilderness in Medieval Britain: From Arthur and Beowulf to Sir Gawain and Robin Hood (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017); Albrecht Classen, “Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: A Significant Domain Ignored for Too Long by Modern Research?,” Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: The Spatial Turn in Premodern Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen, with the collaboration of Christopher R. Clason. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 9 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 1‒191; here 59‒61. 116 I wish to acknowledge valuable studies such as Pedro Martínez García, El Cara a cara con el otro: la visión de lo ajeno a fines de la Edad Media y comienzos de la Edad Moderna a través del viaje (Frankfurt a. M., Bern, et al.: Peter Lang, 2015), and Legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel (2017). The latter points out, for instance, that some modern scholars of travel literature have preferred terms such as “displacement or mobility” over ‘travel’ (10), but this does not address our critical inquiry at all and imposes a huge new filter with very little efficiency regarding the phenomenon at stake here. We can, however, fully agree with him that late medieval pilgrims viewed reading, writing, and their associated aptitudes as an essential part of self-discipline that distinguished the heroic traveler from his frivolous counterpart. In the process, they reimagined travel as an artful regulation of mind, soul, and body, oriented toward self-examination and the creation of useful geoethnographic knowledge. (13) For the Hereford Map, see now Kupfer, Art and Optics in the Hereford Map (2016). 117 Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1978). For numerous responses to his ideas, see the contributions to Worldmaking, ed. William Pencak. Critic of Institutions, 6 (New York: Peter Lang, 1996); Cultural Ways of Worldmaking: Media and Narratives, ed. Vera Nünning, Ansgar Nünning, and Birgit Neumann, in collaboration with Mirjam Horn. Concepts for the Study of Culture, 1 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010); Sisse Siggaard Jensen, Ways of Virtual World-Making: Actors and Avatars (Frederiksberg, Denmark: Roskilde University Press, 2012). As to the direct application of the notion of ‘worldmaking’ in the early modern age, see Elizabeth Spiller, Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature: The Art of Making Knowledge, 1580‒1670 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). As to contemporary applications in cultural studies, see the contributions to Worldmaking: Literature, Language, Culture, ed. Tom Clark, Emily Finlay, Philippa Kelly. FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures, 5 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017). 118 For further reflections on the larger issue, see the introduction to Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen (2018). I have predicated this entire section on the insights developed by Goodman in his famous essay. 119 Marcia Kupfer, Art and Optics in the Hereford Map: An English Mappa Mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016), 169. 120 Andrea Glaser, Der Held und sein Raum: die Konstruktion der erzählten Welt im mittelhochdeutschen Artusroman des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts. Europäische Hochschulschriften: Reihe 1, Deutsche Sprache und Literatur, 1888 (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2004). 121 Armin Schulz, Erzähltheorie in mediävistischer Perspektive: Studienausgabe. 2nd rev. ed. by Manuel Braun, Alexandra Dunkel, and Jan-Dirk Müller (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), 302.

122 Peter Czerwinski, Gegenwärtigkeit: Simultane Räume und zyklische Zeiten, Formen von Regeneration und Genealogie im Mittelalter. Exemple einer Geschichte der Wahrnehmung II (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1993). 123 Walter Haug, Literaturtheorie im deutschen Mittelalter: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts. Eine Einführung. Germanistische Einführungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995). 124 Douglas Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). 125 Hans-Joachim Behr, Literatur als Machtlegitimation: Studien zur Funktion der deutschsprachigen Dichtung am böhmischen Königshof im 13. Jahrhundert. Forschungen zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Literatur, 9 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1989). 126 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. from the German by Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series, XXXVI (1948; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 127 See, for instance, the contributions to Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA, and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1988). There is a whole legion of pertinent studies past and present. 128 Peter Dinzelbacher, “Allegorische Jenseitswanderung” (2020), concludes: Trotzdem bleibt die ontologische Grundstruktur dieselbe: Aufstieg, Erhöhung, Erlösung durch Überwindung – wer würde nicht an Sloterdijks Vertikalspannung denken? Aber der didaktische Sinn der allegorischen Jenseitswanderungen läßt sich vielleicht adäquater durch die bekannten antiken Sentenzen ausdrücken: ‘Per angusta ad augusta’ und ‘Per aspera ad astra’. (117‒18) [Nevertheless, the ontological foundational structure remains the same: climb, elevation, salvation through overcoming – who would here not think of Sloterdijk’s vertical tension (human striving toward self-fulfillment)? But the didactic sense of the allegorical tracking through the afterlife can perhaps be expressed more adequately through the well-known ancient sentences: ‘Per angusta ad augusta’ (Through difficulties to glory) and ‘Per aspera ad astra’ (Through the bitterness to the stars).] See Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern: Über Anthropotechnik (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2009). 129 Alfred Hiatt, Maps, Classical Tradition, and Spatial Play in the European Middle Ages (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2020), 291‒92. 130 Peter Dinzelbacher, Structures and Origins of the Twelfth-Century ‘Renaissance’. Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 63 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2017), Part One. He also includes ‘religious expansion’ as a characteristic of that paradigm shift. 131 See now Hiatt, Maps, Classical Tradition, and Spatial Play in the European Middle Ages (2020), who already examines texts and maps in conjunction with each other in order to figure out how much the elements of dislocation and disorder contributed to the growth of the intellectual discourse from antiquity to the Middle Ages and beyond. See my review in Mediaevistik 33 (forthcoming). 132 Juan Ruiz, The Book of Good Love, trans. Elizabeth Drayson Macdonald (London: J. M. Dent, 1999), stanza 974, verse 4. 133 See, for instance, A Companion to the “Libro de buen amor,” ed. Louise M. Haywood. Colección Támesis: A, 209 (Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2004); Louise Haywood, Sex, Scandal, and Sermon in Fourteenth-Century Spain: Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). See also the contributions to Juan Ruiz, arcipreste de Hita, y el “Libro de buen amor”: Congreso Internacional del Centro para la Edición de los Clásicos Españoles, ed. Francisco Toro Ceballos (Alcala la Real: Ayuntamiento de Alcalá la Real, Centro para la Edicion de los Clasicos Espanoles, 2004); Armando López Castro, Estudios sobre el Libro de buen amor (León, Spain: Universidad de León, 2015). 134 Christian Oertel, “Road Networks, Communications, and the Teutonic Order: A Case Study from Medieval Thuringia” (205‒29); Julius E. Crockford, “The Itinerary of Edward I of England: Pleasure, Piety, and Governance” (231‒57); Paul Webster, “Making Space for King John to Pray: The Evidence of the Royal Itinerary” (259‒86), Journeying along Medieval Routes in Europe and the Middle East (2016). 135 Johann Valentin Andreae, Peregrini in Patria errores, ed., trans., and commentary by Frank Böhling. Johann Valentin Andreae: Gesammelte Schriften, 11 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2020). For a digital version of the 1618 edition, see https://ia902809.us.archive.org/12/items/peregriniinpatri00andr/peregriniinpatri00andr.pdf (last accessed on April 2, 2020). For a biographical survey, see Martin Brecht, Johann Valentin Andreae 1586–1654. Eine Biographie. Mit einem Essay von Christoph Brecht: J. V. Andreae. Zum literarischen Profil eines deutschen

Schriftstellers im 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008); Reinhold Münster, “Utopie und gelingendes Leben im 17. Jahrhundert: Johann Valentin Andreae und Jan Amos Comenius,” Gutes Leben und guter Tod von der Spätantike bis zur Gegenwart: Ein philosophisch-ethischer Diskurs über die Jahrhunderte hinweg, ed. Albrecht Classen. Theophrastus Paracelsus Studien, 4 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 393‒402. 136 Jamie K. Taylor, “Toward Premodern Globalism: Oceanic Exemplarity in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale,” PMLA 135.2 (2020): 254‒71.

1 Beowulf’s Ways to Denmark, to the Monster, Home Again, and the Path to the Dragon’s Lair One of the major features of the greatest texts in world literature proves to be the infinite opportunity of developing new interpretations, perspectives, insights, and observations. A truly meaningful text or art work contains maybe an infinite number of imbrications, and each new generation of scholars is invited to uncover deeper, or simply different levels of meaning. Insofar as we have by now deeply realized the great significance of space in semantic, metaphysical, and spiritual terms, as commonly manifested in literary texts, we can return to many fields previously plowed already quite thoroughly and yet discover new nuggets of meaning. This is certainly the case with the Anglo-Saxon/Old English Beowulf as well, which has witnessed a steady stream of new critical studies by modern scholars. There is no doubt that here we face a true ‘classic,’ and even those who hardly care about older literature are at least familiar with the name of this extraordinary hero. Many different approaches have been tried out, many of which yielding excellent and farreaching insights about how to interpret this major epic poem, which was probably composed much earlier than previously assumed, that is, most likely around 700.1 Apart from the theme of heroism, there is clearly a sense of ethical values; the proper behavior of a leader; and the struggle against outsiders, monsters, and demons. Most recently, Francis Leneghan has also suggested that the anonymous poet, probably a monk, intended to reflect on the dynastic struggles in the Scandinavian world.2 There is no doubt about the fundamental character of this heroic epic poem, glorifying the protagonist’s extraordinary accomplishments in his struggle against the man-eating monster Grendel; then his mother; and, finally, 50 years later, the dragon.3 However, although having survived as an anonymous work, it is highly likely that the author/poet was a Christian monk and pursued specifically didactic purposes teaching young princes fundamental lessons about the role of a leader, the dangers of going always every path all alone, and a hero’s responsibilities.4 Ethics and morality play as much of a role here as the military ethos,5 and then there are, of course, the fundamental conflicts between human society and the world of monsters, and also, almost as a corollary, between the court and nature.6 The history of research on Beowulf has run its course, by now, and the shelves are filled with relevant studies on this literary masterpiece. The topics discussed tend to focus on such issues as defining the hero, defining the monstrous, the defeat of the expectation, the pattern

of “Until,” shapes of darkness, the banquet, Wiglaf’s role, the feud between Hengest and Ingeld, and the departure of the hero (death).7 Other scholars have focused primarily on the manuscript itself and the information we can plug from it about the poet, the scribe/s, the historical and cultural circumstances.8 Ruth Johnston Staver has offered a close reading of the poem, trying hard to embed it in his historical context, which we need to do anyway with every literary text, medieval or modern.9 Issues such as the style and structure, the myth and legend, religion and learning, heroes and villains, words and deeds, and similar other aspects occupy Andy Orchard, above all.10 Ioana Alexandra Bolintineanu has focused more on the space as outlined by the poet,11 while Lee C. Ramsey has dealt with Beowulf’s voyages.12 Space as an epistemological entity also matters much in recent research, as indicated by the work of Gillian R. Overing and Marijane Osborn.13 If we trace the trails pursued by Beowulf, we can easily recognize that those metaphorical and also very concrete paths in his life matter considerably more than previous scholarship had realized. After all, the protagonist is a hero who arrives from across the sea and must first make his way to King Hrothgar’s court before he can face the challenge of Grendel. Later, once he has also killed Grendel’s mother, Beowulf returns home, and even this journey deserves to be considered. In addition, his moves tracing Grendel’s mother and later the walk to the dragon’s lair also deserve closer attention because they carry epistemological meaning and contribute in a subtle but powerful way to his self-identity, his accomplishments, and his value system. After all, the hero’s actions are deeply determined also by his movements through space, which itself deserves more attention than previous scholarship has deemed necessary.14 In other words, we cannot be content with the reflections on space; instead, we also need to consider the way of how the protagonist traverses space and on what trails.15 The epic poem sets in with some historical comments about the previous king, Skyld, followed by remarks on the successor, Hrothgar, who has the fabulous hall built to glorify his kingdom and personal power. But the poet then quickly turns to Grendel, the monster coming from the swamps, the fens, and he calls him immediately “mære mearc-stapa” (103), which Fulk appropriately translates as “a well-known wanderer in the wastes” (93). Grendel arrives at the great hall, called Heorot, coming from the fens, in order to inspect this monument representative of human civilization. He espies the sleeping men, resting after the feast, and this creature, evil incarnate, immediately jumps on them and devours several of his victims, only to disappear in the darkness of the night. The next morning reveals the devastation, but Grendel’s tracks lead to nowhere, and the murder continues the following night. Naturally, Hrothgar’s men quickly decide to sleep elsewhere, so Heorot becomes empty and stands idly, a sign of steep decline of the court where the evil monster can rule freely without anyone able to resist him (95). As the narrator emphasizes, the conflict assumes the dimension of a war of annihilation, as Grendel attempts to destroy Hrothgar entirely, and thus his world. The religious message contrasting the good with evil is obvious, but we must also keep in mind how much Grendel manages to rule “the foggy heath in continual night” (97), the “mistige moras” (v. 162), whereas Hrothgar’s men are not able to defend themselves against this hellish monster who comes and goes as it pleases him, and causes massive death among Hrothgar’s men. Grendel

cannot be followed, since he operates only at night, and the trails remain untraceable because he represents evil all by itself. Although a loner – “feond man-cynnes” (v. 164) – the monster roams uninhibited and uncontrollable throughout Heorot, killing at liberty, only prevented from approaching the throne or the courtly treasures by God (“Metode,” v. 169), which clearly underscores the religious and symbolic message of the entire epic poem. By contrast, Hrothgar’s soldiers are stymied, they cannot move, do not know what to do, and seem to be frozen by death. Everything changes, however, as soon as the word has spread and the news have reached Beowulf, who is at first not introduced by name, but as Hygelac’s man (v. 190). As is characteristic for heroic epics, many things are only alluded to and emerge between the lines. The fact that this hero has learned about the terrible havoc wrought by Grendel clearly indicates a remarkable network of informants, since people traveled already at that time quite intensively and who thus connected various peoples and countries. Without any hesitation, Beowulf orders a ship to be readied for himself and meets with general approval of his plan. While Grendel is moving around in circles, so to speak, haunting the fens and Heorot, not leaving that realm, trying to establish his own control, Beowulf travels from the outside and then enters the inside in order to confront the monster. Two tangents thus meet and clash, a direct battle of wills and might. The poet takes considerable time to relate much about the voyage, not so much in geographic terms, but by way of providing comments about the ship itself and its build, the warriors, their armor and weapons, the watery foam of the waves, the speed of the ship, and the arrival in Denmark. Despite the impressionistic narrative style, the audience is clearly informed about the experience for the men who reach the new shore obviously in a triumphant mood, assured of their mission to achieve victory over Grendel. Even tiny aspects are highlighted, such as the mooring of the vessel, the drying of the war-garments, and stepping onto firm ground, where they soon encounter the sentinel of the Scyldings, who finds these visitors most interesting and impressive, greeting them politely and welcoming them in a warming fashion. The savior has arrived, so to speak, and he demonstrates immediately that open, trustworthy communication matters centrally to him, while speaking with the coast-guard, and later with King Hrothgar.16 Most importantly, Grendel is always operating all by himself, traversing his swampy world all alone, not even assisted by his mother. Beowulf, on the other hand, travels with his band of warriors, and as soon as he has arrived in the land of the Skyldings, the guardsman welcomes him, then accompanies them to the court. But before this happens, Beowulf relates his family background, mentioning his father, Ecgtheo, who was, as he emphasizes, known all over the world (103), which unmistakably means that word-of-mouth about him had spread far and wide. Even though the specific term ‘trail’ or ‘track’ does not come into play in this case, the notion of a global communicative network sustains the validity of ‘trailing’ after all. This is, actually, a common feature of epic poetry, especially in Old Norse literature (Edda), whether in Njál’s Saga, in Egil’s Saga, or in the Volsunga Saga, because the protagonists travel on well-known paths, traverse large bodies of water, and reach familiar shores, settle in far-away lands, and go hunting or embark on war-campaigns where they are surprisingly well familiar with the geography and can operate easily.

This is also the case with Beowulf, although he does not reject the guidance of the seaguard who takes them to Hrothgar’s court, full of respect, while their ship is well guarded, a proud material reminder of their origin and their intention to return home after they would have accomplished their task. The poet operates almost like a modern-day camera-man, moving around gazing into all directions, providing us with vivid images of the material aspects that serve as a kind of landmarks or a mental map because movement is the central operation, next to the exchange of words: “The men moved along quickly, marched together, until they could make out a timbered hall, stately and gold-trimmed” (107). At the same time, it is not only Beowulf and his retainers who move along but also others, who thus make an appearance and disappear again, making room for a new narrative focalization on the protagonist and the host, King Hrothgar. The sea-guard quickly leaves the host of guests and returns to the coast to observe his own obligations and duties. In a way, the narrative camera then switches and allows us to observe the band following the last stretch of the trail toward the hall. Vividly, the bard describes the gleaming of their shields, which they place outside next to the wall before they turn to the benches to sit down. They are “seaweary men” (107), and with just this one expression, this attribute, we are clearly informed about the long journey behind them, the challenges of crossing the sea. Beowulf and his men are individuals on the move; have followed a trail; and have now reached a nodal point in their existence, ready to challenge Grendel, the monster incarnate. Hrothgar’s herald welcomes them and inquires intently about their origin, especially because they do not appear as exiles and are most determined in their demeanor. As much as the subsequent exchanges, requests, and speeches reflect a rigid court ritual, no conflicts emerge, especially because Hrothgar acknowledges Beowulf as the mighty son of an old friend, and he also emphasizes that he is well-known among the Geats because seafarers had previously brought news about him. Those are, however, not always trustworthy, as the almost contemporary Old High German “Hildebrandslied” indicates (copied down ca. 820 in the monastery of Fulda), where the young man Hadubrand relies exclusively on their information that his father had died in battle. Yet, that is blatantly untrue since he is currently facing his own father on the battlefield and wants to deny his identity.17 In Beowulf, on the other hand, those who have come from across the sea emerge as the saviors against the monster Grendel, as Hrothgar comments himself: “The blessed Lord in his mercy has sent him to us, to the West-Danes” (111), that is: “us onsende” (v. 382). While Grendel was born in that land, and constitutes, oddly, a part of Hrothgar’s kingdom, destroying it from within, so to speak, Beowulf is the outsider who had to travel to Denmark to bring rescue by overcoming the monster. As Edward B. Irving has already pointed out, the two voyages, arriving in Denmark and leaving it again, and the description of the ship, all underscore the hero’s greatness and ideal qualities as a warrior and leader of his retainers: The complex combination of many elements—the skill and prudent discipline of the sailor-warrior, his requisite wary attitude toward the uncontrollable and toward luck, his imperturbable courage, the favoring wind—somehow goes toward creating the image of the hero, who gives himself, commits himself, launches himself boldly . . . onto a sea that bears him to his destination.18

No hero can exist without pursuing a trail; s/he must move forward, leave home and accept the challenge abroad, and that’s exactly what Beowulf is also undertaking, and which makes him so welcome at Hrothgar’s court, especially since there is no hope left and no one has come forward who might live up to the challenge by Grendel. Only the outsider, the one who travels the farthest, can hope to achieve this goal; this is certainly an archetypal motif. There is, of course, also the possibility that Beowulf might be killed, so he asks Hrothgar for the favor to send back to his lord Hygelac the armor, a poor substitute for the real body, which Grendel would have killed and consumed. All this is, of course, well known, but we can still emphasize here, maybe more clearly than before, how much the direction back to Sweden is always kept in mind (117). After much ado about Beowulf’s youthful contest with Breca, which Unferth, out of envy, tries to question, and then has to learn about his opponent’s truly heroic accomplishments that subsequently took him even as far as Finland (125),19 Hrothgar entrusts the hall to the mighty guest, who strips all of his weapons and armor in order to fight against Grendel on equal footing. As expected, the monster surely arrives in the middle of the night, coming from his own territory, pursuing the same old trails of destruction and murder. Grendel appears to be similarly defined as Beowulf, possessing enormous strength, which he uses to feed his cannibalistic desires, but he travels in different ways and under different circumstances: “There came in the gloomy night a shadow-walker creeping” (133). The narrator underscores with unmistakable terms that time and space matter here poignantly: “Then under misty bluffs came Grendel walking from the moor, bearing God’s wrath; the villainous raider meant to entrap a certain human being in the tall building” (133). This monster is tantamount to the moor, while Beowulf is associated with the open sea, traveling by day, whereas Grendel moves by night. When the battle begins, the monster immediately realizes the great danger and attempts to flee, wanting “to flee into the darkness” (135) or “wolde on heolster fleon” (v. 755). For Grendel, the exit is the only way out, and yet he knows that his death is near. The poet provides a wealth of relevant expressions indicating the prime importance of movement, such as: “fly off from there into the solitude of the fen” (137) or “That was a bitter visit that the harm-doer paid to Heorot” (137), or, from a slightly different perspective, “The safeguard of men did not want by any means for the deadly visitor to depart alive, nor did he consider the days of his life of use to anyone” (139). Indeed, once Beowulf has ripped Grendel’s arm out of its socket, death for the monster is near, which again is formulated in spatial terms: “Grendel had to flee sick unto death from there under the fen-bluffs, go in search of a comfortless lair; he knew all the more certainly that the end of his life had been reached” (141). Similarly, but placing greatest glory upon him, the poet also identifies Beowulf as being a journeyer, “he who had come from afar, wise and indomitable” (141) or “feorran com” (v. 825). Travel makes the man, so to speak, and the next morning many chieftains arrive to witness the miraculous deed, having “traveled from far and near across long distances to see that marvel” (141). While Heorot is defined as a space where the crucial events in the battle between Grendel and Beowulf take place, it is also the node in two central

movements, with the latter having arrived from far away, the former from just near-by, from the foggy swamps that constitute the no-man’s land surrounding the architectural marvel. However, once Grendel has been killed, the problems for Beowulf are not over at all, especially because he has no dead body as evidence of the opponent’s death. Consequently, the arrival of Grendel’s mother provides him with the additional opportunity to ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ both retrieving the body and to overcome the monstrous female.20 First, however, Beowulf’s glory is spread in all directions, meaning that his trail now concentrates into a circle, metaphorically speaking (143). Then the entire nobility meets in Heorot, drawing inward and celebrating the feat, now concentrating on the one point in that building which Grendel had so desperately tried to destroy through his cannibalistic acts of violence. Song and libation culminate this healing process, the jubilations, but the entire company is still deceived and has not paid enough attention to the many trails that lead outward and lure more dangers into the hall, especially Grendel’s mother. She is also identified by trails that were pursued originally by Cain after the murder of his brother Abel: “He departed outlawed, then marked by murder, fleeing human society, occupied the wastes” (169).21 Good and evil are clearly identified by their spatial location, outside and inside, and so Grendel’s mother, Cain’s distant descendant, takes the same path to Heorot: “Com þa to Heorote” (v. 1279), where she takes hold of one of the most noble retainers, Æshere, killing him, whereupon she disappears in the darkness of the night, but not without taking Grendel’s hand with her. Once the court council discusses the outcome and their plans, Hrothgar reflects upon the world outside of his great hall and identifies it as a world marked by unknown paths through the swamps, a territory that ordinary people cannot trod, a world hostile to people because the trails are lost there, and no humans can give directions, which reminds us in a way of the much later Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as I have discussed it in the introduction: “They inhabit hidden country, wolf-hills, windy crags, a dangerous passage through fen, where a cascading river passes down under the gloom of cliffs, a watercourse under the earth” (175).22 The alliterative “flod under foldan” (v. 1361) highlights the dramatic projection of a terrain that is forbidden to people because they cannot make their way through that labyrinth, especially not under those terrifying physical conditions. In fact, Hrothgar even warns Beowulf from entering those fens: “You are not yet acquainted with the region, that dangerous place where you can find the one who is the offender” (175). Nevertheless, which underscores Beowulf’s heroic qualities further, nothing can daunt him, so he now finally turns his attention to the real location of evil, tracing Grendel’s mother, in the dark and foggy realm of the fens, in the underbelly of earth, so to speak, and reaches the coast where the female monster had disappeared into, obviously fully aware of where to go (179). The hero’s destiny is to follow those monsters, and while they withdraw into the dark and the deep, he boldly traces them down and kills them, even under most unlikely circumstances. However, facing this uncanny pool into which no known lanes, paths, tracks, or trails would lead, Beowulf must accept a profound challenge that could easily cost him his life:

Even if a heath-roamer beset by hounds, a hart firm of antlers, makes for the forest, driven far in flight, it will sooner give up the ghost, its life on the bank, than enter and save its head, that is not a pleasant place. (177) In essence, hence, the trackless water represents a true challenge for Beowulf, but he does not shrink back from it, especially because Hrothgar dares him: “You are not yet acquainted with the region, that dangerous place where you can find the one who is the offender” (177). Curiously, however, as soon as Beowulf has then reached the bottom of the sea, and this after diving for almost a whole day down into the depth of the water, it is not himself who is then in control of the situation. Instead, Grendel’s mother realizes that an intruder has entered her realm, and at first, she takes hold of him in his virtually helpless state because she is the ruler of that space and has complete command. In fact, the hero seems incapacitated at first, cannot prevent her from carrying him to her underwater cave, but she as well is not able to hurt him because he is solidly defended by his armor. While the fierce battle between them has been discussed already many times,23 here it deserves to be mentioned that she pursues her own path and does not give Beowulf any chance to decide on the direction himself: “When she came to the bottom, the sea-wolf carried the prince of rings to her court, so that he could not, no matter how courageous he was, wield weapons” (185). This is the first time in Beowulf’s life that he himself is not in charge and has to look for alternatives to overcome this monster in a different way. Worse even, when he has finally the opportunity to wield his weapon, the sword fails him, and he can only throw it down onto the floor because it does not bite the intended victim. Only when he can grasp one of the giants’ ancient swords does he finally hold a weapon powerful enough to strike Grendel’s mother and kill her. Subsequently, he also observes Grendel’s corpse and decapitates him to prove later that he actually had slaughtered him (191). Significantly, before Beowulf returns to the surface, blood from the mother’s body flows up and makes Hrothgar’s men believe that the warrior has lost his life, whereas his own retainers hold out and wait until he actually returns to them, without being wounded. Beowulf has cleansed the world from evil, represented by those two monsters, and we can easily identify his movements down to the bottom of the sea and the subsequent return to his men as a form of catabasis, the heroic act determined by the travel to the depth of the sea and the safe re-emergence to firm land.24 The trails down in the depth of the sea are uncanny and unfamiliar to Beowulf, hence his helplessness once Grendel’s mother had seized him and carried her victim to the lair. Just as in his youth when he had entered the swimming competition with Breca, many sea monsters tried to attack him in this almost fatal enterprise, but the hero never loses his courage and his strength. Although subject to the monster’s control over him, Beowulf is protected by his armor and can thus turn the situation around and kill her. This sends the stream of blood to the surface, which serves as an ambiguous signal for the waiting men above, but it also turns into a trail for the protagonist from the bottom of the sea to the shore, especially because the water finally appears cleansed and free from sin: “Sona wæs on sunde se þe ær æt sæcce

gebad / wig-hryre wraðra, wæter up þurhdeaf; / wæron yđ-gebland eal gefælsod” (vv. 1618– 20; the mingled waves were completely cleansed, the environment improved). With the death of both monsters, the world is relieved from a long-term burden, which the poet expressed metaphorically by means of this life-threatening battle in which the hero emerges as victorious. The outsider had to come to the inside, and after he had killed the penetrator even within the grand hall, Heorot, and then the mother whom he had to trace down to the bottom of the sea, he can finally return to the court, receive all the accolades and gifts, and subsequently travel home again. In this sense, Beowulf practically operates like a savior, but not only because of his superior strength, but especially because he knew the trails, could find the directions, proved familiar enough with the unfamiliar, and could thus finish his business at the bottom of the sea. Almost poetically, the narrator emphasizes that now, finally, tranquility and clarity have returned to the entire place: “lungre alysed. Lagu drusade, / wæter under wolcnum, wæl-dreore fag” (vv. 1630–31; the lagoon grew placid, water under clouds, tinged with battle gore). While before the retainers had approached that location with dread, but also stoicism, being prepared for the worst, now they can return, carrying Grendel’s head, using “footpaths, measured the earth-way, the familiar road” (193). What was chaotic, uncanny, threatening, and simply frightful has now turned into a well-ordered natural world where trails demarcate human civilization and allow the men to make their way back home without any fear for their life. Even though the head requires four men to carry it, the entire company manages to reach Heorot in a good, triumphant mood, traversing now “level meadows” (195), while Beowulf simply follows, walking on foot, no longer in battle mood. The narrator then hastens to move to the next stage in the hero’s life because he and his retainers desire to return home, now that all dangers have been overcome: “the nobles were eager to return to their people” (205). Beowulf promises that he would offer help anytime in the future if need would call him back, but the band then departs, and there are no further worries for either party, although the partying is determined by deep sadness, as reflected by the old king’s tears who knows that he will never see this brave warrior again.25 Indeed, the voyage finds hardly any particular mention, as the narrator only comments on the coast-guard, the loading of the ship with all the treasures, and the smooth voyage: “the wind did not hinder the wave-floater from its voyage over the swells; the sea-walker proceeded, foamy-necked floated away over the waves, bound-prowed over the ocean currents” (213). After all, Beowulf has proven himself again, and he is worry-free after all the deadly struggles, which the smooth sea reflects impressively. Trailing thus can be identified as a direct mirror of the protagonist’s character, valor, determination, and abilities. The voyage represents more than only the traversing of the body of water. Instead, it symbolizes each time the hero’s determination, power, and commitment to help the Danes, on the way over, and then his glory, triumph, and esteem, on the way back. Moving from one point to another also proves to be highly revealing in another context, so when Beowulf relates to his lord Hygelac about the glory of Hrothgar’s court and remarks, for instance, about the queen and then about her daughter how they walked through the company of men during festivities and shared gifts and ale-cups. Their presence, but more so

their moving around constituted, in Beowulf’s mind, the highlight of Hrothgar’s courtly culture (219). At the same time, we also learn of ominous signs of military strife and conflicts resulting from the daughter’s bridegroom, Froda, whose movements ominously predict the terrible clashes soon to occur: they “will have the capacity to regret it when he, lordly son of Danes, walks onto the floor with the splendidly attended woman” (221). In other words, only hardly has Beowulf accomplished his task, when new wars and battles among the people appear to be imminent; evil strife continues among people, even after the monsters have been eliminated: “Now the son of one or another of the killers is walking here on this floor, priding himself on the gear, boasts of the murder and bears the valuables that you by right should possess” (221). The hero’s destiny is to follow those monsters, and while they withdraw into the dark and the deep, he boldly traces them down to wherever he can find them and kills them, even under most unlikely circumstances. However, without being able to trace their trails, Beowulf would not have easily, if at all, achieved his goals. Trails here are not simply footpaths, for instance, but they are constituted by waterways, deep waters, swamps, and other challenges. Each trail mirrors special conditions for the hero and the monsters, and the voyage itself taking Beowulf to Denmark and back again to Sweden reflects his character, his mood, and his accomplishments. But more so, focusing on the various trails traversing the fens, the courtly world, and the ocean, we recognize how much there is a mental road map for each character. But this is not all; instead, when we follow Beowulf’s life to the end, when he has to fight the dragon, we recognize once again how much the idea of trails as symbols of life emerge as most meaningful metaphors for this heroic epic poem. The dragon who will be the hero’s ultimate challenge has settled in a mountain cave, below which a “stig” (v. 2213) passes by which is unknown to people. The situation hence proves to be the same as with the two previous monsters that exist in the vicinity of people, but they are hidden because the trails have not yet been explored. Only a slave driven away from society happens to come across the dragon’s lair and steals a precious cup. As in the case of the other monsters, the dragon, as is commonly the case in other medieval narratives dealing with such a horrifying creature, is located underground, so normally hidden from people’s view. However, awakened by the intruder and the theft, this final monster makes another attempt to attack mankind and to destroy it, in metaphorical terms, of course, which calls Beowulf back into action (239).26 Just as in the case of Grendel’s mother, the hero is required to follow the trail that leads him to the monster, this time underground, but just as, if not even more, dangerous because superhumanly strong and vicious: “He went against his will to where he knew there was a certain earth-hall, a cavern under the ground near the sea-currents, the tumults of waves” (245). The struggle of good versus evil always takes place either in the dark or in hidden places, once under the water, now in a cave. However, while Beowulf was always victorious in the past, assured of his own strength, he faces now an enemy of superior strength and power, and yet the hero tries to rely exclusively on his own strength, at the risk of losing his life and endangering all of his then leaderless people. It is not clear why he refuses to accept his retainers’ help, but in terms of

the network of life determined by trails, this is simply the last track for Beowulf to pursue, so he wants to go it alone, without any outside help (253). As in the case with Grendel’s mother, who had disappeared under the water, now Beowulf has to track down the monster in the hidden abodes of nature, here made up of rocks and gushing water: “then saw arches of stone standing in the wall, a stream gushing out of them from the barrow; the brook’s current was hot with war flames” (253–55). Before, the hero had to combat the force of water, now he has to combat the force of fire, coming out of earth, while air, the last of the four elements, is behind him and sustains him. However, as has often been remarked with surprise, if not disgust, in this dangerous moment all of the retainers have fled and try to save their lives, except for Wiglaf, who finally comes forth and rushes to his lord’s side to offer his help. The poet develops all those movements with great care and outlines clearly the difference between inside and outside, life and death, the movement of the protagonist from his safe location to the site of greatest danger. While he moves into the dragon’s lair, his retainers flee from that place and seek safety. The two warriors, one old, the other young, defeat the dragon, although Beowulf is deadly wounded, which repeats, in a way, the killing of Grendel’s mother insofar as the greatest danger always rests in dark and hidden places. Subsequently, those retainers who had fled now return to join their lord, who is, however, dying from his wounds and the dragon’s poison. Parallel to the situation in Hrothgar’s kingdom, the one who enters from the outside succeeds in overcoming and destroying the evil creature, while those who stay outside appear as weak and as cowards. Wiglaf formulates his contempt unmistakably: “he had utterly and senselessly squandered those war-garments when combat encompassed him” (275). Oddly, back in Hrothgar’s kingdom, Beowulf’s retainers had been the only one who waited for their lord’s return and held out in their hope to see him again alive. Here now, in his Swedish kingdom, Beowulf’s own retainers prove to be failures since they wait until the dragon has died before they dare to enter the cave. At that point, however, Beowulf no longer needs their help and expires, having accomplished the heroic deed, with the help of Wiglaf, of course. He has, thus, completed his long path through life, both metaphorically and literally, as here he had to return to the dark and fight evil a third time, but this catabasis has no good ending, at least not for the protagonist. But his people, being leaderless from then on, now have to find their own trails, which appears as rather problematic. The outcome of all this proves to be highly ominous, as Wiglaf predicts, outlining a whole series of military strife affecting the Swedes, the Geats, and many other people: “Neither do I expect peace or amity at all with the nation of Swedes” (279) and “The bloody track of Swedes and Geats, the deadly onslaught of men, was widely apparent, how the armies roused up hostility between them” (281). The same situation had dominated the world of the Geats, with Grendel and then Grendel’s mother attacking them. The outsider Beowulf restored their peace, but now, at the end, 50 years later, he himself encountered a force that was virtually beyond his control and brought death upon him. Under Wiglaf’s leadership, the future beckons already upon them, and he then leads everyone into the dragon’s lair to inspect the hoard, a symbol of all evil (291). Finally, the protagonist’s corpse is burned in a fire, and then

they erect a monument dedicated to him, which is situated on a promontory, widely visible from the sea by the mariners: “weg-liðendum wide gesyne” (3158). Beowulf’s life thus concludes with his death and burial near the starting point where he had departed on his voyage to the Geats. He was a wanderer, and he always followed his own trails, attacking all evil, tracking down the monsters. But whereas before he could always leave the place of battle on his own, emerge triumphantly, the fight against the dragon proved to be too much, so the retainers must carry his dead body out into the open and burn it in a pyre. The epic poem concludes with Beowulf having been put to rest, no longer following his usual trails, while the retainers can only circle the mound with his remains and mourn the passing away of their lord (295). Beowulf’s linear movements directly targeting his evil opponents have come to an end, and there is nothing left to do for his soldiers but to walk around the monument, obviously fully aware of the many dangers awaiting them in the future. Without the trails trodden by Beowulf, the heroic world has become lost, so it seems, even though the demonic forces have been overcome. From here on, as the various prophecies indicate, evil rests in people, who fight each other and bring destruction upon their opponents. Altogether, as our analysis has revealed, Beowulf achieves his greatest renown by way of following his own trail, by targeting his opponents without fail, and by pursuing an absolute resolve to achieve his goals, wherever it might rest. Ironically, however, his own downfall does not occur in the distant lands, but right in his own backyard, so to speak, and this time there are no swamps, there is no body of water; instead, he has to face a fire-exhaling dragon that can melt down his own armor and weapons. Grendel’s mother would almost have been able to kill him because his sword failed on her, but Beowulf could draw from the ancient giants’ weapons. This is no longer the case in the dragon’s lair, yet there the arrival of young Wiglaf saves the situation, who guarantees the rise of the kingdom’s future. In short, the metaphor of the trail operates effectively in Beowulf, since we can track down all of the hero’s actions and operations by means of a mental map that connect him with his home, the country of his visit, the monster’s location, and the people.27 As long as Beowulf is able to follow his trails he can overcome the monsters, but once he is stuck in the cave together with the dragon, the monster overpowers him and causes the deadly wound. Literally and symbolically, Beowulf has thus reached the end of his road through life. It seems debatable whether the battle against the dragon in the cave indicates the protagonist’s own moral shortcomings insofar as he refuses to accept his retainer’s help – those appear to be too cowardly anyway; only Wiglaf comes to his lord’s rescue – and reveals his own great desire for the treasure even at the moment of his death. Fajardo-Acosta goes so far as to observe that the serpent/dragon serves as a mirror that “reflects Beowulf’s spiritual condition.” But why would the protagonist have turned into a copy of the dragon which is “simultaneously attractive and repulsive,” whereas the hero himself “has become [the same] over the years ever since his encounter with the berserker Grendel in Heorot hall.”28 I would suggest that a reading following Beowulf’s trails throughout his life that eventually end in the dragon’s cave helps us more in understanding the epistemological process here at work. No hero can enter the underworld and fight monsters numerous times and gain the upper hand

without any scars or suffering death. Beowulf ultimately dies because he has run out of space or tracks to turn to and basically ends his life with a final struggle in the underground location. The retainers can only carry his dead body from that ominous location and try to figure out for themselves how to secure an existence for themselves in a highly dangerous, militarily very unstable world. However, there is also a strong sense that Beowulf has not died in vain, that he has walked the right way for his people, and has followed the trail to the bitter end which liberates his people from the monsters and allows them all, under the new leadership of Wiglaf, to return to a safe existence. Without pushing this issue excessively, we might even assume that the Christian monk/s who recorded this poem had the biblical statement in John 14:6 in mind, a quote by Christ Himself: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Other Germanic epic poems such as the Old Saxon Heliand (ca. 830) operate even more explicitly with this model, facilitating the introduction of Christian ideas into the culture and mentality of the pagan people.29 Those were highly mobile at any rate, and utilizing the notion of the trail as the critical pathway for the protagonist in Beowulf to imitate Christ as the messiah obviously served the intended purpose of this work exceedingly well.

Notes 1 The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, ed. Leonard Neidorf (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2014). 2 Francis Leneghan, The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Studies (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2019). 3 Geoffrey Russom, “Historicity and Anachronism in Beowulf,” Epic and History, ed. David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub. The Ancient World: Comparative Histories (Malden, MA, Oxford, and Chichester, West Sussex: Blackwell, 2010), 243–61. 4 Edward Currie, “Political Ideals, Monstrous Counsel, and the Literary Imagination in Beowulf,” Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 24 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, forthcoming);cf. also Larry D. Benson, “The Originality of Beowulf,” Contradictions: From Beowulf to Chaucer: Selected Studies of Larry D. Benson, ed. Theodore M. Andersson and Stephen A. Barney (New York: Scolar Press, 1995), 32–69; for toponymic research, see Leonard Neidorf, “Beowulf before Beowulf: Anglo-Saxon Anthroponymy and Heroic Legend,” Review of English Studies 64 (2013): 553–73. 5 Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, The Condemnation of Heroism in the Tragedy of Beowulf: A Study in the Characterization of the Epic. Studies in Epic and Romance Literature, 2 (Lewiston, NY, Queenston, and Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989). 6 Fantastische Monster: Bilderwelten zwischen Grauen und Komik, ed. Peggy Große, G. Ulrich Großmann, and Johannes Pommeranz (Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2015); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Postscript: The Promise of Monsters,” The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman with Peter J. Dendle. Ashgate Research Companion (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 449–64; here 455–61. 7 Edward B. Irving, Jr., A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1968). 8 Kevin Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript (Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, 1981). 9 Ruth Johnston Staver, A Companion to Beowulf (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2005). 10 Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003). 11 Ioana Alexandra Bolintineanu, “Towards a Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative,” Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2012. 12 Lee C. Ramsey, “The Sea Voyages in Beowulf,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971): 51–59. For mytho-poetic and comparative perspectives, see also A. S. Cook, “Beowulfian and Odyssean Voyages,” Transactions of the

Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 28 (1926): 1‒20; André Crepin, “Les Expeditions de Beowulf,” Voyage, quete, pelerinage dans la litterature et la civilisation medievales, ed. CUER MA. Senefiance, 2 (Aix-en-Provence: CUER MA, 1976), 155–66. 13 Gillian R. Overing and Marijane Osborn, Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World (Minneapolis, MS, and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 14 Here I will quote from The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts and The Fight at Finnsburg, ed. and trans. by R. D. Fulk. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2010). Cf. also Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition, trans. by Seamus Haney (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2000). Of course, there are many good other editions and translations, especially the one by Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A Verse Translation, trans. Seamus Heaney, ed. Daniel Donoghue. 2nd ed. (2000; New York: Norton, 2019); see the excellent review by Alison Elizabeth Killilea in The Medieval Review, online, 19.12.16. For early efforts to incorporate the notion of space into the interpretation of Beowulf and related texts, see Cameron Hunt McNabb, “‘Eldum Unnyt’: Treasure Spaces in Beowulf,” Neophilologus 95.1 (2011): 145‒64; Justin T. Noetzel, “Monster, Demon, Warrior: St. Guthlac and the Cultural Landscape of the Anglo-Saxon Fens,” Comitatus 45 (2014): 105‒31. Most important, however, proves to be the study by Fabienne L. Michelet, Creation, Migration, & Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 15 Surprisingly, particularly Beowulf does not receive any focused attention in the new approach to world literature created by Ken Seigneurie. There are some small references to this epic poem, but no dedicated article. 601 CE to 1450 CE, ed. Christine Chism. A Companion to World Literature, ed. Ken Seigneurie. Vol. II (Hoboken, NJ and Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley & Sons, 2020). 16 I have examined this passage already once before in light of modern communication theory; Albrecht Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung. Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, 1 (Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 2002), 1–6. 17 Altdeutsche Literatur. Mit altniederdeutschen Textbeispielen. Auswahl mit Übertragungen und Kommentar, ed. Horst Dieter Schlosser (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2004), 68–71. 18 Irving, A Reading of Beowulf (1968), 51. 19 For a psychologizing reading, see Judy Anne White, Hero-Ego in Search of Self: A Jungian Reading of Beowulf. Studies in the Humanities: Literature–Politics–Society, 26 (New York, Washington, DC, et al.: Peter Lang, 2004), 10– 15. 20 Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, “The Riddle of Beowulf,” In Geardagum 15 (1994): 1–27. 21 Ruth Melnikoff, “Cain’s Monstrous Progeny in Beowulf: Part I – Noachic Traditions,” Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979): 143–62; id., “Cain’s Monstrous Progeny in Beowulf: Part II – Post-Deluvian Survivals,” Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1980): 183–97; Oliver F. Emerson, “Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English,” Publication of the Modern Language Association of America 21 (1906): 831–929. 22 Rod Giblett, “Theology of Wetlands: Tolkien and Beowulf on Marshes and Their Monsters,” Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 19.2 (2015): 132‒43. 23 See, for instance, Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (2003), 64–65, 68–69, et passim; M. Wendy Hennequin, “Her Own Hall: Grendel’s Mother as King,” Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe 17 (2017): 13‒26; Paul S. Langeslag, “Monstrous Landscape in Beowulf,” English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 96.1–2 (2015): 119‒38; Dana M. Oswald, “‘Wigge under Waetere’: Beowulf’s Revision of the Fight with Grendel’s Mother,” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21.1 (2009): 63‒82. 24 Warren Tormey, “The Journey within the Journey: Catabasis and Travel Narrative in Late Medieval and Early Modern Epic,” Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Explorations of Worldly Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 22 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 585–621. For more global, maybe too generalist perspective, see Earl R. Anderson, Understanding Beowulf as an Indo-European Epic: A Study in Comparative Mythology (Lewiston, NY, Queenston, Ont., and Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010). 25 Albrecht Classen, “Friends and Friendship in Heroic Epics: With a Focus on Beowulf, Chanson de Roland, the Nibelungenlied, and Njal’s Saga,” Neohelicon 38.1 (2011): 121–39. 26 Timo Rebschloe, Der Drache in der mittelalterlichen Literatur Europas. Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2014), 158–71. 27 G. V. Smithers, “Destiny and the Heroic Warrior in Beowulf,” Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. James L. Hosier. Janua Linguarum: Series Maior, 37

(The Hague: Mouton; Academia Publishing, 1970), 65–81; Joyce Tally Lionarons, “Beowulf: Myth and Monsters,” English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 77.1 (1996): 1–14. 28 Fajardo-Acosta, The Condemnation of Heroism (1989), 115. 29 Wolfgang Haubrichs, “Heliand und Altsächsische Genesis,” Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, ed. Herbert Jankuhn. 2nd ed. Vol. 14 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 297–308; for an English translation, see The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel. A trans. and commentary by G. Ronald Murphy, S.J. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), with useful commentary, xiii‒xviii; cf. also his critical analysis supporting this perspective, The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth Century Heliand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Cf. now Paul Battles, “Old Saxon ‒ Old English Intertextuality and the ‘Traveler Recognizes His Goal’ Theme in the ‘Heliand’,” Old English and Continental Germanic Literature in Comparative Perspectives, ed. Larry J. Swain (New York: Peter Lang, 2019), 5‒37.

2 Herzog Ernst A Traveler Explores the Eastern World: Herzog Ernst and His Efforts to Find Himself through Travel. Or: Trails through a Political Jungle and an Exotic World in the East

Trails matter fundamentally in all literary narratives because they provide directions, a framework, a mental map for all events taking place within the fictional (or non-fictional) world. There are no actions, no events, no happenings, and not even decisions without a network of tracks or paths, or without an imaginary map of the many available or conceivable directions that can be taken. Trails represent the protagonists as much as the latter determine those trails. For our interpretive approaches, it proves to be extremely helpful if we understand the time and space coordinates that determine the narrative framework, particularly in medieval narratives, the focus of this study. But trails do not need to be concrete or physical, as we have already seen in the introductory chapter and as we will observe in the following sections; they are also as much spiritual, maybe fantastic trajectories for the protagonists, and this both in modern and pre-modern literature.1 This chapter applies this theoretical concept for an innovative analysis of one of the most important contributions to the history of medieval German literature. Much has been written about Herzog Ernst and his many adventures both in imperial Germany and on his extensive travels throughout the mysterious East. This Middle High German Spielmannsepos, if that is the right term, from ca. 1220 (at least according to the three manuscripts a, b, and c that form the basis for version B) enjoyed a tremendous popularity throughout the following centuries, both in German and in Latin,2 apart from several other vernacular languages. The political conflicts between the Bavarian Duke Ernst and his stepfather, Emperor Otto, led to massive movements and military confrontations, so it is quite natural that scholars have examined both the historical implications pertaining to the situation in twelfth-century Germany and the global concept about the exotic Orient where Ernst arrives after many difficult challenges that could have easily cost his life. Here the canon of monsters, as already outlined by Herodotus (fifth century B.C.E.) and which was much enjoyed throughout the Middle Ages in many different media, is fully displayed, but since Ernst always proves to be in full command and can overcome all of the enemies, monstrosity itself does not emerge as a real threat.3 It is mostly just a curiosity, and not a serious matter because the protagonist almost always proves his superiority. The Middle High German anonymous version of Herzog Ernst belongs to one of the most popular secular verse narratives in the history of medieval German literature, as documented

by the many manuscripts and even incunabula, then early modern prints of various versions. The poem continued to appeal to audiences well into the nineteenth century (if not even until today).4 Numerous late medieval German poets include references to this pre-courtly romance, such as Ulrich von Etzenbach (Alexander), Wernher der Gärtner (Helmbrecht), the anonymous poet of Reinfried von Braunschweig, and Reinmar von Zweter.5 At one point, the Middle High German text was even translated into Latin, obviously because it proved to be valuable also for the learned audience in the late Middle Ages. Once the printing press had been invented, Herzog Ernst quickly entered the book market and thus continued to be highly influential over the next centuries. Some scholars have recognized here most intriguing opportunities to uncover elements of the medieval unconsciousness,6 while others have investigated the function of the monsters as catalysts of epistemological endeavors in the high Middle Ages.7 This certainly exciting text, which represents a literary masterpiece for many different reasons, is determined by the combination of its strongly fictional elements, providing entertainment that can appeal even to modern audience, with a strong historical background. After all, the poet’s efforts to reflect on political entities, territories, and spaces of operation are quite significant as well.8 Herzog Ernst proves to be a highly meaningful mirror of the political discourse concerning Emperor Otto I, reflecting on bitter conflicts between the great lords in imperial Germany and the emperor.9 It is, more specifically, quite likely that the composer of the version contained in ms. B reflected directly on the assassination of King Philipp of Swabia in Bamberg in 1208, although we then face the difficulty of correlating this version with the one in ms. A, composed in ca. 1170/1180, in which other historical conflicts might have served as a source, such as the fight between Emperor Otto I and his son Liudolf or between Emperor Conrad II and his stepson Ernst.10 The most elegant solution for this dilemma might be the realization that the original narrative concept, created sometime in the late twelfth century, proved to be virtually archetypal, engaging with the ‘classical’ conflict between father-in-law and stepson within a political context. Future generations could then easily adapt this account for their own purposes, reflecting on ever-new conflicts within the various dynasties during the high and late Middle Ages. Previous scholarship has tended to identify Herzog Ernst as a Spielmannsepos, i.e., as a work composed by a wandering minstrel, but we prefer today to recognize this narrative as the work of a learned, probably clerical poet who enjoyed considerable freedom to draw from the tradition of heroic epics in the vein of the Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) and also travelogues,11 who thus managed to create an imaginary, highly attractive, but also deeply meaningful verse narrative with many political and historical implications. Simone Hacke recently made even the effort to correlate the voyage of the protagonist with the trails outlined in the famous Ebstorfer Weltkarte (mappa mundi), thus correlating this narrative with the geographical knowledge in the high Middle Ages.12 Here I want to draw on this narrative poem in order to pursue the same investigation of the identificatory and meaning-creating role of trails which the protagonist, Duke Ernst, uses in order to achieve his goals in life. His trails prove to be highly complex and even contradictory at times, moving first in circles, and later in progressive lines forward, but

those are then combined with the circle once again concluding the narrative. In other words, the hero’s movements throughout Germany, then in the eastern Mediterranean, subsequently in the world of monsters, thereupon in the Holy Land, and finally back home in the Empire suggest that the poet aimed at conveying relevant ideas about human life and deep messages about the fundamental values in all of existence conveyed through the text. Whereas before Herzog Ernst has been the subject of intensive analysis regarding political history, the encounter with the world of monsters, the problem of treason, the Orient, and precourtly ideals, here I will take into closer view the way how the poet projects the protagonist pursuing trails, following paths, losing his way, retracing his direction, and recovering the way toward home once again. In this chapter I want to demonstrate that Ernst’s many movements are determined by profound significance insofar as they, that is, the specific trails, determine his character, his life, and the circumstances of his many military experiences and adventures. Most German medievalists are certainly familiar with this extraordinarily popular text, which could easily become the basis for a modern blockbuster movie, if the film industry listened to some recommendations by recent medievalist scholars,13 but others might need at least an introduction; so, let us begin with a brief summary as a basis for our subsequent analysis. Ernst’s mother, duchess of Bavaria, is, when we meet her, widowed, but then she marries the German Emperor Otto – historically confirmed as Otto I the Great (r. as king 936–973, as emperor since 962). Ernst himself, following his mother to the throne, thus the new duke of Bavaria, enjoys a very good relationship with his stepfather, both in personal and political terms, until a jealous competitor, the Count Heinrich/Henry of the Palatinate, embarks on a campaign to malign his opponent, charging him with treason.14 He goes so far as to insinuate to Otto out of malicious jealousy that Ernst secretly intends to organize a coup d’état and to kill the emperor because he regards himself as superior to the emperor and wants to usurp the throne. Undoubtedly, Heinrich thus ironically himself commits serious treason by accusing his enemy with the very same crime, and although there is no evidence for this evil claim, the emperor easily accepts the accusation, obviously because he is lacking in character strength himself and proves to be fearful and insecure.15 As was quite common in high and late medieval narratives, the emperor is characterized as weak, manipulable, and irascible, whereas the young duke, certainly idealized by the narrator, operates in a circumspect manner, resolute, energetic, and self-conscious.16 This finds its confirmation in the numerous iterations of the literary treatment of the famous Emperor Charlemagne across the European landscape. Although highly praised, even idolized by countless chroniclers and poets (Chanson de Roland, or Priest Konrad’s Rolandslied; both late twelfth century), late medieval authors increasingly viewed this famous figure rather critically and often cast him as a manipulable, irascible, impetuous, or even vicious ruler who could not be trusted.17 Soon war breaks out, and Ernst defends himself with all his might. At one point he even tries to attack the emperor himself and to assassinate him. He manages, one late evening, to enter the imperial camp near Speyer on the Rhine without being recognized by anyone. Heinrich and Otto are at that moment together in a private chamber to discuss their further steps in this major conflict, when Ernst breaks into the room and is able to decapitate his

personal opponent, Heinrich, whereas the emperor can escape, maybe because his stepson hesitates to kill him. Ernst and his men make their way out of the camp and disappear in the darkness of the night. This bold and outrageous attempt to avenge himself incenses Otto even further, so he intensifies his military efforts against the Bavarian Duke, although he is married to his mother. After years of fighting, Ernst realizes that he is running out of resources and is in danger of ruining his entire country, Bavaria. Wisely, he then decides to leave Germany and to go on a crusade to avoid the emperor’s boiling fury against him, which begins to threaten the lives of his own subjects all over Bavaria. This concludes the first segment of Herzog Ernst. Subsequently, Ernst embarks on his journey, taking the land route down to Constantinople where he is welcomed with open arms. However, as soon as he has left that famous city on a ship, accompanied by a whole armada, catastrophe strikes, and he loses all the other ships in a major storm. Months pass during which the small company is lost in a fog, and they would almost have starved to death when the weather finally clears and they manage to reach a new land, Grippia. The coastal city, however, is completely deserted, which makes it possible for the company to take all the supplies they need from the castle inside. Upon a second visit, Ernst and his advisor Wetzel explore the city further and discover its enormous luxury.18 Even though they enjoy a bath and rest in sumptuous beds, they suddenly realize that the people of the city return, but they belong to a monstrous race, being hybrid creatures, half human and half cranes. These Grippians have come back from a military operation against the king of India, whom they killed along with his wife, and whose daughter they have kidnapped because the ruler of Grippia wants to marry her. Having observed the young woman’s misery from their hiding place, Ernst and his advisor attempt to rescue the poor woman, but she is stabbed to death in that process, and terrible fighting break out. The protagonist and his advisor then barely make it out of the city, and they escape with only a small group of their men to their ship, but only after they have struggled through a hostile army of Grippians, losing most of their own warriors. Hardly have the travelers reached the open sea, when they run into the next danger because their ship is drawn invariably toward a magnetic mountain, a popular literary motif which we encounter again in works such as the anonymous Kudrun or Reinfried von Braunschweig. The magnetic mountain also appears in the Arabic tradition, such as in the stories contained in the collection of One Thousand and One Nights, so we can be certain that here we face a universal theme, a significant landmark on the mental map, a dangerous turning point on the travel to the exotic East, or to the world of monsters.19 Early modern geographers such as Gerhard Mercator (1512–94) were still convinced of the existence of such a dangerous mountain, which they called “Rupes nigra.” The English scholar Richard Hakluyt also addressed it in his The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589), which additionally confirms how much pre-modern writers did not distinguish specifically between fictional and factual accounts and attempted rather to understand the noetic connections among all physical manifestations, all determined by a trail or a network of trails.20

Ernst and his companions unavoidably slam with their ship into the harbor, and then have no way to leave that island again, until Wetzel conceives of a plan through which the remaining small group of men are rescued by means of the griffins who carry the seemingly dead bodies to the nest with their youngsters as food. Thus, they get away from the island and the magnetic mountain and finally kill the griffins. However, then they are stuck once again, not being able to leave the new location until they build a raft that takes them on a subterranean river through a mountain. Once having arrived on the other side, they reach the land of monsters, where Ernst and his men are friendly welcomed and can recover. Subsequently, they serve the king of the cyclops, defeat many of his enemies, and can eventually leave again, reaching the Holy Land, where they achieve a great victory over the Muslims. Finally, having accomplished all of his goals, Ernst is able to travel back home to Germany where he manages, through some deception and skillful subterfuge, to achieve peace with the emperor who then embraces him once again, even though rather hesitatingly, and accepts him as his loyal vassal. As is evident throughout, this goliardic epic poem is deeply determined by the protagonist’s movements throughout his life as presented here; there is no stasis, and only once he has returned home and re-established his original friendship with the emperor does the narrative come to an end, and so does Ernst’s constant traveling. Following, I want to identify what kind of trails the poet projected in order to create a semantically meaningful mental map, maybe parallel to the more or less contemporary world maps. Our analysis will expose immediately the extent to which the poet predicated much of his narrative material on the notion of movement because Ernst’s adventures would find easy confirmations through those reports presented by other heroes who roamed the distant worlds and also experienced many adventures of life-threatening nature: “die in fremden rîchen / dicke sorclîchen / varent durch vermezzenheit” (23–25; who often traverse foreign countries arrogantly accepting many dangers). The poet unmistakably underscores the universal observation that I have noted numerous times in the introduction that life is a journey, and in order to understand the various steps, we need to trace carefully the various trails that cross the protagonist’s life or that he pursues in order to achieve his goals. Considering Ernst’s young age at first, it is worth noting that his mother sends him abroad to learn foreign languages, not only French and Latin, but even Greek, which finds its parallel in young Tristan’s experiences as a child and teenager in Gottfried von Straßburg’s version (ca. 1210). Princes in the Middle Ages were regularly required to study a variety of foreign languages, so they made their rounds at different courts and schools, or received the necessary tutors.21 Ernst quickly acquires an international reputation because of his rank and his learning, his mobility and cultural sensitivity (82–85). The narrator makes great efforts to sing a song of highest praise for his ethical and moral ideals and values, which form the foundation for his almost global network in political terms. In fact, this young man rises rapidly as a major leader both of his own people and many warriors abroad. He has traveled around much and has gained an international reputation, which finds its confirmation later when he has to leave Bavaria to escape Emperor Otto’s overbearing military threats. When he arrives in Constantinople, he is immediately warmly welcomed and receives all the help necessary for

him to voyage to the Holy Land (2037–2109). The reports about his military accomplishments, about his resolve and effectiveness in holding out against the emperor have reached Constantinople and have bestowed a kind of nimbus on this young hero. In fact, once he is about to leave that city, many Greeks follow him, so that his ship is accompanied by 50 others, all out of admiration and respect for this charismatic individual. Tragically, all those ships will suffer shipwreck as a result of the massive storm that engulfs them soon after their departure, but this does not change anything in the general framework determining Ernst’s early life. His trails are at first always clearly marked, they take him to the highest positions within society, and he always appears moving in familiar territory, at least in the first part of the narrative. It is most likely that he had studied and learned Greek in Constantinople, so this time he simply returns to the same location of his previous stay. The news about his military struggles have reached the Byzantine king long before Ernst’s arrival, and they underscore his universal fame. In short, the protagonist is moving around on well-trodden trails and travels back and forth in a world that is determined by a network of acquaintances, family connections, friendships, and shared values and ideals, bridging the gulf between the Latin West and the Greek East. Nevertheless, we still have to keep in mind that the protagonist has by now left his home country and has embarked on a new route that takes him even far beyond the territory so well known to him since his childhood. In other words, only when Ernst moves away from Constantinople, and enters, by accident, the world of monsters does he realize that he has left all previously known countries behind and must struggle hard to come to terms with the new trails and tracks, many of which are not even passable for human beings, so it seems. As much as this entertaining pre-courtly romance tries to get the audience excited and deeply interested in the political and military events in Bavaria and in the Holy Roman Empire, a major focus also rests on the establishment of personal individuality, political independence, and the creation of networks of influence. For Ernst, this is all possible because of his great abilities to reach out to his social context, to appeal to high and low everywhere, and because he clearly pursues the traditional values of a good ruler. As we will later notice, his outstanding linguistic abilities help him to establish good contacts, even with a monstrous people, and thus to utilize each situation to his own advantage.22 The same applies to the emperor, however, despite his evil character, who consults with his advisors, communicates more or less well with his social environment, and succeeds in protecting the empire and in expanding its role and influence. This proves to be true at least in the early part of the narrative. Otto sends one of the high-ranking princes to Bavaria to woo for the hand of the widowed duchess, who happily accepts this offer to marry the emperor, and the latter then also extends his friendship to Ernst, whom he wants to adopt as his future stepson. The movements from the imperial court to the Bavarian court function smoothly without irritations, disruptions, or conflicts, and Otto’s plans quickly become reality, and this to the satisfaction of all sides because the communication has flowed well without any misunderstandings. The messengers have traveled back and forth, and the written letters achieve all the desired outcomes, especially because the messages are formulated in all clarity and without hidden agendas. On

the side, less than 100 years later, the very opposite situation occurs in the anonymous sentimental romance Mai und Beaflor (ca. 1290), where the jealous queen falsifies the letters in order to get her hated daughter-in-law killed. Fortunately for the married couple, ultimately the truth is revealed, which leads to Mai committing matricide, and although he believes that he has lost his wife and son, ultimately, they are all reunified and assume the imperial throne of Rome.23 The anonymous poet operated intensively with trailing which is virtually equated with the notion of following one’s destiny. We might wonder, just as in Herzog Ernst, to what extent the trail determines the protagonist or the protagonist the trail. The narrator does not particularly highlight the travels by the messengers, but their function proves to be critical after all because they establish mutual confidence and trust or indicate through their efforts what kind of political network exists.24 By way of the free flow of information, the political and personal connections are established, and apparently close bonds tie the emperor not only with his future wife but also with Duke Ernst, whom he treats like his own biological son (608–12). In this early part of Herzog Ernst, the emperor emerges as an ideal ruler who governs with great skill, knows how to reach out to the great lords of his empire, is aware about the importance of having strong domestic and foreign politics, and commands a full awareness of the geopolitical dimensions of his empire. However, as we know already, Otto soon loses this nimbus because he proves to be too weak in character, too susceptible to outside manipulations, and as soon as the Count of the Palatinate, Heinrich, has begun to malign Ernst, whose great influence on the emperor believes he has to fear, the harmonious relationship between stepfather and stepson breaks apart, and is replaced by hostilities. Heinrich, above all, uses the opportunity to wage a ruinous war campaign in Bavaria, but Ernst at first tries to consult with his advisors about a reasonable response, and reaches out to his mother, but she proves to be helpless. For our consideration, however, it matters that again a messenger is sent out who reaches the empress, which indicates how much the narrative events are deeply determined by movements from one protagonist to another, whether those are carried out in secret or in public. In the meantime, Heinrich tries to provoke Ernst to fight back against him, which would prove his ‘guilt’ to the public, whereas Wetzel advises his lord to attempt diplomatic strategies, that is, to pursue different paths to appeal to the emperor to abstain from further military actions and to return to the negotiation table. All attempts even by the imperial princes to sway the emperor in favor of Ernst and to abstain from this revengeful warfare against the innocent duke of Bavaria fail, and the campaign of destruction continues for six long years, until Ernst finally realizes that all of his efforts to defend himself effectively begin to fail because the imperial armies overwhelm his own limited resources. Instead, the young duke resorts to a secret strategy, once he has learned of an imperial diet held in the city of Speyer on the Rhine. Whereas before he had followed ordinary trails, in the open, at daylight, now, in his desperation and nearhelplessness, he resorts to the darkness of the night and the surprise of his move to penetrate to the very core of the imperial court where he can indeed encounter Otto in private deliberations. Together with Wetzel, Ernst rushes into the unprotected room, where he

manages to decapitate Heinrich, whereas the emperor can escape into a chapel. However, Ernst does not pursue him there, obviously out of respect for the sacred space that grants everyone secure asylum. Yet, he berates the dead Heinrich and chastises him for his evil character and mean strategy aimed against him. The protagonist does not move any further, allows the emperor to hide safely in the chapel, and instead he returns home without anyone at first learning anything about this assassination attempt. This trail has led Ernst far toward his goal, but it has also cemented his own condemnation because now the emperor is more resolved than ever before to combat this deadly enemy, as he perceives him. So, once the scene has cleared, Otto pushes his war efforts against Ernst so much forward that the young protagonist loses all of his resources and has to accept that his own position has been so weakened that there is no viable option for him to resist any longer. He must seek a different route, a new trail, a pathway out of the political and military cul-desac. Whereas until this moment in time the protagonist had operated in a rather traditional vein, moving from his own dukedom, Bavaria, to the court of the emperor, following his own mother’s path to the rank of empress as Otto’s wife, the false accusations ultimately destroy those trails and make it impossible for him to maintain the previously constructive relationship with the emperor. Moreover, because of the imperial princes’ obligations to Otto, they cannot support him despite their best efforts. In fact, they are even forced to join the emperor’s army and to fight against the Bavarian duke. In very clear geophysical terms, Ernst’s trails from southern Germany to the north and west of the German empire are simply cut off, and he can only look for alternatives in a different direction. In fact, he is basically forced out of his home territory, Bavaria, and must leave Germany altogether. The narrator provides many valuable comments about this travel, which is called a “mervart” (1974; voyage), but the subsequent remarks make it clear that he embarks on a ship together with a large army of men that takes them all down the river Danube all the way to the kingdom of Hungary, where they are received in a most honorable fashion (2010–27). This might be an echo of the heroic epic poem Nibelungenlied (1200), where the Burgundians also travel from the Rhine (there, however, from Worms) down through Bavaria and Lower Austria to reach Hungary. However, there, they face their doom and all die in battle, including their hosts, their sister Kriemhilt, and virtually the entire Hunnish court. Duke Ernst, by contrast, continues far beyond that location and reaches the eastern Mediterranean, following the usual pilgrimage or crusading route. From Hungary, the company continues its travel overland through Bulgaria, from where they finally reach the territory of the Greek-Byzantine empire (2076). The welcome in Constantinople could not be better, especially because Ernst has gained tremendous respect and admiration far and wide, and so also abroad, for his valiant military efforts fighting against his own stepfather. They spend three weeks in this splendid city and are treated royally, until they are ready for the voyage across the sea in order to reach the Holy Land. The Greeks are so excited about their guest that a huge group of people join him traveling on 50 other ships, all deeply joyful about this great opportunity to accompany Ernst on his crusade (2115–22). Tragically, of course, they all drown in shipwrecks following a massive storm, and only Ernst and his company of German knights survive, although they are also lost in a world “dâ weder sît noch ê / nie dehein mensche hin kam” (2066–67; where no

person ever had roamed and where no one was ever to come). They survive, of course, also this adventure, but only to approach the kingdom of Grippia, the first people belonging to the race of monsters. While the trails back in Germany had become lost to Ernst because of the military conflict, now he has lost his trail once again because nature is opposed to him and drives his ship into a foreign world that would best be described as the product of literary imagination.25 Back home, the usual trails had become blocked to him, which left him only one way out, toward the eastern European world. From Constantinople, he could have fairly easily reached the Holy Land, following the usual route well organized by the Venetian and other shipping companies, but Ernst chose the land route from Bulgaria to the Greek capital, and now, once he has entered the sea world, he becomes entirely lost and will need much time and effort to return to the relatively familiar Holy Land. The situation in Grippia, however, also indicates that this traveler faces severe difficulties in orienting himself and mapping out the best route in his life. Grippia proves to be a virtually ideal city, an urban dream come true in architectural terms,26 and yet it also misleads Ernst and his advisor Wetzel because it proves to be overly attractive, even though the absence of all the inhabitants should have served them as a warning signal, apart from the fact that a festive meal is prepared for those who can be expected to return soon for a wedding party. Contrary to all of his previous circumspection, carefulness, and strategic planning, here in face of Grippia the protagonist finds himself suddenly on a most dangerous trail that could easily lead to his own death and that of all of his men. The luxurious city seduces them to reenter and to explore the beauty and pleasant urban space without care about possible dangers since the inhabitants are certainly coming back. Granted, even though Grippia is new territory for Ernst and Wetzel, they do not get lost and only examine ever new palaces and rooms, eventually being suddenly surprised by the returning Grippian army under the leadership of their king. The city thus turns nearly into a death trap for the two men, although they prove to be considerably stronger and better armed than those monstrous creatures. However, the huge number of Grippians both within the city and then also outside would have almost led to a disastrous outcome, as these European travelers barely make it back to their ship and thus manage to escape, not without having lost scores of their own men. The next stage, the imprisonment on the island with the magnetic mountain, indicates that Ernst and his men follow trails that are beyond their own control. Whereas before, back in Germany, the Bavarian duke knew how to manage his own affairs, moving to wherever his presence was required, here, in this mysterious sea somewhere in the East, the magnetism entirely overpowers him and his men. If the few surviving members of their company then had not found the cunning strategy to utilize the griffins to carry them away from the mountainous island, they all would have perished. Physical might and intelligent planning hold the balance here, but Ernst increasingly manages to take charge of his own life and direct his men to carry out his orders and instructions.27

Most significantly, once having been saved from the effects of magnetism, these adventurers are lost once again and do not find a trail that could take them beyond the daunting mountains. Wetzel, however, suggests building a raft and thus to travel on the river through the mountain, which indeed proves to be the only reasonable, though dare-devil solution and saves them all from certain death. This journey through the mountain could easily be interpreted in psychological terms, with the protagonist finally reaching a new world where he can demonstrate his ultimate growth into full adulthood.28 Although quite unusual even for a medieval romance, this voyage through the mountain constitutes a trail, and there are good reasons to compare it with the classical catabasis, although there is no sense of an inferno, despite the darkness and the glow of the gemstones in the ceiling.29 Once the group of Ernst and his men have come out of the mountain, they are welcomed by a count who treats them most hospitably, and later they are moved into the king’s service. However, all those people are monstrous, but not horrifying creatures; they only have monstrous features and yet demonstrate the same courtly manners as the nobles and knights back home. Ernst and his people have thus found their own trail into the mysterious East and there they manage to cope well, quickly proving their superior chivalric and knightly skills and education, closely cooperating with those monstrous people called Arimaspi. We hear then of various war campaigns in which Ernst and his men support their king, and there are no further external threats, although Ernst desires, after a while, to return home. The narrative then moves fairly quickly to its conclusion because Ernst escapes secretly with some merchants, reaches the Holy Land, fights in a crusade, and then is able to return home, where he can finally re-establish his former good relationship with the emperor. But we need also to keep in mind that he operates much more successfully in the mysterious East than in the well-known West. This is the more surprising in that he is much less familiar with the geophysical territory there and that he has to fight monstrous enemies, including giants. But each time, back home and now in the new world, the fighting takes place, so to speak, in a circular space. However, the time in the land of monsters follows after he has traversed large distances, has crossed vast bodies of water, and after he has traveled through the mountain, emerging there, more or less, as a new person, more mature and highly experienced. Of course, he is then stuck in the exotic East for some time, but not as a prisoner. He is obligated to fight on behalf of the ruler of the Arimaspi, a monstrous, but certainly courtly people, so he can establish himself and gain status, fame, and wealth. However, once he has achieved his goals, and when a European merchant ship arrives, he fairly easily slips away and finds another route back first to the Holy Land, and from there, after having defeated the Muslims, home to Germany. Altogether, Ernst undergoes various significant movements, twice in a circular motion (back in Bavaria and in the land of the monsters), and twice in a linear travel, first to the exotic East, then back to Europe. Thus, the entire narrative gains a solid internal structure determined by a network of trails that move the protagonist from one scene of operation to the next. As much as he seems to be lost numerous times, as much the various trails take him further to the next important stages in his life. All those ultimately prove to be relevant and

maybe even predetermined, considering his steady growth along the way. Of course, the poet does not indicate whether there was any divine influence, but the final outcome displays a consistent development from Ernst’s youth to his more advanced adulthood. While he loses virtually everything after years of fighting against Emperor Otto, he regains at the end of his lengthy travels his own political status and so also his stepfather’s friendship and love. Every moment in Ernst’s life is, as we can conclude, determined by his movements from home to the court, from Germany to the Orient, and back home again. The trails determine his life and lead him along in decisive ways. Geometrically designed, whenever Ernst is stuck in his circular movement, he cannot progress, such as in Germany and in the world of monsters. Whenever he leaves that circle and enters a new trail that leads outside, his life experiences crucial progress and significant growth. In light of these observations, we can confirm that this narrative carries indeed profound messages about the challenges in human existence and how those can be overcome by means of intelligence, bravery, diplomacy, knightly skills, and a strong sense of orientation. Ernst is, of course, a mighty ruler, a leader of his people, but he suffers badly and would have almost become a victim of the emperor’s wrath and of the Grippians’ hostility. However, each time he barely slips away, finds a new trail and can thus survive. Herzog Ernst thus proves to be a literary reflection on a mental map, taking the protagonist first throughout Germany, then to the mysterious East, and finally back home again. The more Ernst travels and pursues his trails, the more he grows and gains in experience, status, strength, and power, especially because the trails force him to act upon huge challenges and to pursue many paths that are completely unknown to him. As we will see in the subsequent chapters, this notion of the trail as an epistemological instrument in the hands of many medieval poets allows us to gain deeper insight into the structure of this and other high medieval narratives, which thus paves the way for us to comprehend the ethical, moral, political, and religious messages.

Notes 1 For the fundamental notion of spiritual pathways in the Middle Ages, see now Amy Neff, A Soul’s Journey: Franciscan Art, Theology, and Devotion in the Supplicationes Variae. Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination 6. Studies and Texts 210 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2019); see also the review by Jane Beal in Mediaevistik 33 (forthcoming). 2 Herzog Ernst: ein mittelalterliches Abenteuerbuch. In der mhd. Fassung B nach der Ausgabe von K. Bartsch mit den Bruchstücken der Fassung A, ed., trans., and commentary by Bernhard Sowinski (1970; Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2009). This work has now been re-edited, also on the basis of ms. B, but together with the fragments of the versions A, B, and Kl, ed., trans., and commentary by Mathias Herweg (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2019); for a comprehensive and critical introduction, see Hans Szklenar and Hans-Joachim Behr, “Herzog Ernst,” Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon. 2nd completely rev. ed. by Kurt Ruh et al. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), coll. 1170–91. For a recent and extensive bibliography, see Volker Zaph, “Herzog Ernst,” Deutsches LiteraturLexikon: Das Mittelalter, ed. Wolfgang Achnitz. Vol. 5 (Berlin and Bonn: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 149–65, though there is hardly any new insight offered compared to Szklenar’s and Behr’s outline. For a not quite convincing attempt to read the text in terms of gender, see Sophie Marshall, “Queering and Things: Vectors of Desire in Herzog Ernst B,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 92.3 (2018): 287–316.

3 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Medieval Studies (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000); see also the contributions to Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). Cf. also more recently Classic Readings on Monster Theory, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Marcus Hensel. Demonstrare, 1 (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018). See also Serina Patterson, “Reading the Medieval in Early Modern Monster Culture,” Studies in Philology 111.2 (2014): 282‒311; Damien Kempf and Maria L. Gilbert, Medieval Monsters (London: British Library, 2015). Even though a little dated, these studies continue to be of great relevance: Monsters and the Monstrous in Medieval Northwest Europe, ed. Luuk A. J. R. Houwen and Karin E. Olsen. Mediaevalia Groningana, 3 (Leuven and Sterling, VA: Peeters, 2001); and Claude Lecouteux, Les monstres dans la littérature allemande du Moyen Âge: contribution à l’étude du merveilleux medieval. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 330 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1982). For the wide range of theoretical approaches now pursued in Monster Studies, see The Monster Theory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2020). 4 Eva Parra Membrives, “Herzog Ernst als Fantasy-Roman” (2018), suggests that this verse narrative could be particularly appealing to young readers today. 5 Joachim Bumke, “Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des Herzog Ernst und zu einer neuen Ausgabe des Herzog Ernst A,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 119 (2000): 410–15; strangely, Herzog Ernst does not appear in Dichter über Dichter in mittelhochdeutscher Literatur, ed. Günther Schweikle. Deutsche Texte, 12 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1970). 6 David Blamires, Herzog Ernst and the Otherworld Voyage: A Comparative Study. Publications of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Manchester, 24 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1979). 7 Albrecht Classen, “The Epistemological Function of Monsters in the Middle Ages: From the Voyage of Saint Brendan to Herzog Ernst, Marie de France, Marco Polo and John Mandeville. What Would We Be Without Monsters in Past and Present!” Lo Sguardo: Rivista di filologia 9.2 (2012): 13– 34.https://www.academia.edu/6744378/The_Epistemological_Function_of_Monsters_in_the_Middle_Ages_From_The_Voyage_ . 8 Julia Weitbrecht, “Heterotope Herrschaftsräume in frühhöfischen Epen und ihre Bearbeitung: König Rother, Herzog Ernst B, D und G,” Literarische Räume der Herkunft: Fallstudien zu einer historischen Narratologie, ed. Maximilian Benz and Katrin Dennerlein (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 91–119. 9 Otto Neudeck, Erzählen von Kaiser Otto: zur Fiktionalisierung von Geschichte in mittelhochdeutscher Literatur. Norm und Struktur, 18 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2003). 10 Gerd Althoff, “Heroes Who Break the Mould: Duke Ernst and the Emperor Otto,” id., Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games: A German Perspective. Medieval Law and Its Practice, 29 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2019), 234– 49 (orig. published in German in 2017). 11 Mathias Herwegh, “Nachwort,” Herzog Ernst, ed. id. (2019), 549–53. In the major study on minstrels by Maria Dobozy, Re-Membering the Present: The Medieval German Poet-Minstrel in Cultural Context. Disputatio, 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), Herzog Ernst is not even mentioned, probably rightfully so, which urges us to connect this text, after all, more closely with the world of courtly romance. 12 Simone Hacke, “Der Reiseweg des Herzog Ernst auf der Ebstorfer Weltkarte,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 146.1 (2017): 54–69. Cf. now with this my last chapter on mappae mundi and other medieval maps and charts. 13 Eva Parra-Membrives, “Herzog Ernst als Fantasy-Roman: Trivialität und Mittelalter,” Japanisch-deutsche Gespräche über Fremdheit im Mittelalter: Interkulturelle und interdisziplinäre Forschungen in Ost und West, ed. Manshu Ide and Albrecht Classen. Stauffenburg Mediävistik, 2 (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2018) 187–97. 14 Albrecht Classen, “Treason and Deception in Late Medieval German Romances and Novels: Königin Sibille, Melusine, and Malagis,” Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame, ed. Larissa Tracey. Explorations in Medieval Culture, 10 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2019), 269–87. The case of Herzog Ernst does not seem to have been consulted in this context, except by Tina Boyer, “Legal Ramifications of Ordeals and Treason in Morant und Galie,” Treason, ed. Larissa Tracey (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2019), 199–222; here 202, n. 7. 15 See now the contributions to Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame, ed. Larissa Tracey. Explorations in Medieval Culture, 10 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2019). 16 Albrecht Classen, “The Cry-Baby Kings in Courtly Romances: What Is Wrong with Medieval Kingship?,” Studi Medievali 3a Serie, XXXIX.2 (1998): 833–63; see already Michael Swanton, Crisis and Development in Germanic Society 700 - 800: Beowulf and the Burden of Kingship. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 333 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1982); Thijs Porck, Old Age in Early Medieval England: A Cultural History. Anglo-Saxon Studies, 33 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2019).

17 Albrecht Classen, “Royal Figures as Nation Builders – King Kamehameha and Charlemagne: Myth Formation in the European Early Middle Ages and in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Polynesian Hawai’i,” Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal 3.2 (2016): 112‒15; “The Ambiguity of Charlemagne in Late Medieval German Literature: The De- and Reconstruction of a Mythical Figure,” Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, 45 (2019): 1‒26. In a forthcoming monograph focusing on the figure of Charlemagne in medieval German and Dutch literature (Boydell & Brewer), I explore this issue much more extensively. 18 Albrecht Classen, “The Dream City in Medieval Literature: The Case of Herzog Ernst (ca. 1170/ca. 1220), Konrad von Würzburg’s Partonopier und Meliur (ca. 1280), and Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du monde (ca. 1310),” Studia Neophilologica 91.3 (2019): 336–54; online at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00393274.2019.1627242 . 19 Christa A. Tuczay, “Motifs in ‘The Arabian Nights’ and in Ancient and Medieval European Literature: A Comparison,” Folklore 116.3 (2005): 272‒91. 20 Eva G. R. Taylor, “A Letter Dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee,” Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography 13.1 (1956): 56‒68. 21 Reinhold Schneider, Vom Dolmetschen im Mittelalter: Sprachliche Vermittlung in weltlichen und kirchlichen Zusammenhängen. Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 72 (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 2012), 51– 68. 22 Albrecht Classen, “Multilingualism in Medieval Europe: Pilgrimage, Travel, Diplomacy, and Linguistic Challenges. The Case of Felix Fabri and His Contemporaries,” Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Communication and Miscommunication in the Premodern World, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 17 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 279–311. 23 Mai und Beaflor. Herausgegeben, übersetzt, kommentiert und mit einer Einleitung von Albrecht Classen. Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, 6 (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2006); Albrecht Classen, “Roman Sentimental in the Middle Ages? Mai und Beaflor as a Literary Reflection of the Medieval History of Emotions,” Oxford German Studies 35.2 (2006): 83– 100. 24 Horst Wenzel, “Boten und Briefe: Zum Verhältnis körperlicher und nicht-körperlicher Nachrichtenträger,” Gespräche – Boten – Briefe: Körpergedächtnis und Schriftgedächtnis im Mittelalter, ed. id. Philologische Studien und Quellen, 143 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1997), 86–105. See also Carsten Morsch, Blickwendungen: Virtuelle Räume und Wahrnehmungserfahrungen in höfischen Erzählungen um 1200. Philologische Studien und Quellen, 230 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2011), 63–73. 25 Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 26 Classen, “The Dream City in Medieval Literature” (2019). 27 Claude Lecouteux, “Die Sage vom Magnetberg,” Burgen, Länder, Orte, ed. Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich. Mittelalter Mythen, 5 (Constance: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2008), 529–39. 28 David Malcolm Blamires, Herzog Ernst and the Otherworld Voyage: A Comparative Study. Publications of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Manchester, 24 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979). 29 Warren Tormey, “The Journey within the Journey: Catabasis and Travel Narrative in Late Medieval and Early Modern Epic” (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2018).

3 The Lovers in Their Quest for the Right Trail and the Trail of Love Marie de France’s Lais

A young man seems to be immune to the effects of love, but he is suddenly wounded during a hunt and must quickly leave the scene because the dying animal, which he had killed with his arrow, alerts him that he would not find any healing unless a lady would be willing to come to his rescue. Indeed, the young knight then traverses a body of water, reaches a distant shore where a lady is kept a virtual prisoner by her old and unloved husband, and she then turns into his nurse, treating him so well that he recovers quickly. However, at the same time their budding love hurts their hearts, so the two spend two years in bliss together. Eventually, they are discovered by the husband and the young man is forced to leave again, transported one more time, just as the first time when he had arrived at the place where his lady lives, by an unmanned black ship. Two years pass, when the lady is finally able to escape, and she as well is transported away to reach the same land where her lover lives. At first, however, she is kept by another knight, and her lover has to fight hard to conquer his enemy’s castle until the two young people can finally join hands again in a union of love and happiness. This is, in essence, the summary of the first of 12 lais by Marie de France (ca. 1160‒ 1200), of “Guigemar.”1 As the brief brush strokes indicate, love can only be found if the protagonists are willing to make journeys on mysterious ships, accept the danger of crossing unknown bodies of water without any guidance and control over the ship, and pursue the dream of their lives by tracing their predestined trails.2 While Molly Robinson Kelly stresses the role of place and space in medieval epistemology, here I argue that movement from place to place matters centrally and provides meaning, and this also deeply in Marie’s lais because the lovers have to recognize the trails that open up for them and then entrust themselves to them.3 Only because Guigemar has been wounded can he finally be forced out of familiar territory where he is apparently not able to develop any thoughts or feelings of love. This forces us to examine in detail what the protagonist’s movement ultimately mean. Returning to Marie’s verse narratives one more time in an effort to create a new interpretation carries considerable risks for anyone who is trying to discover themes, topics, motifs, or subject matter which might have been overlooked by previous scholarship. After all, she has been rightly recognized as a highly prolific, complex, meaningful, and selfassured high medieval woman writer, and our book-shelves are filled with significant studies dedicated to Marie de France. There are the excellent studies compiled by Chantal A.

Maréchal,4 while Emanuel J. Michel, Jr. has presented a biographical and analytic study of her works,5 which was followed by the thorough examination of Marie’s lais by Glyn S. Burgess,6 who recently also presented a bibliography of studies on this writer.7 The authors of the contributions to A Companion to Marie de France, edited by Logan E. Whalen, address specific interpretive questions concerning the learned tradition, epistemological issues (the wound, the knot, the book), and literary and socio-cultural aspects.8 When R. Howard Bloch turned his attention to Marie, he offered the first fully-fledged monographic study of her entire work. Bloch’s interest regarding her lais centered on her wordplay, speech acts, the danger of misreadings, on the problem of unhappy marriage, mostly due to age differences, hidden love that is revealed after all, and the dangerous pitfalls of language, the significance of writing, and the death of innocent lovers.9 The way how rhetoric and memory function in the world of Marie’s lais is the topic of Logan E. Whalen’s book-length study,10 whereas Milena Mikhailova-Makarius brings to light a variety of themes in Marie’s lais, such as the relevance of gift giving, infertility, the harsh relationship between father and daughter, the conflict of choosing a lover out of several options, infidelity and forgiveness, and the like.11 Anna Kukułka-Wojtasik has offered a useful structural analysis of all lais within the broader context of medieval French courtly love discourse, distinguishing between those with a happy outcome and those that end in tragedy, but she leaves with a sense of frustration because her conclusion that all those lais “chantant… une histoire d’amour Courtois” is selfevident.12 Most recently, Viviane Griveau-Genest has examined a complex of issues in the lais, pertaining to the rhetorical and stylistic elements at play, the role of the marvelous, the relevance of the topography where the protagonists operate, the social and economic structure of feudalism as mirrored in Marie’s tales, the ‘game’ of love as it permeates all the lais, and finally the importance of writing and the role of the female voice.13 I would not even dare to summarize the hundreds of shorter articles dealing with Marie de France published over the last few decades, and can only confirm here that she has long been recognized as a major spokesperson of Anglo-Norman literature in the late twelfth century. Undoubtedly, we can approach her texts from many different perspectives, pursuing socialhistorical aspects such as her criticism of injustice at court and parental cruelty against their children,14 or we can probe to what extent, as I have endeavored before, Marie reflected on the life and destiny of the famous couple, Peter Abelard and Heloise, at least in her lai “Eliduc.”15 Even eco-critical interpretations of her works have proven to be viable and helpful in gaining deeper insights into her worldview.16 Here I want to go one step further and examine not only what the movement of the individual characters entail as to ethical or moral issues, as Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken have already highlighted insightfully.17 They are certainly correct in observing, Transitions between spaces articulate the values that define them. As protagonists move between and among places, they confront conflicting value systems, but the interesting thing the Lais is that there is no one consistent resolution to conflict . . . .

Different values and different sets of rules map onto places, and movement and mobility in the stories foreclose any univocal reading.18 There is, however, more to the movements of the individual figures because they constitute trails of and through life, and they need to be examined more in detail so that we can uncover the epistemology of the tracks themselves that crisscross virtually all of her lais, similarly as in many other medieval narratives. Let us first gain an overview to confirm that for Marie traveling, movement, and following trails mattered centrally. I have already indicated the basic structure of “Guigemar,” emphasizing the role of tracking for the lovers to get together and enjoy their happiness. In “Equitan,” the king goes hunting and visits his beloved, but since both prove to be foolish, insufficiently self-controlled and self-disciplined, both are killed by the husband who catches them in flagrante. In “Le Fresne,” the young baby is carried away from the mother and indirectly handed over to an abbey where she is raised, when finally love with a prince, marriage prospects, and the reunion with her family returns happiness to all involved. In “Bisclavret,” the protagonist does not simply turn into a werewolf; he is actually roaming the forest and has to stay there after his wife has treacherously asked another knight to steal her husband’s clothing, condemning him to the life in the wilderness. But he is eventually allowed to join the king’s company and can thus confront his wife and punish her. In “Lanval,” the impoverished young knight leaves the court of King Arthur out of deep frustration and encounters the fairy in the meadow. Once having returned, he suffers from many problems, but once the beloved has arrived to testify on his behalf, he is relieved from the false charge, and yet he then turns his back to the court and departs, together with his lady, for the land of Avalon. In “Deus Amanz,” the male protagonist has to travel to Salerno to secure the magical potion that would give him the necessary strength to carry his beloved up the mountain. He achieves that goal without having used that potion, but he dies from a broken heart once he has reached the top, only to be followed by his lady, who also passes away due to grief. In “Yonec,” the hawk man flies to his lady many times until he is eventually trapped by the jealous husband and dies, which she witnesses after she has followed the trace of blood to his castle. Later she returns, together with her old husband and her by then grown-up son, and the truth then is revealed, whereupon the young man kills his ‘father’ who was obviously not his biological father. In “Laüstic” the two lovers communicate via words, gazes, and gifts, but cannot get together and have only the windows to be as close to each other as possible. Tragedy, however, then strikes because of her husband’s brutality, killing the nightingale which allegedly kept her awake all those nights. This, however, does not fully stop the exchanges between the lovers, though they are really caught by stasis and have no trails available to bridge the physical distance between them. “Milun” is extensively determined by movements, all complicated and eventful, but the outcome is a happy one for the lovers who can eventually get together legally and marry each other after her old husband has passed away. In “Le Chaitivel, ou Quatre Dols,” we encounter four knights who are all in love with one lady. They strive so hard for her love that in a tournament three of them die and one is badly wounded, but this does not lead to her deciding on granting her love to the sole one who survived. Could we perhaps argue here that this narrative concludes with a disaster not

only because of the fierce competition among those knights for the lady’s love but also because there is no trailing going on, no movement, no travel, tracking, and the like? All five characters are stuck at their location, which makes progress impossible. In her “Chevrefoil,” Marie created a version of the Tristan-legend herself and predicated the short scene in which the two lovers can come together on the experience of travel through the forest where there is an opportunity for both to meet in secret. And finally, in the probably most complex narrative, difficult to analyze and to figure out as to the ultimate message contained in it, “Guildelüec et Guilliadun, ou Eliduc,” the protagonist has to leave the court of his lord because he is maligned by others, reaches Exeter, falls in love with the princess there, later elopes with her back to his country, but only after a most dramatic crossing of the Channel, during which she learns that he is still married and has deceived her. But eventually, his wife recognizes whom her husband truly loves, so she frees him from the marital bond and creates a monastery for herself so that the two lovers can marry and enjoy their happiness. It becomes immediately clear from this survey that Marie is deeply concerned with the ultimate question how lovers can find each other, can overcome challenges to their love, how they have to free themselves from imposed bonds and escape to other countries, or what means and materials lovers need to rely on in order to gain their happiness. Also, the entire question concerning the freedom enjoyed by the aristocracy to decide on its own marriage policy comes to the fore and is considerably insisted on.19 There is considerably more involved here than just the movement from place to place, as Kinoshita and McCracken perceive it: “In all these works, the journey and physical movements that the characters enact have meaning as embodied experiences.”20 In fact, as I want to argue below, love itself is intimately tied to the existence of specific trails that determine the lovers’ lives and help them or destroy them, depending on how they proceed on those trails. “Deus Amanz” illustrates this perhaps most poignantly insofar as the father of the young princess, the king of Pistreis, has set as a condition for any wooer that he would have to carry her up a mountain without any pause or rest. This demand appears rather curious and quickly reveals to be the father’s almost incestuous relationship with his daughter because she is his only consolation as a widower clearly serves as the wife’s substitute. Not surprisingly, no wooer is capable of accomplishing this task, which the father set up knowing full well that it would be impossible to carry out for any living man. Consequently, the poor young woman does not find a husband because the father’s demands are too harsh and prevent anyone from marrying the princess. It is the vertical direction, placing his daughter on a too high pedestal, which guarantees for himself that she will stay with him for good. Even though the narrator does not reveal the sexual implications, preventing us from charging the father directly with incest, the circumstances are suggestive enough to read this lai in that term.21 Choosing the top of the mountain as the goal marker for any potential wooer creates a roadmap that no one can follow because the physicality of this steep elevation makes it impossible. However, the young woman falls in love with a charming squire at her father’s court, who soon enough develops plans on eloping with her, which would thus take a very different direction, pursuing a horizontal direction. She rejects it on the grounds that it would hurt her

father dearly, and since she loves him profoundly, this would not be an option for her because she cannot hurt his feelings. Although she does not say so, we can also assume that an elopement would constitute a great dishonor to her father and the entire kingdom. But the maid is smart as well and offers a counter-plan, also based on the horizontal level. She has an aunt who is active as a medical doctor in Salerno, today just south of Naples, at that time a center of medical learning deeply influenced by the influx of ancient Greek knowledge (Galen) which had been preserved in Arabic translations and which, during the twelfth century, was translated first into Hebrew and then into Latin. This aunt, who has already worked for 30 years in the medical field, would certainly be able to help by producing a magical potion that could provide him with enough strength actually to carry her up the mountain.22 Indeed, the young man accepts this proposal and travels all the way down to Salerno, so his idea of running away from the domineering father is replaced by an alternative idea which requires the squire to travel a long way to find a remedy of an artificial kind to solve the conflict they find themselves in. This aunt, once she has read her niece’s letter, accepts this task, examines the young man thoroughly, and then provides him with a potion that would give him all the strength necessary to achieve the task – basically a steroid, as we would call it today. Then the test begins, and this time the protagonist has to change his perspective, and instead of operating on the horizontal plane, he changes to the vertical, and this in the serious hope of achieving his goal because of the magical potion. However, tragedy looms already since the young man is defiant and thinks more about his public performance than about the ultimate goal to win his beloved’s hand in marriage: I would not be any means stop / long enough to drink, / for I could go three steps in that time. / These people would cry out to us, / they would stun me with their noise; / they could easily upset me. / I do not want to stop here. (190‒96) Despite her repeated pleas with him, he steadfastly refuses to accept the drink although he had gone on that extensive travel to secure such a potion, the only means that possibly could guarantee in this competition. As anticipated by the narrator, once he has achieved the virtually impossible, he sinks down and dies from a heart failure. His lady, kneeling down beside him, has to realize that her lover has passed away, which causes her so much pain that she also succumbs to death, while the potion spills on the ground, which makes many flowers to grow, which still constitutes a tragic outcome. Since the two people do not return from the top of the mountain, her father and many other people follow them, but they only find two dead bodies, which creates widespread sorrow, but apart from the two being buried at the top of the mountain, there are no further comments about the cruel father and his indirect responsibility in this case. He is not criticized for his demands and hence his implicit incestuous desires for his daughter. We are only supposed to feel sorry for the two “enfaunz” (241; children), and the rest is hidden behind the text.

Nevertheless, there are numerous implications to be considered, as is always the case with Marie’s lais. On the one hand there is the community of women, with the maid and her aunt communicating over long distances and helping each other out in difficult circumstances. On the other hand, there is the competition between the squire and the king, both vying for the princess, the former as her father, the latter as her lover. While the older man earns our criticism because of his selfishness trying to control and hold on to his daughter, preventing her getting married, the younger man proves to exceedingly foolish and selfish as well, attempting to prove in public that he can supersede all other men in his physical strength by carrying the girl all the way up to the top of the mountain, and this even without the help of the magical potion. Moreover, we observe the princess operating in a most circumspect manner, rationally, calmly, though she is deeply in love with the squire and would love nothing more but to marry him. However, she also cares much about her father, so she knows how to resort to a strategy that involves her aunt far away. Her trail to happiness, so to speak, combines the vertical and the horizontal trajectory; and she knows how to command both, sending her lover down to Salerno, and controlling his climb up the mountain, except that he then does not listen to her, becomes exceedingly stubborn and thus fails her bitterly, leading to both their deaths. She knows about the specific properties of the steep hill; she is fully aware of human limitations and has already witnessed too many men fail in their attempts. But she wants to experience love, without hurting her father. Everything would have worked out at the end if the squire only would have accepted the potion, would have been reasonable in his assessment of the situation. In fact, there is a pattern in his behavior which indicates that he cannot fully think through the situation he finds himself in. First, he suggests to elope with the princess, which would have been a political scandal extraordinaire. Second, when it counts the most to accept all the help and the advice he can get, he refuses because he wants to demonstrate his manliness. His path up the mountain thus turns into a death trail, whereas his voyage to Salerno, as suggested by the princess, was clearly a reasonable and viable option. The male characters (the father, the squire) thus emerge as inimical to women’s happiness in love, whereas the female characters closely collaborate, even though via distance, to make the ideal of love possible. To draw on the geometric metaphor again and pushing its interpretation further, the princess knows exceedingly well how to operate with all the trails in her life and would have succeeded in her goals if her lover had not been blind about the true danger of the hike up the mountain and his own death overestimating his own physical prowess. Both men are fixated on the mountain, and it is there where their wills collide with each other. For the women, distant and wide-ranging networks make it possible to circumvent local tensions, barriers, and conflicts since they know how to cooperate and thus to assist each other in realizing their goals of love. We have learned much more about this female network also at the highest level in historical circumstances, with queens in various parts of early and high medieval Europe exerting tremendous power because of their dynastic connectivity.23 To understand this lai fully, we have to keep the parallels in the configuration in mind, with two older and two young people operating on the stage, each resorting to pursuing their own trails. In the process of overcoming the obstacle, the two women closely cooperate, while the

two men essentially fight against each other over the control of the desired female, the princess. The king has set the trail up the mountain as the ultimate challenge, and since the squire does not resort to the potion, the only way to come to terms with this challenge, he dies, a victim of the king’s selfish, possessive character. Utilizing the metaphors of the trails for the analysis of “Bisclavret” works exceedingly well because the destiny of husband and wife is determined by intersecting pathways, colliding tracks, and empty spaces with no trails. Even though the couple is happily married, he disappears regularly for three days a week, leaving no trace, which deeply worries her, maybe because he returns rather joyfully. But he clearly demonstrates that he loves her, except that he refuses to answer her question concerning his whereabouts during those three days. Absence and presence are hence the key moments in this tale, and once she has forced her husband to reveal the truth, including the fact that he has to hide his clothing when he is transforming into a werewolf, which then another knight steals on behalf of the lady, whom he himself loves, Bisclavret can no longer return and is forced to stay in the wilderness roaming the forest as a monster. The love bonding these two people thus does not prove to be strong enough to overcome the terror and the fear of the utmost foreign. But is Bisclavret really totally foreign, when he turns into a werewolf? First of all, we never hear anything about him as a monster committing any crime, or performing evil deeds like a monster is alleged to do according to many medieval and modern fantasies.24 Granted, in the prologue to “Bisclavret,” Marie notes that a werewolf “devours people and does great harm” (7), but this does not seem to apply to our protagonist. He becomes stuck as a werewolf because his wife badly lies to him, pretending to love him more than anyone else in the world, requiring him to reveal the hiding place. As soon as she has learned that secret, she has a knight go out and take them away, which thus condemns her husband to life as a werewolf. What determines this development deeply is the constant movement from his home to the forest and back again. He does not entertain any love affair, he is simply away from his wife, but she cannot handle this situation and thus betrays him, which constitutes one of the worst crimes in the Middle Ages (and also today).25 Their shared path of love is thus divided, and both then follow separately their own trails, he being condemned to exist in the wilderness, she enjoying a new life with the knight whom she marries after Bisclavret’s disappearance. The poet is actually very clear about it, since she uses almost the same formulation to indicate how much the two characters’ lives are determined by trails. The lady instructs the knight, “Toute la veie ke il tint / Vers la forest l[i] enseigna” (122‒23; she taught him the whole path / he took to the forest”). The knight is instructed by her how to retrieve her husband’s clothing, which closes the latter’s destiny, at least for the time being. Insofar as Bisclavret had regularly disappeared from all human eyes, his complete absence now does not fully surprise people who simply assume that “this time he had gone away for good” (129). Even though many attempts are made to find him, all searches result empty-handed. After all, Bisclavret roams on trails that are unknown to the common people, and in his monstrous appearance he hides to the best of his abilities. In short, his marriage has been

entirely disentangled, and since he can no longer walk the same path with his wife, she abandons him and marries the other knight. But this is not the end of the story; on the contrary, it only begins at that point because Bisclavret as a werewolf is discovered by the king’s hunters, who are about to kill him when he espies the king; humbles before him; and thus can demonstrate, as the king clearly recognizes, his noble character, irrespective of his monstrous outer appearance. Taking the beast under his personal protection, the king breaks off the hunt and immediately returns to his castle, constantly accompanied by Bisclavret, who is quickly completely integrated into the court as if he were not a monster. For the king, the case is very clear; he observes without fail that the beast “loved him” (184), so we face here a kind of male-male bonding. This is only threatened when the knight who had stolen his clothing, and thus also his wife from him, visits the king and is recognized by Bisclavret – there is no obvious logic why this should be, but this would be beside the point here – who immediately attacks him and only lets him go because the king orders him to do so, which happens twice and which alerts people to some mysterious circumstances that would explain this extraordinary hate directed only against that knight. Later, the king goes on another hunt, always accompanied by the werewolf, and at night takes lodging at the castle of Bisclavret’s former wife. In other words, now the narrative circle is closing, and takes us back to the starting point, but there is no more love in Bisclavret’s heart, obviously because he understood clearly what happened to him and who was at fault for this development. As soon as he gains sight of the lady, he attacks her and bites off her nose. Even though the courtiers again want to kill the werewolf in punishment, a wise counselor advises the king to extort from the lady why the beast might be so hateful against her and the new husband. She then admits her guilt, and returns the clothing. Once Bisclavret is left alone in a room, the magical transformation takes place and the protagonist is returned into his original shape, and this to the king’s great joy and happiness. The lady, however, is sent off, banished by the king, and disappears from the narrative scene, although the poet emphasizes at the end that she had to depart from that country, accompanied by the knight, with whom she has numerous children, though the females are all born without a nose. The lai is exquisitely structured by way of giving each character an individual trail. The protagonist leaves his home and disappears in the forest for three days, returns however, until his wife can no longer stand the mystery and must find out the actual condition. This then expels him from this world for good, especially because he is losing her love altogether. The narrative accelerates only once the king comes across Bisclavret and takes him in, allowing the werewolf to operate as a fully integrated member of the court until first the other knight appears, and until the royal court stops at the lady’s castle for lodging, which then exposes her evil character and deed. “Bisclavret” undoubtedly served as a negative example in matters of love, with the lady not able to understand her own husband and that she should not pry into his private affairs because, after all, he assures her of his love, and there is no indication whatsoever that he might have an affair. Bisclavret loses her love when she banishes him into the forest, but at the end she herself has to leave the country as a punishment for her actions against her own husband. We

observe these two people moving inside and outside of the forest, from the forest to the court, and the crucial encounter happens when the hunting party returns from the forest to the lady’s castle. But at the end, there is no love left, only hatred, which results in a violent act, with Bisclavret biting off her nose, thus marking both her and her female descendants in an egregious manner. Of course, if Bisclavret had not disappeared in the forest without any trace for three days a week, his wife would not have developed suspicion, and she would not have insisted on learning the truth about his behavior. However, she forced him to reveal the truth by way of emphasizing her deep love for him, and yet she then immediately betrayed him. By contrast, the king emerges as a worthy and wise personality because he recognizes in the werewolf’s behavior that the beast possesses a noble character and deserves to be incorporated into and accepted by the courtly company. He is the one who moves freely from castle to castle, from court to forest, and back again, and he provides the werewolf at the end a chance to transform back into human shape by means of the returned clothing. There is only little love mentioned at the beginning of the lai, whereas the real narrative focus rests on the protagonists’ behavior, location, mobility, and identity. Neither Bisclavret nor his wife can count on stability, especially because there is no guarantee that the former might not resume his shape-shifting tendencies, for which the story-teller has not provided us with any explanation. The narrative trails thus end in a thicket that leaves us baffled in many different ways. We only know for sure that Bisclavret has no choice but to withdraw into the forest in order to undergo his transformation into a werewolf. We can sympathize with the lady over her deep trouble not being informed by him where he disappears for three whole days. At the same time, the development of the lai clearly puts sharp blame on her treason, which is ultimately punished by her expulsion from the country. Bisclavret stays behind, having regained the king’s love and respect, his own lands and more, but now alone without a wife. This provides us with an excellent segue to examine the rather troublesome lai “Eliduc,” which has attracted much scholarly criticism.26 When we examine more closely how travel transforms the lovers and how the shifting directions of the tracks contribute to the development of the narrative, we are in a good position to tease a new level of meaning out of this text. Here we observe, just as in “Guigemar,” the significant role of a ship, though here Eliduc takes over the control himself and manages to steer the vessel through the rough sea to the safe harbor. But the crossing of the water has also catastrophic consequences for his love relationship at first, and yet it offers him also great opportunities, at least after much stressful experiences. We hear quite often in medieval literature that a protagonist is forced to leave the court because the king or emperor has been influenced by evil-minded courtiers who are jealous of the victim and secretly maligned him, such as in the Old Spanish El poema de mío Cid (ca. 1100), in the Middle High German Herzog Ernst (ca. 1170/80, ms. A; ca. 1220, ms. B), in the Old Norse Njál’s Saga (ca. 1270), or in Königin Sibille by Elisabeth of Nassau-Saarbrücken (1437), though there it is the king’s own wife who is forced to leave the court. This political dilemma is also the case in Marie’s lai of “Eliduc,” where the hero can do nothing to defend or protect himself against the evil opponents who begrudge his successes and his high

standing with the king: “Pour l’envie del bien de lui, / Si cum avient sovent d’autrui, / Esteit a sun seignur medlez, / Empeirez e encusez” (41‒44; Out of envy for his good fortune, / as often happens to many another, / he was spoken ill of to his lord, / wronged and accused).27 Even though Eliduc then has to leave, crossing the Channel separating Brittany from England, where he finds new employment as a military leader for a besieged king, he is happily married and enjoys his wife’s deep love: “Mut s’entreamerent léaument” (12; they loved one another loyally). This woman, Guildelüec, grieves intensively when her husband has to depart (81), but she cannot help him either and must accept the change of good fortune for Eliduc. This crossing the water, however, represents a major change in the protagonist’s life, not only because he becomes distanced from his wife physically but also because he encounters another woman, the young princess, Guilliadun, daughter of the king of Exeter. Significantly, the narrator does not linger much at all on that voyage and only emphasizes that Eliduc took ten knights with him and soon reached Totnes on the south coast of England, ca. 20 miles away from Exeter. He quickly moves into the position of the king’s military savior and can achieve, almost literally, miracles, defeating the opponent in a masterful manner, who had wanted nothing but the hand of his daughter in marriage – a very common theme in medieval literature, such as in the case of Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius.28 Even though the subsequent details do not concern us much here, it is worth pointing out that Eliduc’s most important strategy consists of finding a location where he can successfully ambush the enemy and defeat him badly. The further away he gets from the first court, the better he seems to perform, but in inverse concepts, the further he gets away from his wife, the less his marriage functions. First of all, he falls in love with the princes who actually woos him actively and energetically. Then, once he has returned home because his king has called him back for help, he longs deeply for the princess, as is revealed through his changed behavior. In other words, because he left home and followed a different trail, he suddenly changed his heart. While before, he appeared to have enjoyed a very good and solid marriage, now, he has suddenly experienced true love and cannot help but return on the same path to the princes with whom he then elopes; oddly, however, he returns home, where his wife is waiting for him.29 The crucial and truly puzzling scene takes place during the voyage across the water when a strong storm threatens their life. In that moment one of the sailors calls out that there are being punished by God for Eliduc’s wrongful behavior. In short, they are all aware of the highly problematic situation with the princess on board, and they are afraid of becoming innocent victims of Eliduc’s actions which they view as “against God and against the law, / against righteousness and against faith” (837‒38). We have to remember that this is, in the course of this tale, the fourth crossing, and yet it is the first one that proves to be lifethreatening. Significantly, the voyage itself appears to be going well with good winds, but just before they arrive at the coast of Brittany, things get out of hand. After all, to keep our central metaphor in mind, Eliduc’s trail is now about to collide with that of his wife, and some emergency solution must be found.

The sailor’s suggestion to sacrifice the young maid and to throw her into the sea in order to calm the waves (839) reflects ancient pagan rituals and religious beliefs, many of which lurk, in fact, in Marie’s lais.30 Eliduc, however, the resolute man that he has always been, now assuming that his beloved has died as a result of fear, despondency, and shame, grabs an oar and slays the sailor, whose corpse he dumps into the water, which thus might be considered a substitute ritual victim. At any rate, he then takes over the rudder and manages to steer the ship safely to the harbor, saving them all. However, the princess seems to be dead, so, upon the advice of the others, he transports her ‘corpse’ to the cell of a hermit, who has recently passed away, and places it on the altar, worshipping her body as a kind of relic. All previous passages from Brittany to England and back had turned out well, and each time he had achieved more fame and success. The first time, having been expelled from the royal court, he reaches a land where his military capabilities are much sought after, so he gains great fame. After his return home, his heart is filled with love for the young princess, but he is welcomed home with great joy by his wife and also by the king, who needs his service once again and has put behind him all the false charges against Eliduc. The next time he crosses the water, again he does not face any problems and reaches the harbor on the English coast without any interruption. Only when he brings his beloved with him back to Brittany does a mighty storm arise and threaten all of their lives. It is, of course, simply a natural phenomenon, but it is no accident that Marie resorted to this narrative strategy to problematize the foolish, if not impossible decision by Eliduc to return with a second woman, without having thought through how to handle the situation being still married and yet in the arms of that foreign princess. Little wonder that the narrator emphasizes the great danger of shipwreck (“turment,” 829), because the protagonist finds himself for the first time in an impossible situation in which he cannot resort to his intelligence and physical prowess. The sailor is correct, in a way, although his threat to drown the maid makes him to potential murderer. The near catastrophe puts everyone into desperation, and they do not know how to help themselves after the mast has broken and all the sails have been lost (819‒20). The end of their lives is already in sight, so they resort to desperate prayers, which are followed by the violent outburst of the sailor against the maid. The fear of drowning exposes the raw nerves, which thus also forces Eliduc to confront his own situation as it really is because he cannot stay married and have a mistress on the side.31 Granted, Eliduc can steer the badly damaged ship safely to the harbor and rescue everyone, but he cannot handle the situation in his private life, obviously because he is torn between his strong feelings of love for the princess and strong feelings of loyalty, respect, friendship, but maybe also love for his wife. In a way, we might say, he has crossed that body of water one too many times, and this one now takes him into a dilemma from which he himself cannot find a way out. In fact, the tattered ship represents the inner turmoil he finds himself in, and even though he can rescue all of his crew, he cannot bring his beloved back to life; she is so deeply grieved that she cannot return from her coma. The rest is almost history and has been discussed many times by scholarship. Eliduc’s wife finally learns the truth; she discovers a magical flower that can restore life to dead

bodies, recovers the princess with that flower, then decides to withdraw from the marriage and thus allow her husband to enjoy full and complete happiness. We can describe this outcome also in terms of the individuals following their own specific trails, some of which intersect, while others lead away from the center. This can be observed particularly well with regard to Guildelüec (wife) who has pretty much the same experience as Gregorius’s mother in Hartmann von Aue’s eponymous religious tale. While Eliduc performs ritual prayers before her body, Gregorius reads his tablet and cries over his mysterious past. Both men then return home or come back to their room, the former deeply grieving, the latter rather relieved having received some relief over his mourning. But both are then observed by a maid or a servant who subsequently reveals the secret. In other words, there is much movement back and forth between the secret or quasi-religious place and the outside space. Withdrawing into their private spaces, the two male characters create an opportunity for themselves to meditate, to live out their emotions, and thus to find some consolation, but happiness does not, of course, return to their heart. However, because of their going away and coming back, the partner (mother whether wife) manage to have them tracked by a confident who is thus able to observe what is really going on. Each time the denouement happens when the marriage partner enters the secret space and thus can learn the truth. While in the case of Gregorius, she is thus able to confront him with what she has learned, which brings to light that they are mother and son, in Eliduc she finds the body of the person whom he really loves. We do not need to summarize the miracle made possible through the appearance of the weasels and can immediately turn to the question how Eliduc’s wife then responds to the new situation. Seeing the beautiful maid whom she can recover from her coma, she realizes that her husband truly loves the maid and no longer herself. Consequently, she frees Eliduc from the marriage bond and has a monastery built with his help, where she resides as the abbess. Her trail, in other words, leads away from their marriage to the sacred space of a monastic community. Ultimately, she is not the only one to dedicate her life to God. In their old age, however, Eliduc and Guilliadun also leave this world and enter the monastery, the elder woman welcoming the younger as her friend, while he keeps in close contact with them through messenger (1174‒76). Eliduc, above all, has thus learned to replace his traditionally unilateral pathway through life with a two-way street, so to speak, creating a community with the two women. Instead of focusing on their worldly love, they all turn their hearts to God and (1180) and thus have found a common denominator that grants them peace of mind. At closer analysis, we observe that each one of them has to travel from their origin to a new destination. For Eliduc and the maid this constitutes at first a very painful experience because their love affair destabilizes their existence and threatens to destroy them. The princess would not have woken up from her coma if she had not been rescued by means of the red flowers. Eliduc would have fallen into such deep depression over the loss of his beloved lady that he might have died as well. The situation for Guildelüec was different, but she suffered badly as well because her husband returned home from England filled with sadness and could not greet her with any happiness. When he returned a second time, he was in an even worse shape, which made his wife feel profound pain.

Only once Guildelüec leaves her own residence and finds the abandoned hermit’s chapel does she finally realize what her husband’s real reason for his sorrow was, and she quickly decides to help him once she has witnessed the miraculous recovery of the weasel by means of the flowers. This then strengthens her own resolve to set Eliduc free and to leave both her marriage and the courtly world in order to establish a monastery. This finally disentangles the trails determining their lives and makes it possible for Eliduc and Guilliadun to join hands in marriage, while his wife proceeds to her new destination, founding and leading an abbey. Without doubt, “Eliduc” demonstrates clearly how much we can learn about the various protagonists and their development if we trace more carefully how they move around in their lives and what those trails which they follow imply as to their personal decisions, perspectives, experiences, feelings, and actions. Many times, however, they do not have all that much freedom to choose among the trails available to them, and instead they have to make do with the trails as they open up for them. In particular, the voyage across the Channel emerges as a highly symbolic move because it transports Eliduc out of Brittany to England, out of the by then hostile kingdom; it takes him back home when the political situation has changed, it draws him away from there when love pulls him away from his home, and love also forces him to elope with his beloved because he has sworn loyalty to her father. Eliduc knows only too well that his love for the princess puts him into a binary opposition since he is already married and cannot have two wives which would be against God’s laws (601‒04). However, he cannot live without Guilliadun and so comes up with the cunning plan to return at a later date under the cover of darkness and take her with him back to his country. We have to believe that both of them are truly and deeply in love with each other. At the same time, Eliduc’s wife is to be pitied; yet she proves to be wise, loving, respectful, and ready to let her husband go because she cannot and does not want to control him. Staying with her would be his own death trap, and Guilliadun would also not survive if she were to lose her lover (679‒82). This leaves Eliduc with no choice but to pursue the strategy of returning home temporarily, coming back secretly to England, and eloping with her back to Brittany. However, only because Guildelüec is strong enough to realize that her own trail within the marriage with Eliduc has come to an end and that another trail has just opened up for her, leading her directly to God, can she contribute effectively to the successful conclusion of this admittedly rather problematic lai. Ironically, she is the only one in the entire narrative who chooses her own trail and thus finds a solid solution for her life. By contrast, Eliduc is tossed around in his life and never knows for sure what trail to follow, until his wife finally shows him the correct direction and thus grants him full happiness. The princess is equally driven along without much of her own doing and finds joy and peace only once the wife has withdrawn from the marriage, making room for the young woman. In his interpretation, R. Howard Bloch emphasizes primarily the problem of ambiguity, bigamy, deception, blaming primarily Eliduc for the almost tragic development: He is the hero who, loved by two women, is a mediating term between their similarity and difference. He is, in short, the one who poses the question of what might be

carried from one side of the geographic and linguistic divide to the other, of what might pass not only between disparate lands but from one language to another.32 This does not make much sense to me for a variety of reasons, especially because he relies too heavily on a linguistic analysis. More important seems to me that the love story evolves along paths that take the protagonist first to England, then back to Brittany, back to England, and back to Brittany. The more he travels, the less sense he can make out of his life, and it takes his wife’s resolute actions at the end to unravel the knot in the lives of those two lovers. In sum, using the metaphor of the trail helps us tremendously to comprehend more in depth the developments in the protagonists’ lives. The various spaces in which the protagonist operates are of great relevance, but they are all interconnected and highlight the protagonists’ moves that prove to be decisive for their personal, emotional, political, military, and religious experiences.33 Let us finally consider the way of how Marie constructed her lais by basing them on the notion of the trail through a close reading of “Yonec,” where love, slaughter, and death intermingle in such a tragic fashion. As is often the case in Marie’s text, and so in medieval literature at large, the young woman, mother of Yonec, is married to a rich old man who is deeply enamored with her, but obviously not in love, only attracted to her physical beauty: “pour sa beauté” (24; see also “Guigemar” and “Milun,” and to some extent “Laüstic” and “Chevrefoil”). She suffers from this personal ‘imprisonment,’ but finds herself entirely helpless, especially because she is closely guarded by her sister-in-law, an old and unmarried lady. This goes on for seven years, and she never becomes pregnant, obviously because he is impotent. For her, however, the situation is like a prison, and she can only lament about her miserable situation, incarcerated, so to speak, with no hope for help from outside or for her old husband’s mercy. Very similar to the situation in “Guigemar,” patriarchal society has imposed its strict rule on this young woman whose life tracks are stalled, in a way. The sudden change in her life, which is like a frozen lake, occurs, however, when a goshawk comes flying into her chamber and quickly transforms into a young knight. This is the very opposite transformation compared to “Bisclavret,” here from beast to human, whereas in the former lai it was from human to beast. The other difference is that here the lady is most unhappily married, whereas in “Bisclavret” both people enjoy a happy marriage together. Nevertheless, in both texts we observe the critical moment of a force from the outside or the inside enters the picture and has a huge impact on those two people. The werewolf story concludes tragically for her, and so does the goshawk story, but in a different way insofar as the lady quickly accepts the stranger as her lover, and both enjoy many encounters together until the old husband becomes suspicious because her entire demeanor has changed, and filled with strong feelings of love, her entire body emanates beauty as well.34 The husband is smart enough to organize a trap for his wife, and pretends to leave for some time to see the king, but he has only malicious intent and wants to learn who is cuckolding him behind his back. All this is only possible because the foreign knight arrives from another country, is unaccounted for here, and flies through the window, transcending the physical barrier so that

he can join with his lady. While she is stuck in her small little room, he is the active agent in this story, but he is also limited in his abilities insofar he must transform first into the shape of the hawk. Moreover, he can enter the room of his lady only through a small window, as the old sister-in-law soon discovers, and this makes it possible for the husband to hurt the competitor by placing iron spikes into the window. Those then wound the young man mortally when he arrives once again at a later point in time. There are a number of inconsistencies here insofar as the lady must have witnessed the metal pieces being placed into the window, and hence, she must have been aware of the imminent danger for her lover. Also, the narrator calls this “traïson” (295; treason), as if adultery would not have to be viewed as the break of the marital oath. However, what matters here is only that the young woman, just as in “Guigemar,” is imprisoned by her husband and gains some joy only through the visits by this mysterious lover. Guigemar is not mysterious, but the black ship that transports him to the tower where his lady resides is so, just as the mortally wounded doe that informed Guigemar about the only possible strategy to recover his health. Moreover, this hawk man can arrive only when she is calling him through her concretized longing, so he is bound by a trail of feelings and cannot really stay away when she is asking for him. The poet underscores the significance of this peculiar element also through a visual strategy because once the knight has been badly wounded and knows that his death is near, he comforts her, predicts the future, and leaves. She then follows him jumping down from a window 20 feet above the ground, and discovers a trail of blood. Here we have finally the ultimate evidence for the significant theme of the trail that constitutes the protagonists’ identity and life, or death: A la trace del sanc s’est mise, Que del chevaler curot Sur le chemin u ele a lot. Icel seenti[e]r errat e tient, Desque a une hoge vient. En cele hoge ot une entree, De cel sanc fu tute arusee; Ne pot nent avant aler. Dunc quidot ele bien saver Que sis amis entré i seit (342‒51) [She followed the trace of blood that flowed from the knight on the road where she traveled. She continued on and held to this path until she came to a hill. There was an entry into this hill

all wet with the blood; she could go no farther. Then she thought she was quite sure that her beloved had gone in there.] Once she has traversed the cave in the mountain, she arrives in the open and discovers a fabulous city, which reminds us strongly of Grippia in Herzog Ernst (see Chapter 1 in this book), especially because of its fabulous build-up and complete emptiness. However, the trail of blood continues and leads her along, first to a castle inside, then to a hall, and finally a chamber. It seems entirely unrealistic how much blood the poor man had spilled, but it serves as a certain marker leading the lady to the dying knight. He can still comfort her one more time, and prepare her for the future. First, she receives a magical ring that will make her husband forget everything that had happened; second, a sword for her future son; third, a valuable gown; and fourth, specific instructions as to what to tell her son about his real father once he has matured. Thereupon she leaves, backtracking all the way to her country, while laments and shouts of grief emerge in the city behind her. While all this appears as rather magical and enigmatic, the narrator clearly focuses on the symbolism of the trail that carries deep meaning. The blood creates a long line leading the lady from her castle to his city and then to his inner chamber where he is succumbing to his death. Moreover, once life has resumed for the lady, she delivers her child and everything seems to go normal again until the time has come when he is knighted. That same year the family travels to a festival, but a young man, here not identified any further, leads them to a castle within which there is an abbey. The narrator emphasizes unmistakably, “Kis ad mené le dreit chemin” (476; “who led them the right way”), and the outcome proves correct. The abbot shows them around and proudly presents them all their building, until they arrive at a fabulous tomb, which proves to hold the corpse of the dead knight. At that moment the truth is revealed insofar the country has refused to select another king after the death of that glorious man because they waited for the true heir to come forth, his own son. For the lady, this is enough proof that they had been led to the exactly correct spot, so she reveals the entire story to Yonec and hands over the sword to him, pointing at her unloved husband as “Que cist villarz a tort ocist” (529; “whom this old man wrongfully killed”). Thereupon she swoons and dies, while the young man takes the sword and decapitates the old king who had killed his real father. There is much fairy-tale material contained here, but the imaginary elements only hide the deeper meaning of this lai where, perhaps more than anywhere else in Marie’s verse narratives, the significance of the trails comes to the fore. The poor lady is kept like a prisoner, so her life does not develop, until the goshawk man appears and grants her much happiness, and at the end also impregnates her. Jealousy by the old husband, however, takes a huge toll, with the knight being mortally wounded. But with the help of the magical ring she can keep up the pretense of a normal marriage, until another trail opens up and takes them, not by chance, to the castle, that is, to the abbey, and hence to the tomb where her destiny is fulfilled. Altogether, there are three trails which she follows: once tracing her dying lover, then the return to her own castle after he has died, and finally the trail toward his tomb.

Only once she has completed the cycle, so to speak, can she die and join her lover in death. If she had not followed the bloody track, she would not have learned about her own future, she would not have received the sword and the ring, and she would have been completely imprisoned by her husband. This way, having walked all the way to the knight’s castle, back to her own, and then to the abbey, the lady completes her life, and her son is chosen as the new king. In contrast to “Eliduc,” the lady’s love cannot be fulfilled here in this life, but she has, at least, a son, which is apparently not the case in the previous tale. The only other time when love leads to pregnancy is in “Milun,” where the lovers have to resort to many devices and strategies to stay in touch. There we also face the curious situation of the son growing up and tracing his father whom he finally meets at a tournament. The lady’s husband dies in time for Milun to have a chance to marry his beloved at the end. Trails matter there even further, involving also the writing of letters that are sent by means of a swan, transforming the notion of the track into a metaphorical expression of the ultimate search for love. However, here I break off in the assumption that we have assembled sufficient evidence to confirm that Marie de France indeed resorted in a subtle but most definite manner to the concept of the trail that connects lovers, separates them again, and almost assumes an independent agency determining the protagonists’ lives. “Yonec” itself proves to be so productive in this regard because the poet has the hawk man fly to the beloved lady whenever she desires for him. But the husband’s jealousy then kills him, and he can only keep the trail of blood that allows her to follow him and learn about her future son. Destiny is fulfilled once Yonec has learned about his history at the tomb of his unknown father and cuts off the head of his false father. There are many more opportunities analyzing the meaning of trails in Marie’s lais, but we can be certain that they constantly operate as markers on the narrative map and create meaning, connected and separating lovers, bringing about new love and also death, depending on the circumstances. We could examine also at length the semantic relevance of the trail that traverses the forest in which Tristan is hiding while waiting for his beloved lady, Yseult, in “Chevrefoil.” Their meeting has to take place in complete secrecy, but he knows well how to leave signals along the way, “splitting a hazel tree along its length” (51) that only she knows how to read. Once she has discovered the sign, she gets off her horse and retires away from the company. As the narrator underscores, “Del chemin un poi s’esluina” (91; “She went a little way from the road”), which means that there is the official, public way and the secret space for the lovers. But both have to travel for long and then deviate from the ordinary route in order to achieve the secrecy that makes the fulfillment of their love possible. But only because Yseult had to be on the road to reach Tintagel and participate in the festival for Pentecost do the lovers have a chance to meet again. Without trails, in other words, love cannot be achieved. This might well be the ultimate message contained in virtually all of Marie’s lais.

Notes

1 There are by now many good editions and translations of Marie de France’s lais. For pragmatic purposes, I will draw from the most recent publication, The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Translation, ed. and trans. Claire M. Waters (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Editions, 2018), because she offers both an edition based on British Library, Harley MS 978 and a solid, well-proven translation, along with some important parallel texts. 2 I will return to the issue with the self-directed ship in the last chapter where I combine the discussion of this lai with an analysis of medieval trailing and mapmaking. 3 Molly Robinson Kelly, The Hero’s Place: Medieval Literary Traditions of Space and Belonging (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). 4 In Quest of Marie de France: A Twelfth-Century Poet, ed. with an intro. by Chantal A. Maréchal (Lewiston, NY, Queenston, Ont., and Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). The issues here rest primarily on the female voice, entertainment in the lais, the folktale tradition, Celtic origins, divine justice, psychology, sexual politics, male figures, love and envy, and desire. 5 Emanuel J. Mickel, Jr., Marie de France. Twayne’s World Authors Series, 306 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974). 6 Glyn S. Burgess, The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Context (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1987). He focuses, for instance, on the internal chronology, the issue of mesure, chivalry, the role of women, and the vocabulary of love. 7 Glyn S. Burgess, Marie de France: An Analytic Bibliography. Supplement, 3. Research Bibliographies and Checklists, New Series (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007). 8 A Companion to Marie de France, ed. Logan E. Whalen. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 27 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2011). 9 R. Howard Bloch, The Anonymous Marie de France (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003). 10 Logan E. Whalen, Marie de France & the Poetics of Memory (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008). 11 Milena Mikhailova-Makarius, Le Présent de Marie: Lecture des Lais de Marie de France. 2nd ed. (1996; Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2018). 12 Anna Kukułka-Wojtasik, La dame et l’amour au Moyen-Age: Symbolique du portrait amoureux dans la littérature courtoise du XIIe siècle (Warsaw: Université de Varsovie, 2007), 145. True happiness can be achieved only when a fulfilling marriage is achieved at the end of the tale (149). See already Albrecht Classen, “Happiness in the Middle Ages? Hartmann von Aue and Marie de France,” Neohelicon XXV.2 (1998): 247‒74; here not consulted. 13 Viviane Griveau-Genest, Écriture du raffinement: L’esthétique de Marie de France. Collection “Cours” (Mont-SaintAignan Cedex: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre–CNED, 2018). 14 Albrecht Classen, “Outsiders, Challengers, and Rebels in Medieval Courtly Literature: The Problem with the Courts in Courtly Romances,” Arthuriana 26.3 (2016): 67‒90; id., “A Medieval Woman Dares to Stand Up: Marie de France’s Criticism of the King and the Court,” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 12.1 (2020): 1‒13; http://rupkatha.com/V12/n2/v12n201.pdf. 15 Albrecht Classen, “Guildeluëc in Marie de France’s “Eliduc” as the Avatar of Heloise? The Destiny of Two TwelfthCentury Women,” Quaestiones Medii Aevii Novae (Poland) 20 (2015): 395‒412. 16 Albrecht Classen, Water in Medieval Literature: An Ecocritical Reading. Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, et al.: Lexington Books, 2018), 89‒104. 17 Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken, Marie de France: A Critical Companion. Gallica, 24 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012), 113‒41. 18 Kinoshita and McCracken, Marie de France (2012), 130. 19 Kinoshita, “Two for the Price of One” (1998). 20 Kinoshita and McCracken, Marie de France (2012), 140. 21 Incest was apparently quite common in the Middle Ages as both legal and literary authors extensively discussed incest as a severe sin. Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Stephen L. Wailes, “Hartmann von Aue’s Stories of Incest,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 91.1 (1992): 65‒78; Brian Murdoch, Gregorius: An Incestuous Saint in Medieval Europe and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). For the legal and theological background, see the seminal study by James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 140‒41, 163‒64, 355‒56, et passim. 22 Allegedly, there lived a famed female doctor teaching and practicing in Salerno during the late twelfth century, called Trotula. The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and trans. by

Monica H. Green. The Middle Ages Series (2001; Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). See also the collected articles by Monica H. Green, Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts. Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000). 23 Lucy K. Pick, Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2017), offers excellent and convincing evidence for this observation, first looking at Léon and Castilia, but then also at Anglo-Saxon England and the Holy Roman Empire under the Ottonians: “it was the daughters and sisters of kings who took on the sacred sphere through practices of prayer, gifts, and associations with monastic communities and who gained power from the actions they performed and the connections they developed” (17). 24 There is a lot of thorough research on medieval monsters; see, for instance, John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Medieval Studies (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000); the contributions to The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman with Peter J. Dendle (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012); Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). Cf. also more recently Classic Readings on Monster Theory, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Marcus Hensel. Demonstrare, 1 (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018). Consult also Serina Patterson, “Reading the Medieval in Early Modern Monster Culture,” Studies in Philology 111.2 (2014): 282‒311. For illustrations of medieval monsters, see Damien Kempf and Maria L. Gilbert, Medieval Monsters (London: British Library, 2015). Anglophone research seems to be woefully unaware of the excellent catalog, Fantastische Monster: Bilderwelten zwischen Grauen und Komik, ed. Peggy Große, G. Ulrich Großmann, and Johannes Pommerantz (Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2015). 25 See the contributions to Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame, ed. Larissa Tracey. Explorations in Medieval Culture, 10 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2019). Marie’s lai “Lanval” is mentioned several times, but only in passing, whereas “Bisclavret” is not even mentioned once. 26 Pam Whitfield, “Power Plays: Relationships in Marie de France’s Lanval and Eliduc,” Medieval Perspectives 14 (1999): 242‒54; Marco D. Roman, “Reclaiming the Self through Silence: The Riverside Counselor’s Stories and the Lais of Marie de France,” Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women Writers, ed. Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho. The New Middle Ages (New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2000), 175‒88; Aileen MacDonald, “Triangles of the Sacred Sisterhood,” Florilegium 22 (2005): 155‒70; Eve M. Whittaker, “Marie de France’s Eliduc: The Play of Aventure,” Medieval Encounters 6.1‒3 (2006): 3‒57; Pierre-Yves Badel, “Guildelüec et la merveille: Sur des lectures nouvelles du lai d’Eliduc,” Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 130.2 (2014): 269‒315; Usha Vishnuvajjala, “Adventure, Lealté, and Sympathy in Marie de France’s Eliduc,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 59.2 (2017): 162‒81. 27 Albrecht Classen, “A Medieval Woman Dares to Stand Up” (2020): 1‒13; http://rupkatha.com/V12/n2/v12n201.pdf. In fact, many medieval didactic poets would have agreed with her serious criticism of the social malaise at her time; see, for instance, the Swiss Dominican, Ulrich Bonerius (d. ca. 1350), with his famous Der Edelstein. 28 See my chapter on Hartmann von Aue. Young Gregorius leaves the island with the monastery once he has realized that he was nothing but a foundling and the product of his parents’ incest. When he arrives at the coast of Aquitaine, he learns of the local duchess and her troubles with a neighboring duke, who wants to force her to marry him. Gregorius immediately offers his service to this noble lady, wins the fight against that suitor, and marries the high-ranking woman himself. 29 Sharon Kinoshita, “Two for the Price of One: Courtly Love and Serial Polygamy in the Lais of Marie de France,” Arthuriana 8.2 (1998): 33‒55, argues that Marie reflected strongly on the continued efforts of high medieval aristocracy to make their own marriage decisions independent from rules increasingly imposed by the Church. As she notes: “Not content to represent nobles acting in quiet violation of ecclesiastical law, Marie conspicuously interpellates abbesses, archbishops, and arguably even God as witnesses and complacent supporters of Gurun’s and Eliduc’s love affairs and audacious marital politics” (50). 30 Romedio Schmitz-Esser, Der Leichnam im Mittelalter: Einbalsamierung, Verbrennung und die kulturelle Konstruktion des toten Körpers. 2nd ed. Mittelalter-Forschungen, 48 (2014; Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2016), 627‒30. This book will appear soon in an English trans. by Albrecht Classen and Carolyn Radtke (ca. Fall 2020). 31 For parallel cases of shipwrecks in medieval literature, see the contributions to Shipwreck in Art and Literature: Images and Interpretations from Antiquity to the Present Day, ed. Carl Thompson (New York and London: Routledge, 2014); cf. also Albrecht Classen, “Storms, Shipwrecks, and Life-Changing Experiences in Late Medieval German Literature. From Oswald von Wolkenstein to Emperor Maximilian,” Oxford German Studies 43.3 (2014): 212‒28. More broadly, but still focusing on this topic mostly in contemporary literature and film, see the contributions to Shipwreck and Island

Motifs in Literature and the Arts, ed. Brigitte Le Juez and Olga Springer. DQR Studies in Literature, 57 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill Rodopi, 2015). 32 Bloch, The Anonymous Marie de France (2003), 87. 33 Kinoshita and McCracken, Marie de France (2012), 130. 34 This would have been a great example for Mary Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages. Oxford ‒ Warburg Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), but her focus rests on Latin texts, primarily by philosophers and theologians.

4 Right Paths, Wrong Paths, Circuitous Paths, Dead Ends, and Religious Epiphany in Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius. Crossroads in a Christian Narrative In the literary excursus contained in his Tristan (ca. 1210), Gottfried von Straßburg has only positive things to say about his famous predecessor, Hartmann von Aue (ca. 1160–1200), the poet of such masterpieces as Erec and Iwein, of the intriguing verse novella “Der arme Heinrich” and the psychologizing debate poem Diu Klage, not to mention his large number of excellent love poems (Minnelieder). Gottfried praises Hartmann as someone who dyes and adorns his tales through and through with words and sense, both outside and within. How eloquently he establishes his story’s meaning! How clear and transparent his crystal words both are and ever must remain! Gently they approach and fawn on a man, and captivate right minds. Those who esteem fine language with due sympathy and judgement will allow the man of Aue his garland and his laurels.1 Indeed, hardly any other medieval German poet has received so much praise and enjoyed such high respect as Hartmann, whom successors regularly identified as their great role model, whether we think of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Heinrich von dem Türlin, Rudolf von Ems, Hugo von Trimberg, Reinbot von Durne, Der Pleier, Konrad von Stoffeln, and Ulrich Fuetrer.2 However, judging on the basis of manuscripts that have preserved Hartmann’s text, the situation looks quite different. “Der arme Heinrich” has survived in seven manuscripts (either as complete texts or as fragments, and this distinction applies to the other works as well); Diu Klage has survived only in one manuscript; Erec has been preserved in four manuscripts; Iwein has survived in 33 manuscripts (the great exception); his courtly songs (18 in total, four of which are questioned as to their authenticity) are extent in three manuscripts; and his Gregorius, the topic of this chapter, has been recorded in 13 manuscripts.3 If any medieval literary text has survived in more than five manuscripts, this represents already an impressive popularity, and a narrative preserved in 13 manuscripts must have truly appealed to wider

audiences. Of course, we must keep in mind here that Hartmann drew, in one or another way, from the Old French La Vie du Pape Saint Grégoire (preserved in six major manuscripts).4 However, we cannot pinpoint with all necessary precision any of the extant manuscripts of that text as one of the sources used by Hartmann. Instead, he might have used another archetype that is lost today, either in French or in Middle High German, but his own version is somewhere between one-third and one-half as long as La Vie, so we face here, despite the strong similarities, an original work vastly developed beyond the source text. After all, as important as translation work was throughout the entire Middle Ages, we cannot simply interpret this term in the same way as we would do today since a medieval translation was often extensively determined by creativity and poetic license, commonly moving it far away from the source text.5 There might also be traces of the dramatic work by the classical authors Plautus and Terence, as was recently suggested, but this does not pertain to this study and is irrelevant after all because of lack of serious evidence for such a claim. Both authors were certainly read in monastic schools and universities, but to what extent Hartmann might have been influenced by either one during his formative years remains very elusive.6 Hartmann probably composed his Gregorius after Diu Klage and Erec, so sometime between 1185 and 1197 or 1200. Virtually all of our knowledge about this famous writer has to be drawn from his own texts, whereas biographical-historical documents confirming his existence as a ministerialis, as a crusader, as a member of a high-ranked noble family, or as a learned cleric remain fragmentary or elusive.7 Hartmann’s enormous impact on his contemporaries and posterity is also demonstrated through the fact that Arnold von Lübeck translated his Gregorius around 1210 into Latin, under the title Gesta Gregori peccatoris, which enjoyed tremendous popularity as a legendary text well into the eighteenth century.8 Famous Noble Prize winner Thomas Mann even adapted Hartmann’s verse narrative in his prose story Der Erwählte from 1951, reorienting it, of course, for his own purposes.9 As previous scholarship has clearly demonstrated, Hartmann aimed at religious instruction through his Gregorius, highlighting the relationship between guilt and redemption, between perpetration and repentance, and especially the workings of God in this world. Considering the outcome of the narrative, the poet strongly signals that the individual can always rely on God’s help if s/he trusts Him to come to the rescue for those who firmly believe in Him. Previous scholarship has paid much attention to the various figures in Gregorius, hence also on the relationship between young Gregorius and his foster-mother, his biological mother, between Gregorius and Abbott Gregorius, which all certainly matter significantly here.10 In his Gregorius, Hartmann added a prologue (extant only in two manuscripts, located at the Staatsbibliothek Berlin and the Stadtarchiv Konstanz) in which he reflected deeply on his purpose with this legendary tale. Here profound sinfulness is surprisingly combined with individual redemption, where personal history is merged with God’s plan for the world.11 Most intriguingly, Gregorius, despite its strongly religious message and content, straddles the fence between a secular and a spiritual narrative. Many bad things happen to Gregorius’s parents and then to the young protagonist, especially because they almost inadvertently

commit incest, a theme that was very common in the Middle Ages,12 but their sinfulness is not simply the result of their involvement in their family history. Instead, the poet explores individual characters, their relationship with the courtly world and the role of knighthood, and then contrasts their existence with that of clerics. Despite catastrophic developments and a nearly fatal outcome for the protagonist after 17 years of repentance and suffering, there is deep hope and trust in God’s grace,13 at least considerably more than in the ancient Greek tragedy by Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, from ca. 429 B.C.E.14 There, fatalism dominates throughout, and the tragic outcome confirms this.15 In Hartmann’s text, however, the protagonist and his own mother emerge, saved from their own sinfulness through God’s help. However, both still feel the risk of falling into the grave danger of despair as they feel lost to their sins and believe that they are doomed to hell because no divine grace could save them. Significantly, for instance, Gregorius, though having received a monastic education, does not seek the help of a priest; instead he simply retires into the wilderness, hoping to be forgotten by the world, and hence maybe also by God. Nevertheless, as Brian Murdoch has elucidated, the Bible has certainly to be reckoned with as a central source in our analysis of this text, whether we think of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), or the global concept of sinfulness that can be redeemed through God’s grace (Romans 5:12). Also, Gregory the Great’s Moralia (578–595), with its commentary and analysis of the biblical story of Job literally, morally, and allegorically might have influenced Hartmann when he composed his legendary tale,16 but neither this treatise nor the Greek tragedy, and also not the biblical text can be identified as direct influences on the poem; they did so only in abstract terms concerning the Christian notion of sin, repentance, and redemption.17 As Volker Mertens alerts us, we also would have to keep in mind the significant influence by late antique legendary and hagiographical accounts about Mary Magdalene, or Maria Aegyptiaca, and Thais, and then the famous Albanus-legend from the first half of the twelfth century. Apparently, the danger of incest committed either deliberately or in ignorance was regarded with great apprehension and considered as a very likely transgression especially among members of the aristocratic class.18 More than in many other medieval romances and verse narratives, the poet has focused here extensively on the symbolic function and significance of the trail leading away from hell and toward God. On the one hand, the devil has seduced many to take the road to hell: “die der tiuvel verriet / ûf dem wec der helle” (58–59; whom the devil betrayed on the way toward hell). On the other hand, anyone who maintains his hope in God can rely on His grace and mercy: “und selbe wider kêren / ûf der sælden strâze” (63–64; and return to the road to salvation).19 The biblical source, Acts 16:17, which talks about the “via salutis,” is quite obvious and constantly needs to be kept in mind when we try to understand Hartmann’s ultimate message. Moreover, we can also recognize here that the poet offers a philosophical concept combined with the religious message, especially when he outlines that the existence of doubt detracts many people from pursuing the right path (63–64). The real problem for most people here on earth proves to be the attractiveness and pleasure of the material

existence and the comfort of the comfortable trail, as we will also hear in Dante’s Divina Commedia or in Petrarch’s famous letter in his Familiares.20 When the wanderer does not have to watch out for rocks and other barriers on the way, does not have to traverse swamps, to climb over mountains, or to pass through a dangerous forest (79–83), hence does not have to suffer from heat or cold (84), the outcome would be guaranteed eternal death, the loss of God’s grace, the hope for a good end of life. The true path, on the contrary, would be both “rûch unde enge” (89; rough and narrow), and yet, this very path would then lead to eternal life, to the union with God, and to timeless happiness and joy. Morality, spirituality, ethics, ideals, values, and faith are hence identified by means of selecting the right trail in one’s life, certainly both a profoundly theological and a philosophical concept.21 The narrator does not leave any doubt that the only valid and worthwhile trail through life emerges as lengthy, arduous, filled with traps and barriers, blocked by bodies of water and rocky heights. Those who are strong enough to follow that track would then ultimately achieve the only worthy goal: “unz daz si hin leitet / dâ si sich wol breitet / ûz disem ellende / an ein vil süezez ende” (94–96; until where it opens up and takes the person out of the misery [in this world] to a very sweet outcome). To characterize the wanderer who is capable of handling this unique trail, the narrator refers to a miserable person who travels through a forest where robbers attack him, steal his clothes, which are a symbol of his intellectual abilities, then cause him many wounds, a symbol of his soul, and leave him behind nearly dead (92–119). However, this victim is not abandoned by God; instead, He sends him two spiritual forces, “gedingen unde vorhte” (113; hope and fear). These are also allegorical elements, since fear stands in for fear of death, and hope, of course, for hope for salvation. Hope makes it possible for him to get up despite all of the pain and suffering and to return to his path, especially because of his trust in God and his repentance (sorrow), which guide him and help him to cleanse his wounds with oil and wine. The oil symbolizes God’s grace, wine the law. Once the wanderer has recovered, he is lifted up by God and placed on His shoulders in order to carry him home for more care (138). The trail through the forest thus transforms into an allegory of the true Christian’s path through life, and although the road proves to be rough, dangerous, even life-threatening, God’s love always sustains the believer, especially when he trusts in God despite all external threats and attacks. Hence, the search for spirituality is here expressed through the allegorical interpretation of the individual’s walk through the forest, a symbol of life with all of its complexities, fears, challenges, doubts, hope, and trust.22 The metaphor of the trail here gains central importance, very similar to the much later account by Petrarch about his climb of Mont Ventoux, although Hartmann pursues a strongly religious perspective, whereas the Italian Humanist subscribes to an ethical, intellectual, and moral reading of the trail.23 The narrator emphasizes that human existence is constantly prone to becoming a victim of sinfulness, and that it happens very easily to people to fail in their effort to be good. Nevertheless, the image of the trail undergirds new hope offered through the tale of Gregorius because he fell much more deeply than most other people, and yet managed to redeem himself through his profound repentance. Whoever ultimately escapes from

desperation and doubt and returns to God would be able to count on His grace and mercy (156). Indeed, incest itself does not prove to be the real sinfulness; it is, instead, doubt, if not despair, and incest emerges only as a test case for the individual whether s/he knows how to cope with the challenges.24 Two instances of incest become the focus of Gregorius’s repentance, specifically that one committed by his parents initially and later the second transgression which he himself commits, unaware about the situation he finds himself in. But in essence, behind all of this rather sordid business, Gregorius really deals with the individual’s quest for the right path toward God, with discovering the proper trail through a chaotic, hostile, and seductive world that threatens to mislead people. Hartmann composed a story about one exemplary case in which the protagonist pursues the wrong path, yet at first achieves greatest happiness and glory, until truth suddenly dawns upon him and he then falls down to the bottom of his existence. He immediately makes the right decision, suffers then for many years in a selfimposed exile from humanity, and is finally chosen by God as a saintly successor to the papal throne. As the narrator emphasizes in the prologue, “Den selben wec geriet ein man: / zer rehten zît er entran / ûz der mordære gewalt” (97–99; that blissful trail a man did find who escaped in the nick of time from the murderer’s/devil’s power). However, what does Hartmann really relate to us in this religious tale? Let us begin with a brief summary because many non-Germanists might not be familiar with this text, although German scholarship has already engaged with it for more than 200 years.25 The story begins with the parents of two young children, the duke of Aquitaine and his wife. After father and mother have passed away, the young man falls in love with his sister and forces himself upon her, impregnating her in that process. Before she delivers her child, he leaves on a crusade upon the advice of an old counselor, but the grief over the distance to his sister kills him. Once Gregorius is born, his mother, trying to hide the shame of incest, places the infant into a wooden box, equipped with gold, silk cloth, and a tablet upon which his origin is somewhat explained. She then goes down to the sea shore, and places the box into a little skiff, which is then sent off onto the open water in the hope that God will take care of this little child. Indeed, two fishermen, facing great difficulties on the water because of a mighty storm, discover the skiff with the box and take it home with them in the hope of gaining riches for themselves, but the abbot, whom they serve, comes to the shore just when they have reached the harbor and discovers the box and hence the child. He immediately decides to take care of the infant, entrusts it to one of the fishermen, who is poor anyway, giving him some of the money, and he baptizes the child, giving him his own name. Young Gregorius quickly grows up, proving to be supremely intelligent and capable, which gives the abbot hope that he might have found his ideal successor. But one day, the young protagonist hits one of the fishermen’s children by accident, who runs home to complain to his mother, who then loudly rants about Gregorius as an unworthy foundling, a statement which the latter overhears to his great chagrin. He immediately confronts the abbot, and reveals that he has always dreamed of becoming a knight, so this would be the right time for him to leave the fisherman’s family, the monastery, and the island in order to search for his own fortune. All of the abbot’s efforts to hold him back and to

prevent him from searching for his own family fail completely, particularly because of the words on the tablet, and soon enough Gregorius is on his way across the sea and then reaches the shore of Aquitaine, where his mother, who had never remarried, trying to be absolved of her sins through a religiously devout life, is besieged by a mighty lord. No one seems to be able to help her, but Gregorius quickly proves to be an outstanding champion and knight for her, and once he has defeated that hostile lord, he marries the lady, not knowing that she is his own mother. As Will Hasty recently noted, the lady is “an eremite living in the world who woos the love of Christ with all her heart,” while Gregorius is “a monk perfecting his soul in divine readings on an isolated island who dreams with all his heart of being a knight and winning a reputation for himself in the world (emphasis by Hasty).”26 Their happiness, however, quickly comes to an end because a maid secretly observes that Gregorius ritually reads the tablet and sheds tears over his sinful origin on a daily basis. Once she has revealed this to her lady, the duchess confronts her husband with the evidence, which then confirms her worst suspicion. He can only urge his mother and wife to remain hopeful and to trust in God’s mercy, but he himself, completely torn by guilt, sheds all of his splendid clothing and leaves on foot, never to be seen again. After three days, Gregorius begs a fisherman for help to find a most remote location where he can do penance for the rest of his days. This fisherman severely distrusts him because his words are in apparent contrast to his physical appearance, but the fisherman’s wife has pity on him, so the sinner can rest in a shed for the night. The next morning, he runs after the fisherman who is already prepared to go fishing on the lake. He takes Gregorius and shackles his feet to a rock in the middle of the water, and then throws the key into the lake, pledging that he would believe in his sanctity only once he would have recovered that key again. Seventeen years pass, when the pope in Rome dies in office. Looking for a worthy replacement, two old noblemen in the city receive dreams about Gregorius as the designated successor. While it proves to be extremely difficult to locate him, they eventually succeed, although Gregorius at first refuses to go with them. However, faced with the key for the locks holding his feet to the rock, which the fisherman had found in the body of a fish he had prepared as dinner for his guests, he finally realizes that God indeed has forgiven his sins and has chosen him as the new pope. Yet, he ultimately accepts this role only after he has also discovered the tablet that he had forgotten in the morning when he had rushed after the fisherman who was to take him to his little rock in the lake. On the way to Rome, many miracles happen that confirm Gregorius’s sanctity. Once installed as the new pope, Gregorius enjoys highest reputation among the people because of his piety and worthiness. As the narrator emphasizes, never before had there been a pope “der baz ein heilære / der sêle wunden wære” (1791–92; who was a better healer of the soul’s wounds). Eventually, the grieving duchess of Aquitaine, Gregorius’s mother, learns about this extraordinary new pope and turns to him as well, hoping to be relieved of her sins through his spiritual power. Soon enough, he recognizes her, and after a lengthy exchange, he reveals his own identity, and both praise God and spend the rest of their lives in pious devotion. There is no doubt about Hartmann’s specific religious teaching, encouraging his readers/listeners to trust God even under the worst circumstances, to repent and to accept

penance without holding back, and never to doubt that God will come to the individual’s rescue if there is true and full faith in God’s grace.27 This is a verse narrative about hope, belief, and confidence that God will never abandon His children, even if they commit the worst possible sin, as is illustrated in Gregorius’s ultimate destiny. There are many other secondary figures, who all serve a specific function and could be analyzed at length as well in order to learn more about how Hartmann perceived his own social environment, since the story is populated by fishermen and their families, maids, monks, and an abbot. Nevertheless, the only real focus rests on the sinner and his recovery through infinite trust in God’s greatness and mercy. Our critical question here consists of how the poet structured the protagonist’s movements, and what role the various trails assume in the entire narrative. In fact, here we face a rich opportunity to recognize the use of physical and metaphorical trails that traverse the entire story. Every major development is determined by tracks pursued by the various figures. While the prologue has already revealed how much Hartmann intended to explore the symbolism of the right and the wrong path, of the true track to heaven versus the wrong track toward hell, we can also identify a strong emphasis on trails in physical terms throughout the narrative because each figure is characterized by specific operations leading to new goals on the fictional map outlined here. As we will observe, the inner motivations, desires, fears, and other emotions find their direct reflections in the path which the characters take throughout their lives, so material and spiritual conditions in the persons’ actions are mirrored in the trails which they follow.28 While the religious narrative at first seems focused on the ducal court in Aquitaine, as soon as the old counselor and vassal has arrived who is supposed to advise brother and sister how to hide their disgrace and sinfulness (incest), significant movement sets in, and a variety of trails offer themselves as possible avenues. The old lord recommends that the young man, father of the incestuously conceived child, leave and go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (175) whereby his body could do penance through the long and dangerous journey. At the same time, he himself would take the young pregnant lady to his own court where she then could deliver the child without anyone learning about it. In other words, he urges them to split ways and thus to find venues through which they could hide their public disgrace and possibly regain God’s mercy: “Your body has acted against God. Let it then do penance before Him” (175). However, he is also aware that such a pilgrimage could entail the young man’s death, so he encourages him to prepare for the worst because even if he were to die while abroad, he would thus gain God’s blessing. At the same time, the young lady should stay in power, exert her political role as ruler over the land, and use all of her resources to give alms, to help the poor, and to display a generous disposition (175). Tragically, however, powerful love bonds the two siblings, and the idea of separating and going on different paths pains them deeply. Nevertheless, they are required to do so, but “[h]is heart followed her from there; hers stayed with the man. Parting perforce caused them pain” (176). Of course, the young man dies out of grief once he has left because he cannot

stay away from his beloved sister, which reminds us of the similar account in the various Tristan versions, except that there the love does not bond blood relatives. More important proves to be the new trail that develops once Gregorius, unnamed at that point, is sent away and kept in a box which is placed on a skiff floating down to the ocean, which is a clear parallel to the story of Moses in Exodus 2:1–7.29 The protagonist becomes, from very early on, a child of God and is entrusted to His guidance. Intriguingly, the narrator calls little Gregorius already a “kleinen schefman” (784; a little sailor, or mariner), indicating that this protagonist’s life will be determined by voyage, by crossing bodies of water, by pursuing unknown and treacherous trails. His mother stays behind, grief-stricken, while the baby safely bobs on the water and makes its way far out on the open sea. From now on, Gregorius is on his way, but it remains an open question whether the trail which he pursues at that point without him having chosen it is the right one, whether he can proceed this way, and how his own destiny is determined by the trail. However, at first his destiny is compared with that of Jonah/Jonas who is mentioned both in the Old and in the New Testament (Book of Tobit; Book of Jonah; and Matthew 12:39–41), so we are assured that ultimately Gregorius would be saved, despite the heavy burden of guilt that his sinfulness will impose upon him. It takes three days and three nights for the skiff to reach the area where the monastery is located, which builds even further connections with the biblical account through the number symbolism. After all the initial difficulties the infant experiences, he is found by the fishermen, rescued from the rough sea, and then adopted by the abbot. All seems to go well for him, since the abbot virtually accepts him as his own ‘son,’ the wife of the fisherman takes care of him en lieu of the biological mother, and the monks teach him everything which a future cleric needs to know. However, similarly as in the case of Herzog Ernst, the stay on the island during the early years of his life is bound to come to an abrupt end because he suddenly realizes that there is a mysterious riddle about his origin that he can solve only by leaving this enclave and returning to the world of strife, struggle, triumphs, and defeats. In fact, the island itself matters significantly, offering an important, even if only temporary landmark on Gregorius’s map of life. It provides him shelter, a secure upbringing, protection, education, but it also keeps him away from his real life, as he imagines at least, and makes it impossible for him to learn about his true identity – a strong parallel to young Parzival in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s eponymous Grail romance (ca. 1205), though the latter is caught in his mother’s forest, a sylvan island, so to speak.30 Whereas before the infant had traveled down to the sea and then had made his way to the island with God’s help, now he is no longer moving and finds himself at a standstill until the critical moment when he learns about the secret of his parents. As soon as he has been informed by the abbot about the tablet and what sordid origin he is from, the circular place – the island – can no longer hold him, and despite the abbot’s best efforts to keep him there, to warn him about the dangers of the outside world, and to lure him back into the monastic sphere, Gregorius has to leave, and so he quickly departs once he has been properly equipped and received a ship. Revealingly, in the engagement with the abbot, Gregorius formulates many of his hidden dreams about knighthood and the glory of chivalry in the courtly setting. All this shocks the

abbot, who really does not understand much about the young man, except that he is very intelligent, highly attractive, brilliant, and of a noble background. Not surprisingly, he can only admit at the end: “I don’t know where it’s all leading. I would understand Greek just as well” (187). Of course, the abbot perceives his own life strictly according to the teachings of the Church, and he would like his foster-son to follow him as the next abbot, but their trails cross here and are not the same. Or, as Susan Clark noted, they represent two different lifestyles, and at this point for Gregorius knighthood appears as much more appealing than the life of a monk.31 As much as it grieves the abbot, he has to acknowledge that Gregorius has to pursue his own path, so he gives him his blessing, wishing for him that he will find his trail taking him toward knighthood (188). Previous scholarship has intensively discussed questions pertaining to his guilt while abandoning the monastery, whether he should have listened to the abbot’s advice, or whether he breaks the vow of oblation, as was common at least until the end of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.32 But Gregorius was not oblated; he was not obligated to stay in the monastic school, and there is nothing in the abbot’s hand to force the young man.33 Instead, this protagonist is constantly moving, and there are only short moments of retardation in his life when he seems to have found a secure place to settle. Yet, each time there appears to be a lull, a drastic event occurs that forces him to find a new trail because his ultimate destiny is calling from the end of the narrative. As Christoph Cormeau and Wilhelm Störmer explicitly underscore, eo ipso there is nothing wrong with either form of life, as a cleric or as a knight, and all depends on the external circumstances requiring the individual to choose the one or the other.34 However, just as much as his arrival at the island had been determined by God’s own decision, he now also submits under divine guidance, no longer pursuing a specific direction, hoping that he will find a new trail that might lead him closer to his true goal, whatever that might be. Instead of letting the sailors use their usual instrument for the guidance of the ship, everything is left up to the wind because Gregorius does not yet know what trail is waiting for him, so he has to accept divine intervention leading him to where he is supposed to get: He ordered the sailors that all should be subject to the winds, to let the ship go wherever the winds instructed, and not to turn otherwise. A strong wind blew. It remained steady, and in just a few days they were driven by a storm toward his mother’s land. (190) All this proves to be an exact parallel with the first move away from Aquitaine when the infant floated on the water, except that at that early moment his mother had arranged that journey for her child. Now, however, Gregorius is more or less in charge himself, although he abstains precisely from any attempt to direct the course of his own journey. This reminds us strongly of the contemporary lai “Guigemar” by Marie de France; both poets indicated with their texts that the trail was necessary for their respective protagonist, but a trail itself did not necessarily grant agency.

In the much later verse narrative, “Der Einsideler und der Engel” by Heinrich Kaufringer (no. 1, ca. 1400), the poor hermit has to learn this truth in the very end after having witnessed a series of tragic events committed, as he finally realizes, by God’s own angel, that is by God’s own instructions.35 Again, staying in Aquitaine, the narrative experiences a significant retardation, with the trail for Gregorius recoiling, so to speak, making him move in circles, establishing him as the prime knight serving the lady, who wins the war against the enemy, and liberates the duchess from the siege. Then they marry, and all seems to go smoothly, but the trail in that land then abruptly comes to an end, and a new one awaits the protagonist. We almost get the impression that Hartmann projected here a kind of narrative world map with many tracks and paths, with God Himself holding the entire panel, i.e., the world, as in the Ebstorf mappa mundi, which invites the individual spectator to work toward the goal of identifying the correct trail and then to pursue it until the final destiny is reached.36 He spent a longer time on the island because he had to grow up first. The next stage runs a much shorter time and is determined by intensive developments, which make the marriage between the two people possible, here disregarding the considerable age difference. Both enjoy great happiness, until the next major disruption occurs, this time involving the revelation of the truth that they have committed incest because they are mother and son. Interestingly, the duchess learns about the tablet which her husband ritually reads every morning in secret, while he is away on a hunt, and once she has discovered it and read the instructions, her husband has to be called back as quickly as possible. This process suggests that both trace a different path; he aiming for nothing but entertainment, she looking for illumination, the unlocking of a riddle. There is much movement involving both characters, but their trails are very short in this scene, with Gregorius returning, not to learn about a new path toward the future, but realizing that the old path has come to an end and that his future as a knight and a duke is entirely blocked by God because of his sinful relationship with his own mother.37 Both mother and son are deeply shocked when they are confronted with the true nature of their forbidden relationship, and she is almost in danger of despairing, until Gregorius reprimands her and urges her to keep her trust in God. Yet, in contrast to himself, he begs her to stay in that country, to repent, to impose material suffering upon herself, and yet to maintain hope in God’s grace: “You are a guilty woman. Let your body atone for that with daily toil, that it is refused what it desires most. Keep it thus, as long as it is allotted to you, in the bonds of sorrow” (200). By contrast, Gregorius cannot stay there any longer; a new trail has opened up for him, although he does not yet know where it will take him. So, in a way anticipating St. Francis’s refusal to wear the costly clothing given to him by his father, he sheds his valuable garments, dresses in shabby clothes, and departs on foot, embarking immediately on a life of repentance and self-sacrifice. St. Francis of Assisi (1181/1182‒1226) had rejected all worldly possessions and sought a new way to lead a spiritual life. He thus became the founder of the famous order of the Franciscans, active until today. As is so often the case in medieval literature, we recognize here also a direct parallel with his father’s move, leaving his sister behind and going on a

pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but only to die soon from a broken heart. For Gregorius, there is much more waiting for him; he must pursue his trail to very end and thus fulfill God’s plans with him. For a third time in his life, Gregorius is not clear at all where the trail will take him. As a baby, unbeknown to himself, he was carried by the skiff to the island with the monastery. As a young man he let the ship drift him to the shore of his mother’s lands, and now, as a sinner and repentant he leaves the world behind, that is, the courtly existence, and follows whatever path opens up to him, the further away from civilization the better: He shunned entirely people and roads and open fields. The wretched man directed his way unerringly toward the wilderness. He waded through water next to a footbridge. With tender, shoeless feet he trod through forests and bogs, tending his prayers and not eating until the third day. (201) In the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1370) we are asked to sympathize with the suffering protagonist who has to traverse a bitter cold winter landscape with many monsters and beasts. But the knight is on a specific quest, he is well equipped, and only has to suffer from the low temperatures because he does not find lodging. As soon as Castle Hautdesert emerges before him, he offers a prayer of thanks to the Virgin Mary and is more than delighted to be invited in and to receive the best possible hospitality during that cold season. Gregorius, by contrast, does not know what his goal might or ought to be, but he pursues the roughest possible paths to begin with his penance. This is almost the same motif as famously included in Robert de Boron’s The Quest of the Holy Grail (ca. 1200): Sallying forth from the castle they took leave of each other as had been agreed, and entered the forest at divers places where they saw it to be thickest and wherever they saw there was no road or path. At the moment of parting many wept who thought their hearts were hard and insensible.38 However, these knights are looking for adventures, whereas Gregorius wants to flee the world, leave his own sinful self behind, and repent to the utmost possible. Indeed, the sinner decides to select the tough trails, the worst crossings, the biggest barriers, all in order to punish his body. Curiously, then, the more he allows the divine power to guide him, the better the track proves to be for his soul. Traveling, for instance, as an infant in the skiff and approaching the island was the right path for him, away from his sinful mother and to a monastery where the abbot adopted him. Learning during his early life all the religious lessons according to his teachers’ requirement allowed him to progress toward a religious goal, but his mind was still set on a different one, knighthood. When he has finally learned about his destiny, he decides to abandon his own initiative, which actually leads him to the shore of his mother’s territory. Of course, there he is facing the problem of being attracted to the duchess, although she is his

own mother, which neither one of them is aware of. However, his accomplishments as a knight make him to the most attractive candidate to marry this lady, and thus both tumble, spiritually speaking, deep down into further sinfulness, doubling it even further. Would we have to lament with the protagonist about this tragic development? On the surface, yes, he emerges as a tragic victim of the unintended circumstances, but in reality, Gregorius is following an invisible trail that takes him first down to the very bottom of his existence, which then becomes the foundation for his spiritual recovery, almost like in the case of Dante who has first to descend to the bottom of Hell before he can ascend again to Purgatory and Paradise. In fact, without having committed the sin of incest with his mother, the protagonist would not have experienced the horrible downfall, and thus he would not have learned the ultimate message, which at the end transforms him into a saint and the new pope. The parallels between the three stages in his life are striking and need to be identified more carefully in order to bring to our attention the functioning of the existential trails. At first, as an infant, he is sent off by his own mother who hopes that God will take care of him. Traveling in the box frees him from the association with incestuous parents, and it also takes him to the best possible person to gain a thorough education and enjoy a good upbringing. However, simply transcending from a bright and intelligent youth into a monk, and subsequently into the next abbot, would not translate into the deep transformation of an ordinary aristocrat into a saintly person. Gregorius must continue to search for the right trail, which explains why he does not give the sailors on his ship any direction, hoping that this would allow him to reach a shore predetermined for him by God where he could fulfill his true destiny, as a knight and possibly as a ruler. This parallels exactly his early move away from Aquitaine to the island, and now he travels from the island back to Aquitaine. It’s a circular movement, and only once he has completed this narrative circle, being united with his mother again, can he enter the next stage of his life, which means, however, that he realizes his egregious sinfulness and that he must abandon all of his worldly existence in order to embark on a lengthy process of repentance, lasting 17 years. The reward is stunning, of course, and so is the ultimate purpose of the entire narrative. But I am not concerned so much with the religious message; instead, my focus rests on the employment of the narrative strategy to trace trails and to recognize them as the critical instruments in achieving a life’s purposes, which proves to be, after all, a religious impetus again. While the infant was completely helpless when floating on the water, a most unstable medium, or trail, Gregorius makes himself completely helpless when he abandons his dukedom, his wife/mother, his wealth, and power. Oddly, only when he follows a path of uncertainty and resistance, such as through the forest, taking him to the rough and uncouth fisherman who has only words of contempt for him, does he actually achieve his true goal. Of course, being taken to the rocky island with no human help available, surviving then only with God’s assistance for 17 years, represents a divine miracle. But it is the ultimate resting point there, and Gregorius no longer needs to follow any other trail because he has found his true destination there, as minuscule and barely life-supporting it might be. While before, fishermen had rescued him from the sea, now a fisherman takes him to the rocky island, certainly a place where no human being could survive on his/her own. Both times, those men

think primarily of themselves and their personal advantage. But in both instances, they assume an instrumental function to help the protagonist turn toward a new path in his life. The miraculous dimension is obvious, and yet we also observe clearly how much the narrator has structured his entire tale by means of implementing and outlining trails that traverse and structure Gregorius’s entire life. Each trail assumes its own function and plays a significant part in his efforts to redeem himself, to gain absolution of his parents’ sinfulness, and to realize his personal dreams and goals. When Gregorius was a youngster, the trail provided to him by the abbot would have turned into a silence and crystallization within the monastic world, truly alien to the protagonist despite his extraordinary learning and intellectual abilities. As a young knight he achieves his greatest triumphs, following a trail leading him to the highest position in life, being the ruler of a country and married to the esteemed lady. But his pathway through life is still unknown to him, even though he regularly reads the tablet. Only once he is confronted by his wife/mother about the truth behind the words on the tablet does it dawn upon him that he had chosen, once again, a wrong trail. Fittingly, when Gregorius abandons all worldly ideals and values, and all material goods, and submits completely to God’s will, he finally choses the right path, even though it threatens to rob him of his physical life. The trail through the forest, the way down to the shoreline, and the crossing of the water to reach the island, the second one in his life, finally closes the doors to all the other but wrong pathways and allows him to transcend his previous existence and to embark on the true approach to God. To this, we have to add that the other travelers who come from Rome to seek the predestined successor to the papal throne do not understand how to detect the right path toward their goal. They are just as lost and in the dark about the right trail as Gregorius was himself throughout his previous life. The two noble Romans have a specific instruction, but they do not know how to translate it into concrete actions. As the narrator emphasizes, they roam the country of Aquitaine for a long time, not succeeding in their efforts. Just as in the case of Gregorius, they fail for a long time because they pursue the normal paths, follow the standard trails, and prefer the comfort of familiarity over the danger of the wilderness, a topic we will hear much about in the chapter on Petrarch’s famous letter in his Familiares. Only once God instills the thought in them that they must follow a different trail do they get close to their goal: “And so they hurried to where they saw mountains and a desolate area near the lake. They were greatly grieved because they doubted they could ever know where to find him” (205). As so often is the case in medieval literature, whether in Dante’s Divina Commedia or in the anonymous alliterative Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, epistemologically determined trails deviate from tradition and require the individual wanderer to explore new territory. By the same token, the two Romans finally realize that they must enter into the wilderness where they might find the man graced by God. Intriguingly, just when they leave their usual tracks, they quickly observe that things suddenly make sense, that they have found their path where God wants them to be: “They followed no path, wandering about as their feelings advised them until the third day” (205–06). It is always this time period, three days, which creates the chronological framework, both for Gregorius and the Romans, and each time the desired goal

emerges just at the right moment when no trail seems to exist any longer, and where no foot or hoof prints indicate that people had traveled there before. Again, they encounter the fisherman, a profession of great significance at least in this verse narrative, and certainly a figure who evokes strong biblical aspects. The first two fishermen try to keep the box with the child and the gold for themselves out of greed, but they have to give it up because the baby begins to cry and can thus alert the abbot about its presence. The third fisherman is characterized as a brutal and mean-spirited man, but this helps in the narrative to make Gregorius suffer even further. Moreover, since he does not care about waking up the poor man early in the morning, the sinner forgets his tablet, and this then later serves, once the tablet has been found again, as an additional sign from God that his sins have been redeemed and that he is indeed chosen as the new pope.39 We must not forget that they rediscover the tablet only after they have taken the repentant from his island across the lake back to the firm land. And only once the tablet is back in Gregorius’s hands does he fully understand and accept God’s grace, and only then can he travel freely down to Rome because he has reached the end of his road of trials and tribulations, suffering, and redemption, and has finally been granted the privilege of pursuing the only right path, as predestined for him. The ultimate triumph thus consists of the travel back to the Holy City when many miracles occur, which underscore that this is finally the true trail: “When they started out the next day on their trip to Rome, they often saw on the way that God’s blessing was manifest in this pure man, night and day” (211). The travel company never encounters any danger, and they never run out of food, so they are guarded by God Himself, and hence they are on the right trail. Both the two Romans and Gregorius had been lost, the latter for almost his whole life, the former only during their search for the God-chosen successor to the Holy See. Once he has reached Rome and has been established as the new pope, no more traveling is necessary; he has reached the end of his road, whereas from now on other people come to see him, especially his own mother, and because she has now no difficulties in finding the way to the Holy See, she quickly reaches the pope and is received well and granted absolution of her own sins. Altogether, there is no doubt that Hartmann here develops a profoundly religious tale, filled with sexual crimes, religious miracles, and tragic developments, but in the final analysis he also operates intricately with the image of the trail which the individual has to pursue in order to achieve his/her ultimate goal here in life, steering away from hell and aiming for heaven. Whenever actions become stalled, the protagonist stays at a location, and whenever the next stage in the development begins, we find him on the road or on a new journey, either across water or through the wilderness. Even though travel does not seem to be of prime importance here at first sight, we can now rightly claim that Hartmann operates centrally with the idea of the trail because it emerges as one of the central epistemological metaphors. Both in the prologue and throughout the narrative, we are constantly alerted to the centrality of trails that take us through life, and to the need to evaluate carefully what trail to choose.

In the case of Gregorius, there are many different kinds of trails, some that take the protagonist on his course without any of his input. Others he selects out of personal desire; others are thrust upon him. But only once he accepts that trailing is the essential task in all existence, avoiding the easy and seductive paths, does he finally turn to his spiritual quest, the true path in this life. We might even go so far as to question how much Gregorius really chooses his trails, or whether they are simply waiting for him because each one of his passages carries meaning and proves to be the precondition for the next to occur. Similarly, the binary opposition between the earthly and the religious dominates the entire tale, putting into question the relationship between time and space. Will Hasty, however, claims that the very binaries seem to have dynamized and been directed by the initiatives to an end in which it seems possible to perceive an expansion of the available cultural options, an increase in the continuously fluctuating values of space-time, a happily ever after in which beginning increasingly shows itself to be an end-in-itself.40 Recognizing, by contrast, the supreme importance of the trails and their forward-looking direction, ultimately allowing both mother and son to recover from their sinfulness and to move forward, beyond their sexual bonding and their material commitment. What matters for everyone in this verse narrative is to recognize the correct trail, to walk the correct walk, and to aim for the ultimate goal. Even though Gregorius has to accept numerous wrong paths, and has to go in circles at times (abbey on the island, Aquitaine), he is granted by God to move forward and to choose the right trail. Hence, the positive outcome, founded on hope and joy because the wanderer is not alone here on earth, consists of the protagonist having discovered his own, true trail, and thus he can achieve his ultimate purpose. We could proceed from here quite effectively and trace as well the narrative trails in Hartmann’s Erec, Iwein, or in his verse novella, Der arme Heinrich. But only Gregorius proves to be so centrally predicated on the notion of the trail as the roadmap for the protagonist from utter sinfulness to glorious redemption by God and elevation to the rank of pope.

Notes 1 Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan. With the Surviving Fragments of the Tristran of Thomas. With an intro. by A. T. Hatto (1960; London: Penguin, 1967), 105. 2 Dichter über Dichter in mittelhochdeutscher Literatur, ed. Günther Schweikle. Deutsche Texte, 12 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1970), 6, 12, 18, et passim. 3 http://www.handschriftencensus.de/werke#H (last accessed on November 29, 2019). For each of Hartmann’s major poems, one must click on the respective links. For the latest critical analysis of Hartmann’s works, see now Ludger Lieb, Hartmann von Aue: Erec ‒ Iwein ‒ Gregorius ‒ Armer Heinrich. Klassiker-Lektüren, 15 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2020); however, I was not yet able to read this monograph. 4 Brian Murdoch, Gregorius: An Incestuous Saint in Medieval Europe and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31–46.

5 See now the contributions to A Companion to Medieval Translation, ed. Jeanette Beer (Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2019). Oddly, such famous ‘translators’ as Chrétien de Troyes and Hartmann von Aue are not even mentioned here. 6 Erika Langbroek and Francis Brands, “Der Fall Gregorius,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 79 (2019): 227–73. 7 Mona Kirsch, “Hartmann von Aue,” Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon: Das Mittelalter, ed Wolfgang Achnitz. Vol. 4: Lyrik und Dramatik (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 111–16; eadem, “Hartmann von Aue,” Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon: Das Mittelalter, ed Wolfgang Achnitz. Vol. 5: Epik (Vers – Strophe – Prosa) in Kleinformen (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 177–200. 8 Sylvia Kohushölter, Die lateinische und deutsche Rezeption von Hartmanns von Aue ‘Gregorius’ im Mittelalter. Untersuchungen und Editionen. Hermaea, NF, 111 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006). 9 Hugo Kuhn, “Der gute Sünder – Der Erwählte?,” Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius der gute Sünder, trans. Burkhard Kippenberg (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, jun., 1959/1986), 235–49. 10 See, for instance, Eva-Maria Carne, Die Frauengestalten bei Hartmann von Aue: Ihre Bedeutung im Aufbau und Gehalt der Epen. Marburger Beiträge zur Germanistik, 31 (Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1970), 69–80. 11 For a structural analysis of Gregorius, especially of the prologue, see Hansjürgen Linke, Epische Strukturen in der Dichtung Hartmanns von Eue: Untersuchungen zur Formkritik, Werkstruktur und Vortragsgliederung (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1968), 35–49. 12 Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 13 Many philologists have made excellent efforts to edit and to translate this text, one of the ‘classics’ of Middle High German literature. See, for instance, Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius der gute Sünder. Mittelhochdeutsch / Neuhochdeutsch. Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der Ausgabe von Friedrich Neumann. Übertragung von Burckhard Klippenberg (1963; Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1986); Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius, Der arme Heinrich, Iwein, ed. and trans. by Volker Mertens. Bibliothek des Mittelalters, 6; Bibliothek deutscher Klassiker, 189 (Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2004); Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius, trans. Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2017). The currently best English translation, as far as I can tell, is offered by Kim Vivian, in The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, trans. with commentary by Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 165–214. 14 For a very useful summary of Sophocles’s text and overview of the modern-day reception (from Freud to Igor Stravinsky, including modern tv productions and radio shows), which hardly finds a match in any current research publication, see, exceptionally, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_Rex (last accessed on April 16, 2020). The medieval versions, however, are entirely ignored. For deeper reflections and an extensive review of the relevant scholarship, see Will Hasty, Adventures in Interpretation: The Works of Hartmann von Aue and Their Critical Reception. Literary Criticism in Perspective (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996), 52–67. 15 Helmut Hühn and Martin Vöhler, “Oidipus,” Mythenrezeption: Die antike Mythologie in Literatur, Musik und Kunst von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Maria Moog-Grünewald. Der Neue Pauly, Supplemente, 5 (Stuttgart and Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2008), 500–11. They mention Hartmann von Aue once, but immediately jump from antiquity to the Renaissance. 16 http://www.lectionarycentral.com/GregoryMoraliaIndex.html (last accessed on November 30, 2019). 17 Brian Murdoch, “Hartmann’s Legends and the Bible,” A Companion to the Works of Hartmann von Aue, ed. Francis G. Gentry. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Cultures (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005), 141–59; here 150–56. 18 Mertens, ed. and commentary, Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius (2004), 788–91. 19 Subsequently, I will rely mostly on Vivian’s trustworthy translation; stylistically, I might prefer sometimes slightly different wording, but overall, his English rendering of Hartmann’s texts proves to be excellent. The poet’s comments in the prologue, however, are extremely important for the subsequent argument, so I prefer to use my own translation of the quotes in this section. 20 See the respective chapters in this book. 21 Ulrich Ernst, Der “Gregorius” Hartmanns von Aue: theologische Grundlagen – legendarische Strukturen – Überlieferung im geistlichen Schrifttum. Ordo, 7 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2002). 22 As to the significant role of the forest, see Albrecht Classen, The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective. Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO: Lexington Books, 2015). There I do not engage with Gregorius specifically, except for an instance regarding the protagonist’s effort to disappear in the wilderness in order to repent his sinfulness, 125. This chapter allows me to expand considerably on this issue.

23 See my chapter on Petrarch in this book. 24 Stephen L. Wailes, “Hartmann von Aue’s Stories of Incest,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 91.1 (1992): 65–78; Brian Murdoch, Gregorius: An Incestuous Saint in Medieval Europe and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 25 Elfriede Neubuhr, Bibliographie zu Hartmann von Aue. Bibliographien zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, 6 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1977); Petra Hörner, Hartmann von Aue: mit einer Bibliographie 1976–1997. Information und Interpretation, 8 (Frankfurt a. M. and New York: Peter Lang, 1998). 26 Will Hasty, “The Beginning of the End: Binary Dynamics and Initiative in Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius,” The EndTimes in Medieval German Literature: Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse, ed. Ernst Ralf Hintz and Scott E. Pincikowski (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019), 50–71; here 61. 27 Volker Mertens, Gregorius Eremita: eine Lebensform des Adels bei Hartmann von Aue in ihrer Problematik und ihrer Wandlung in der Rezeption. Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, 8 (Munich and Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1978). 28 From here on I will follow the translation by Vivian; only when specific passages require a closer analysis, will I offer my own, and then I will indicate that specifically. 29 The Vulgate Bible. Vol. 1: The Pentateuch. Douey-Rheims Translation, ed. Swift Edgar. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1010), 281/282. 30 Albrecht Classen, “Caught on an Island: Geographic and Spiritual Isolation in Medieval German Courtly Literature: Herzog Ernst, Gregorius, Tristan, and Partonopier und Meliur,” Studia Neophilologica 79 (2007): 69–80. See also the contributions to Islands and Cities in Medieval Myth, Literature and History: Papers Delivered at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, in 2005, 2006 and 2007, ed. Andrea Grafetstätter, Sieglinde Hartmann, and James Ogier. Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, 14 (Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 2010). 31 Susan L. Clark, Hartmann von Aue: Landscapes of Mind (Houston, TX: Rice University Press, 1989), 103–05. 32 Mayke de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 12 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 1996); for the history of medieval monasteries at large, see Jans Rüffer, Mittelalterliche Klöster: Deutschland – Österreich – Schweiz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009). See also Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 224–25. 33 Christoph Cormeau and Wilhelm Störmer, Hartmann von Aue: Epoche – Werk – Wirkung. Arbeitsbücher zur Literaturgeschichte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1985), 118–19. 34 Cormeau and Störmer, Hartmann von Aue (1985), 119–20. 35 Albrecht Classen, Love, Life, and Lust in Heinrich Kaufringer’s Verse Narrative (2014; Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2019). 36 I discuss this at length in the last chapter, where I combine the analysis of various narratives with an analysis of maps and charts. 37 Albrecht Classen, “Spiritual and Existential Meanings of the Word: Strategies and Function of Reading in the Middle Ages. With Special Emphasis on Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius,” Seminar 32.3 (1996): 221–39. 38 The Quest of the Holy Grail, trans. W. W. Comfort (Cambridge, Ont., 2000), 28 (online); this is based on La Queste del Saint Graal, translatée des manuscrits du XIIIe siècle, ed. M. Albert Pauphilet (Paris: Champion, 1923); online at: https://www.yorku.ca/inpar/quest_comfort.pdf (last accessed on April 19, 2020). 39 Albrecht Classen, “Objects of Memory as Hermeneutic Media in Medieval German Literature: Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, Thüring von Ringoltingen’s Melusine, and Fortunatus,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 65 (2009): 159–82. See also Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). However, she does not even consider or mention the works by Hartmann von Aue. 40 Hasty, “The Beginning of the End,” 2019, 66.

5 The Passage toward Happiness Trailing through the World in Search of Love Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan (Together with Some Comments on Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach). Where There Is a Trail, There Is Love!

Throughout history, certain lovers have constantly appealed to posterity because of their tragic experiences, whether we think of Abelard and Heloise, Dante and Beatrice, or Romeo and Juliet. To those memorable figures, we also would have to add Tristan and Isolde, treated by a vast number of different poets in the Middle Ages and beyond. The famous German post-Romantic composer Richard Wagner even created a musical memorial of them through his opera Tristan und Isolde (premiered in 1865). The number of scholarly studies, translations, adaptations, retellings especially of Gottfried von Straßburg’s romance (ca. 1210) is immense, so it would be almost foolish to try to recapture the essential contributions offered over the last 200 years.1 I can only highlight a few of the most important studies from the recent years, and then turn to my actual topic, another effort to unearth the extent to which medieval poets embraced the idea of the trail in their works. After all, the issue of love is very much predicated on the notion of the passageway which leads the lovers to their goals or toward catastrophe. Tristan and Isolde deals with many different aspects, not only the love relationship between these two protagonists. Its quality as a superior literary masterpiece from the early thirteenth century is uncontested, and every generation of scholars has been able to open new layers of meaning, considering the structure of the text, its ethical and aesthetic appeals, its theological and philosophical foundation, and its emphasis on the arts (music) and languages.2 Of course, the critical issue is the severe conflict between this couple and Isolde’s older husband, King Mark of Cornwall, who is, to make things even worse, Tristan’s uncle, who is deeply pained over this affair because he loves his wife and is equally charmed by his nephew. Even though Gottfried relies on a fairly standard structural model, telling us first the story of Tristan’s parent before turning to the actual protagonist and his life story, we can easily recognize behind the narrative elements in the foreground a fundamental concern for ethics, morality, ideals, aesthetics, and other concepts and ideals. Those prove to be of central significance, and they deserve to be drawn out in the first place in order to understand fully what the poet intended to express with this famous romance. The tensions between love

and honor, God and social reputation, to name just a few critical terms, are enormous and are powerfully explored by the poet in great depth.3 I suggest here that the notion of the trail served him, like many of his contemporaries, exceedingly well to come to terms with the same spiritual map as outlined also in the other literary examples discussed in the other chapters. So, I will first create a preliminary scaffold of the text itself, that is, uncover its blueprint, and then turn to the critical component, the trail, which holds all elements of this romance together. After all, the experience of love is most congenially expressed in the metaphor of the trail upon which the two protagonists come to meet each other and where they then experience the ultimate sensation of love. They have no choice but to pursue that path of love which constitutes the essential component of their lives. There is no alternative for them but to track their trails and to figure out how those might or might not lead to their goals – happiness in their existence predicated on love and honor, almost an epistemological paradox. The prologue proves to be a masterpiece of literary reflections on the purpose of the erotic discourse for human ideals that make life worth living. Subsequently, we are presented with the actual narrative where we find the fundamental elements already well in place that subsequently structure all the following episodes, first tracing Riwalîn’s life from his youth to his early, very untimely death, subsequently his son’s life, that is, Tristan’s experiences from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to erotic guilt. Both Riwalîn and Tristan are presented each time as travelers here on earth, unsteady, unsettled, always on the lookout for a better life, aiming for new ideals, discontent with their previous life, hoping each time to improve their standing in their earthly existence. Very similar to countless other courtly protagonists, these two men, father and son, long for the glory of the courtly utopia, which they believe can be found at King Mark’s court. Granted, Riwalîn travels to Cornwall upon his own volition, whereas Tristan reaches that kingdom rather involuntarily after he had been abducted and then abandoned by the Norwegian merchants. Nevertheless, as both the prologue and the actual narrative underscore unequivocally, courtliness dominates the entire romance as the ultimate social and cultural ideal, which can apparently only be achieved by following the right path toward love.4 Tristan’s adulterous love affair with the Irish princess, whose hand in marriage he had won for his uncle Mark, occupies the entire second half of the romance, but there is no good outcome to be achieved, and the lovers ultimately have to part from each other, as painful as it proves to be for both. We do not know how Gottfried would have completed the text since it has come down to us only as a fragment, but all indicators tell us that tragedy waited for both lovers.5 This is also the case in all other versions, from Thomas de Bretagne to Eilhart of Oberg, and then in all later adaptions throughout medieval and early modern European literature.6 However, Gottfried was obviously content with breaking off at a critical juncture, knowing only too well that any other comments about how the lovers’ future life might have developed would only make it to a rather banal love story.7 Scholarship has already reflected upon this unique unfinished outcome, but even the attempt to recognize here a deliberate strategy to employ the concept of the fragment, which would have been a rather anachronistic term for medieval literature, has mostly failed to

convince. If, however, we had perceived the text in terms of trailing and the protagonists’ efforts to find their way through an increasingly obscure world, then many of the crucial features would have made much more sense. This is the very approach that I want to pursue here, deviating radically from all recent attempts to gain new insights into this world classic.8 Wherever we turn, Tristan scholars have been content with analyzing the different versions of this romance in the French, German, Italian, or English tradition.9 Or they examined the various narrative strategies to come to terms with the phenomenon of love, which differed from period to period and from language to language.10 For Uta Drecoll, the relationship between love and death in the Tristan romances would have to be regarded as the most central motif.11 Patrizia Mazzadi, by contrast, focused on the theoretical reflections in Gottfried’s romance, which matter, indeed, significantly.12 Other scholars pursued the traditional path of engaging in a close reading of Gottfried’s text and of the myth of the Tristan and Isolde love as it transpired throughout the centuries.13 Anna Sziráky, for instance, highlighted the significant role of music in Gottfried’s Tristan.14 Whereas Hugo Bekker discussed the romance by dint of very close readings, probing many different levels of meanings in every episode and scene,15 Tomas Tomasek identified Gottfried’s narrative as medieval utopia.16 Recently, the visual dimension behind this love story has also attracted scholarly attention, but this approach, once again, is limited to the material framework of this fictional account.17 We could certainly reflect on countless other critical approaches to this masterpiece of medieval, specifically Middle High German literature, and yet we would never reach a full coverage or comprehension because this text has appealed to many generations, medieval and modern, and there are ever new perspectives that open innovative levels of meaning.18 However, this does not signify that everything goes, and that every theoretical approach to Tristan would be valid and useful. Nevertheless, here I want to suggest that the notion of the ‘trail’ offers a perspective that has not yet been fully considered by previous scholarship, although Gottfried alerts us already in the prologue that he intends to compose his narrative in order to illuminate the central importance in human life of tracing one’s trail and to stay on track in order to achieve relevance, satisfaction, goodness, and God’s grace.19 In fact, as I would like to suggest, we could understand the entire romance much more profoundly if we recognized, as Gottfried urges us throughout, to read this text as a literary illustration of the workings of trails as the benchmarks of all of human life. Some scholars have already employed the critical notion of the passage through life, or rather through the thicket of the text, such as Birgit Zacke, but then only in the context of the text-image relationship.20 There is much material in this romance which previous scholars have touched upon already, and yet there appear to be additional layers of meaning that deserve to be unearthed. My approach here thus moves considerably beyond most of traditional research insofar as I will simply take the narrator’s words literally and recognize his intent as a narrative strategy to figure out how the individual can forge his/her way through life and learn thereby the meaning of the trails. As he formulates in the prologue, people’s efforts to realize ethical ideals tend to fail because the “stege” (37; paths) are narrow, making the individual fall by

the wayside. Many reach wrong judgments, calling the good as bad, and the bad as good, destroying thereby all the arts, ethics, and fundamental meaning of life. Society is predicated on this foundation consisting of “Cunst unde nahe sehender sin” (33; art and criticism, as Hatto has it; better would be: art and critical acumen), but envy intervenes and destroys the best intentions. As the narrator emphasizes, virtue pursues a very narrow path, making it most difficult for most people to pursue it. After all, there are many hurdles to overcome (38), and only those who are capable of handling those barriers would be blessed enough to achieve virtue. Most artistically, Gottfried operates here with a chiasm, playing on the two terms ‘stege’ and ‘wege,’ which he first utilizes in their nominal function, and then in their verbal function: “die dîne stege, die dîne wege, / wol ime, der si wege unde stege!” (39–40; blessed be him who dares to walk and to pursue your paths and your trails). The notion of the trail thus transforms into a quest for meaning here in this life which should not be spent idly and uselessly. Consequently, Gottfried as the poet has set a task for himself with which he hopes to help the world by challenging those who possess a noble heart (47). Subsequently, he defines that group of people more in detail, separating them from those who aim only for comfort and ease in their lives, whereas those with a noble heart are strong enough and willing to accept the sweetness and the suffering in their hearts at the same time. Even though he does not return to the metaphor of the path, passage, or trail, the basic notion of nobility being defined as passing through this life by embracing the dialectic of all existence continues to be of central importance for Gottfried: “der werlt wil ich gewerldet wesen, / mit ir verderben oder genesen” (65–66; I want to be part of that world, go under with it or prosper). Indirectly, he suggests that his verse narrative will serve those with a noble heart as a pilot light on their way through this difficult life: “ze kurzewîle vür geleit” (72; presented for entertainment). Those who are burdened by heartfelt pains (love pangs, for instance) would need help which a literary account could provide, but an account addressing central issues of love: “und senfte sô die stunde” (100; and sweetens thus the passing of time). Lovers could not survive their suffering without listening to the suffering of literary figures: “der edele senedaere / der minnet senediu maere” (121–22; the noble lover loves painful stories of love). Those who are qualified as noble lovers search all over the world for true stories of love, that is, they pursue many different paths to soothe their pain. Gottfried then addresses them and assures them that they do no longer search everywhere in vain; instead, here, with this account of Tristan and Isolde, the noble lovers have arrived at the right spot and can delight in listening to a most meaningful story that might alleviate their own love pain: “der envar niht verrer danne her” (124; he does not need to travel any further and has arrived). The poet thus claims the highest status as an expert in love, and calls all the noble lovers to assemble around him and to enjoy listening to this profound story about noble lovers (125–26). Reality and fiction thus merge insofar as the literary account offers direct teachings and amelioration for those who suffer from love.21 The readers/listeners are supposed to join the narrator and follow his trail toward the happy or tragic outcome of the erotic tale. As Gottfried indicates, he himself had to roam the world to find in some library the authentic, the true text as originally composed by Thomas of Bretagne. He checked manuscripts in French and Latin wherever he could find them, but it cost him much effort,

much searching until he had finally the luck to come across the book with the original text, whatever that might actually mean: “sus treip ich manege suoche” (163; thus I searched much). In other words, whatever Thomas really had to tell him, for the poet there was the critical task to determine what source to select and where to find it. While the prologue itself mirrors the tenuous trail to find virtues and maintain an ideal lifestyle, the narrative impetus also signals that the poet had to identify the correct trail to identify the best possible source. But it must be a love story, as the narrator subsequently underscores because only love tales can provide the individual with the necessary teachings regarding ethics and virtues (187– 90). This claim gains in validity then especially because only those who strive for honor and loyalty can hope to develop a noble heart. We can interpret the gerund form of “geren” here as “gernden” (226; striving for) as an alternative term for the search, the trailing through the world in the hope of finding those values. Only those who leave their home and strive for the ideals as outlined would thus be empowered to develop a noble heart. For Gottfried hence, the purpose of his entire text was not just to entertain, but to take his audience toward new ideals: “ir triuwe, ir triuwen reinekeit, / ir herzeliep, ir herzeleit” (231–32; their loyalty, their loyal purity, their heart-felt love, their heart-felt pain). The notion of a trail might be a little far-fetched, but at closer analysis we specifically recognize how much the narrator intends to lead his readers/listeners on a path toward the highest ideals in human life. While ‘the trail’ has so far often meant the very concrete and specific sense of the word, involving traveling, moving around, riding, walking, and going on a hike, here Gottfried elevates the term to imply also the movement in spiritual terms, trying to realize a goal determined by the experiences of suffering and happiness. Hence, for him the symbolism of the bread, like in a Eucharist, comes forward most clearly, but even those who are only on the outside would eventually be able to participate in the true experience of love, at least vicariously. As the prologue thus indicates, the literary account assumes the essential function of providing guidance and inspiration for those who are on the search for the ultimate ideal of love and yet feel insecure in their journey because the path of virtue and loyalty proves to be very narrow. Love thus translates into a trail, which here consists of a narrative, which, in turn, properly understood, creates meaning through the realization of the lovers’ suffering and joy. For Gottfried, then, digesting the account of Tristan and Isolde constitutes eating of bread, which ferments and creates new life in us. While the poet himself had traveled widely to find the original, true, or authentic text, that is, the true story of those two lovers, he now presents to us the results. The audience is thus invited to participate in their experiences of happiness and suffering and do not need to go on that journey, except for vicariously. Gottfried thus teaches the critical lesson of traveling in person and in imagination, and this in the name of love, outlining the strategy how to pursue the narrow path toward honor and virtue. Surprisingly, the entire romance, as it subsequently evolves, is deeply determined by travel, by moving around, and by following trails. Let us first examine the life of Tristan’s father, Riwalîn, before we turn to the protagonist, both of whom follow their own trails, though each faces quite a different one. Riwalîn receives the narrator’s high praise for his worthiness as a young prince, but there is also the warning that he appears to be too volatile

and unsteady, following any whim that might occur to him (264). Gottfried does not call him selfish, but certainly criticizes him for his self-centeredness, allowing only his own will to determine his life course. We are immediately warned about the danger for any individual who enjoys much wealth and power already in young age (267–68), so there is no real surprise about the actual outcome of Riwalîn’s efforts, a very early death, leaving behind his newlywed Blanscheflur who can barely deliver her son Tristan before she succumbs to death as well. Travel proves to be the modus operandi for this young man. He has hardly spent three years as the lord of his land when he decides to turn to an aggressive operation against his overlord, Morgan, although the latter is not guilty of any shortcoming or failure as ruler. The narrator is very specific about his criticism of Riwalîn’s behavior, which he does not regard as justified in any way, although the young man seems to be quite successful at first. However, the opponent knows how to fight back, and both their countries and peoples suffer badly. Curiously, and quite characteristically for Riwalîn, once the two men have achieved an equilibrium and signed an armistice to last for a year (395–401), the protagonist immediately looks for new trails, new challenges, and new entertainment. Riwalîn at first returns home, rewards all of his men, but remains restless, and soon embarks on a new trip, this time not pursuing military objectives. Instead, he aims for the court of King Mark of Cornwall where he hopes to enjoy entertainment and fun: “banekîe” (412), honor and praise, which would all enhance his status as a leading knight. In fact, it seems as if Riwalîn cannot stay restful, and instead of pursuing his original goals, whether justified or not, he abandons the military campaign for courtly culture. But not everything is glorious in Cornwall either, as the narrator emphasizes, because Mark had inherited that kingdom and then conquered the rest of England, repressing and controlling all the warring parties there which could not gain the upper hand against their opponents. Riwalîn is just like those aggressive nobles and demonstrates similarly a profound lack of responsibility and foresightfulness. His case, however, proves to be worse because he quickly abandons his countrymen and looks out only for his personal enjoyment, which ultimately leads to the catastrophic development already indicated. Morgan is not as foolish as his enemy, and prepares himself for the resumption of the military operations, and while Riwalîn spends his time in Cornwall, far away from his own kingdom, he resumes the war campaign and can thus catch his enemy by surprise. Although Riwalîn justifies his time spent in Cornwall with the hope that he might learn their new fighting techniques (458), in reality, he is taking ‘vacation,’ as we would say it. He experiences love, with Mark’s own sister, and impregnates her, but not without first having been almost mortally wounded in another military operation on behalf of the king. Blanscheflur rescues him, by granting her love to Riwalîn, and then the news reach the young man that Morgan has launched a war campaign against him, which forces his return home to defend his country. Blanscheflur’s reaction to this horrible news has already been discussed numerous times in the past,22 and here, we only need to emphasize that she can convince her lover to elope with her because otherwise she and her child would suffer from tremendous shame and embarrassment. Because of her love for Riwalîn, the young woman can no longer stay at her brother’s court, so both become uprooted, even though he returns home, where he marries her

quickly before he goes into war where he then receives his fatal wound. For Blanscheflur, the news of his death are so horrifying that she cannot even express her grief, so she passes away without uttering another word, after having delivered the child. This then concludes the story of Tristan’s parents, both victims of tragic outcomes. In particular, they were lost on their trails and pursued the wrong direction, not understanding the intricacies of their love life and the goals which they should have pursued. Riwalîn was too much of an impulsive character and he thus ruined Blanscheflur’s own life, and both thus leave behind a little child whom the marshal Rûal calls, according to the sorrowful circumstances, Tristan, the sorrowful one. All this makes really sense when we keep the model of the trail in mind, as we have already observed it in previous chapters. After much movement, pursuing different trails, Riwalîn and then his wife pass away, with Tristan being in a highly precarious situation as the orphan of Morgan’s mortal enemy. From a narratological point of view, we will observe that the engine driving Riwalîn is also at work in the son’s case, and the critical question proves to be how the individual manages to make his/her way through this life by pursuing the right or the wrong path. Leaving Blanscheflur aside, Riwalîn certainly wasted all of his opportunities and failed to live up to his expectations of an honorable ruler once that war is over. All of his people have to submit under Morgan, and Rûal barely manages to protect the orphan infant by making his wife Floraete pretend that it is her own newborn. The narrator gives her high praise for her loyalty and assiduousness in taking care of the child and raising it, her own lord, to the best of her abilities until he has reached the age of seven. This is the moment when Rûal sends Tristan off to other knights whom he has selected as worthy teachers for the young man. Tristan quickly proves to be an extraordinarily gifted person and gains the best possible education, both in music and in languages, in knighthood and in rhetoric, in hunting and in playing chess, reading books, and in horsemanship. In a curious but revealing parallel, Riwalîn seemed not to have gone through any particular training, though he shun forth through his extraordinary gifts and skill as a knight. In contrast to his father, however, Tristan is sent off on a carefully selected trail and returns home only after seven years during which he has grown into a most impressive personality, excelling both in intellect and physical beauty. Here we observe the specific working of trails that are prescribed and guided the young man in his long-term process of growing up. However, similar to his father, Tristan also maintains a certain degree of impulsiveness and lack of premeditation when he later attacks Morgan without having prepared himself properly. Tristan had also reached the court of King Mark, his uncle, but not because he had intended to travel there; instead, he had been abducted by the Norwegian merchants who later had to let him off at an unknown shore because they were afraid of God’s revenge for their evil deed. Rûal subsequently finds his lost ‘son,’ which then unravels some of the secrets in Tristan’s life and connects him closely with Mark, who demonstrates great love for his nephew. But at first Tristan’s continues to war against Morgan. Having heard about the situation back home from Rûal, having returned himself, Tristan rushes into a most dangerous situation, meets Morgan, murders him in his war tent, and barely survives the following melee only because Rûal comes to his rescue. Just like his father, Tristan does not fully understand the trails that he is following, and because Morgan was Riwalîn ’s personal

enemy (without any justification), his son continues with the vendetta (again, with no explanation or rational), and he would thus have almost experienced his early death like his father because he has followed a trail that leads only to his death. Most negatively, Tristan and his few men enter the inner camp of their enemy, not revealing their armor and weapon. Morgan is defenseless, and yet he insults Tristan for being a bastard, i.e., having been born illegitimately, whereupon Tristan slays him on the spot. The subsequent fighting could have meant the young man’s doom because they are lacking in numbers, but Rûal comes to his rescue, so Parmenie is finally freed again, and the two former combatants, Riwalîn and Morgan, have died. Tristan realizes in that moment that his life cannot be limited to his father’s realm; he is bound for a higher destiny, so he entrusts the country to Rûal and his sons, and returns to Marke where his real purpose awaits him. There is, in short, much back and forth, much crossing of the water, and a constant probing of what Tristan’s real trail might consist of. The battle against Morgan and then against his people demonstrates that the young man is still too impulsive, still resembles his father, and tends to follow the same trail as him. Only once he has succeeded in the fighting, with Rûal’s help, does he realize that he must pursue a different path which takes him to Cornwall, where he then lives with his uncle, and where his real destiny awaits him. But how did Tristan even learn about his uncle, and why would he be so attracted to the Cornish/English court, where also his own father Riwalîn had wanted to go despite the great need at home to prepare for future military threats? The notion of the trail helps us also in this context to gain a deeper understanding of how the poet structured his narrative where the focus rests on movements, trailing, and tracking in many different ways. Tristan, having returned home at the age of 14, has acquired an astounding amount of knowledge and skills, including playing chess in the most fashionable manner of the time.23 When he and Rûal’s sons visit a merchant ship offering an array of expensive birds of prey, he discovers a chessboard and is immediately drawn to it and soon engages in a game with one of the Norwegians. They quickly realize what a prodigal child he is, and quietly arrange things to kidnap him. Of course, the young man is deeply grieved, particularly in light of his helplessness and loss of his home, but this forces him to embark on a new trail which he had never anticipated himself. He eventually makes his way to his uncle Mark, after having been dropped off at an unknown shore because the merchants have become too afraid of God’s wrath as expressed by the mighty storm that threatened to destroy them. As soon as they have expressed their submission under God and thus their willingness to let the young prisoner go, both storm and waves subside, which indicates the direct communication between God and nature. What matters for us, however, is only the fact that the wild storm has driven them directly to the coast of Cornwall (2469) where Tristan will eventually make his way to the royal court. In other words, both here and elsewhere we clearly recognize that Gottfried implied that no movement by an individual would be simply arbitrary; instead, following one’s trails constitutes the essential operation of life, whether consciously or not. Whereas before Riwalîn had traveled there bent on joining a highly sophisticated and elegant culture, which also meant that he abandoned his own country and people and neglected to prepare himself for the next stage in the military conflict with Morgan, his son

Tristan is taken there by God’s own directive, so to speak, after the Norwegians have forcefully removed him from his home country. The narrator had not informed us in any particular way about Riwalîn’s travel to Cornwall, whereas here, in the case of his son, we receive very specific information about the geophysical conditions and Tristan’s emotional response in that situation, having been dropped off at this coast. The condition seems very difficult for him, indeed, being completely alone, far away from any human settlement, not finding any path or road, and hence not even knowing anything about his own location. Tristan has to pave his own trail through the forest thicket, climbs up a mountain with great difficulties, and only there he discovers an overgrown and long ignored “waltstîc” (2572; forest path).24 Although this trail seems not to have been used for a long time, being narrow and in the stage of being lost to the natural forces, Tristan has no choice and follows it, until he reaches a road well traveled down in the valley, where he sits down first, bursting into tears because of his loneliness and sense of being lost in this wilderness. He badly misses his parents and foster family, deeply regrets his foolishness playing chess so intensively, which had been the opportunity for the merchants to kidnap him, he prays to God, when he perceives two old pilgrims approaching him. Tristan is God’s messenger, so it seems, as his path through his life is apparently directed by divine intervention at every critical juncture of the narrative. This also finds its confirmation when he eventually reaches King Mark’s court where he dazzles everyone with his linguistic, musical, and artistic skills, as if he were a new messiah. Focusing on the idea of the trail, Tristan has indeed reached full circle, now being united with his uncle, who later recognizes him as his blood relative once Rûal has arrived after years of searching for lost Tristan and has then also revealed the young man’s true identity, and embraces him fully as his favorite and as his guaranteed successor (5152–67). But at that very moment Tristan feels the strong urge to return home to Parmenie to look after his people and also to avenge his father’s death in the war against Morgan. We could question, of course, what would justify Tristan’s feeling of revenge, since his father had really been responsible for his own destiny and hence his death. It is also unclear what Tristan intends to do with his political responsibilities, until he has finally killed Morgan and defeated his soldiers with the help of Rûal. He has hardly gained the victory and so triumphed over his father’s enemy and former overlord when Tristan turns the rule of Parmenie over to Rûal and his sons so that he can return to Cornwall, where Mark has promised him succession of the throne, a proposition obviously much more attractive than continuing to reign over his own kingdom – an attitude which Riwalîn had already embraced, looking for the glamorous courtly culture in Cornwall, when his own kingdom seemed like a backwater country (5785– 95). From here on, with Tristan operating independently, maturely, and in a highly sophisticated manner, the pursuit of his trail gains dominance in the romance. To summarize it succinctly, first Tristan defeats the horrifying Irish knight Morold who had collected tributes from Cornwall for many years already without having ever encountered any challenge from among Mark’s barons. He receives, however, a poisonous wound which only the wife of the Irish King Gurmun, Isolde, knows how to heal. This forces Tristan to travel there, although everyone from Cornwall is threatened with death if they dare to come near

that island. He pretends to be a merchant and goliard called Tantris, who could teach the young princess Isolde (same name as the mother’s) music and a variety of learned subject matters, but most importantly, “morâliteit” (8008; ethics, or courtly ideals).25 Subsequently, having regained his health, he pretends that his wife back home is longing for him, so he gains the queen’s permission to leave. However, once having returned to Cornwall, the other courtiers begin to envy him and start plotting his murder, which forces Tristan to leave once again, this time trying to win the hand of the princess Isolde for his uncle in marriage. He achieves that goal by killing a dragon, which makes him to the leading champion in the country, so her parents eventually agree to the marriage proposal. Subsequently the two leave Ireland and journey to Cornwall, although the young Isolde is filled with deep hatred against Tristan because she charges him, unjustly, for her uncle Morold’s murder, although the two men had fought in a duel which Morold himself had set up. By accident, Isolde and Tristan drink the love potion concocted by her mother who had tried to ensure that her daughter would experience true love with her future husband. Now, however, this love flourishes between the two young people, and from that time on their only desire is to find ways to spend time together and enjoy each other. This adultery then dominates the rest of the romance, and every step in the following narrative is determined, maybe more than ever before, by movements, by travels, by deceptive strategies to pretend innocence, to cuckold the old king, and to find each other in secret hiding places. We could summarize at this point, employing a more structural design for our analysis, that Tristan had followed his many different trails by moving from east (Parmenie) to west (Cornwall, and subsequently to Ireland), and then the opposite direction, following the same latitude. Once his love affair with Isolde hasbegun, however, the trail takes a different route and turns into a spiral, spinning around both lovers who ultimately do not know how to escape this labyrinth and are doomed to die for their love.26 This can be powerfully illuminated by the first scene in which their love affair is discovered by Tristan’s friend, the seneschal Marjodô. He dreams at first about a wild boar that rushes into the king’s bedroom and soils the bedding (13529–34), clearly a symbolic message about Mark’s honor being threatened by the two young people’s behavior.27 The disturbing images wake up Marjodô, who then realizes that his friend is not sleeping in his bed next to him. Soon, Marjodô discovers that Tristan has left a while ago and walked through the snow, leaving tracks behind that allow him, Marjodô, to trace Tristan, and so he discovers that the latter has an affair with Isolde. As the narrator emphasizes specifically, those two men are good friends (13466–67), but only because Marjodô also has unrequited feelings of love for the young queen (13468–69). Once both men have gone to sleep, Tristan sneaks away to spend time with his beloved, while Marjodô experiences this nightmare that reveals to him that his lord, King Mark, is being betrayed by an intruder. Tragically, there is snow on the ground, so the unsuspecting Tristan leaves clear marks of where he is going, and once Marjodô has woken up and has realized that his friend is not there, he can easily follow those tracks, especially because the moon provides enough light to expose Tristan’s footsteps that lead directly to the women’s

sleeping quarters. Brangaene, Isolde’s chamber maid, has blocked the entrance with a large chessboard, but she has neglected to close the door (13506–10). This now makes it possible for Marjodô to discover the lovers in bed with each other, but he does not dare to intervene; instead, he quietly returns and does not talk to Tristan when the latter has made his way back. But the next day the jealous seneschal reveals to the king that a rumor claims that his wife has been unfaithful with him, enjoying an affair with his nephew. He does not dare to claim that he himself is an eye witness, but succeeds in making the king highly suspicious, which then determines the rest of the romance. Whereas before Tristan had always managed to follow his own trail, covering his tracks, using all of his intelligence to achieve his goals, such as in the mortal duel against Morold on the little island, or during his two trips to Ireland, in this situation he acts surprisingly carelessly and does not even notice that he is walking through snow. As the narrator points out, Tristan has abandoned all care, he believes to be completely safe from any discovery, and yet it is this fateful short trail from his sleeping quarters to those of the ladies which makes him fall into the trap from which he and Isolde will ultimately not be able to extract themselves (13493). He had always chosen this specific path to meet Isolde, filled with happiness: “z’Îsoten vrôlîche gie” (13496), but now there is snow on the ground, and the moonlight exposes everything. Why is Tristan not more careful in this situation? It is highly unlikely that he was simply so deeply in his thoughts about Isolde that he neglected his usual carefulness in this situation. Walking through snow where there is not supposed to be any has always constituted a highly unusual condition, not only because snow is cold but also because it makes it difficult to move forward. Yet, for Tristan, no hindrance seems to matter, and so he suddenly seems to fall back into the same trap as his father did, driven too much by his love and observing too little the dangers awaiting him along the way. The narrator’s comments sound almost disarming: Tristan nam keiner vâre noch keiner slahte merke war, wan gieng er baltlîche dar, dâ man im sîne tougenheit bescheiden haete und ûf geleit. (13500–04) [Tristan did not notice any danger or any spies, instead he went straightaway to where their secret meeting place was and where he was directed to come.] Tristan is basically ignorant of the changes affecting his own tracks and naively follows the same trail as before, but this time through the snow, which ultimately exposes his and

Isolde’s secret. Whereas before he had been the master of all trackers, so to speak, and had planned every step in his life and on his journeys with greatest care, here he suddenly drops all of his precautions and thus becomes a victim of his trail, which is in this case not moving forward, but takes him straight back to the sleeping quarter where the jealous Marjodô already waits for his opportunity to avenge himself since he cannot enjoy Isolde’s love and so feels terrible jealousy of Tristan the lucky one. To understand this situation better, we can briefly turn to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (ca. 1205), where the young protagonist happens to come across a field surprisingly covered by snow, and this in the month of May. A lost falcon that had not returned to its hunter master attacked a swarm of geese and hurt one of them. The victim could get away, but lost three drops of blood, which shine forth in the snow. When Parzival arrives and discovers those drops, he falls into a trance, thinking deeply of his beloved wife Condwiramurs. Many events had taken place before that. Parzival had freed his future wife from a knight besieging her, he had then married her, only to leave her again in order to visit his mother (who had already died long ago when her son had left her in the forest of Soltane in order to find King Arthur and to be knighted). Then Parzival had come across the Grail kingdom of Munsalvæsche, but although he had witnessed the painful festivities, he did not ask the suffering King Anfortas for the reason of all of the grief, and this out of presumed politeness. The next morning, Parzival encountered his cousin Sigûne, who quickly learned of his failure asking the questions. Feeling deeply guilty, the protagonist then left and encountered the miserable lady Jeschute, whom he himself had abused as a young man (not raped), whereupon her husband Orilus had treated her most brutally in punishment of her alleged adultery with the young stranger (which again was not true). Parzival defeated Orilus and could thus reunite the couple because Orilus realized finally his wrong impression. At this point, Parzival arrived at the snow covered field, not far away from King Artus’s camp. The three drops of blood evoke in him the memory of his beloved wife, and he cannot move forward, though he successfully defeats two of Artus’s knights as if in sleep. Only when Gawan finally arrives and covers the drop of blood can Parzival recover his sense and then joins the company of King Artus. Of course, Wolfram’s romance continues thereafter, with the protagonist encountering numerous adventures and having tragic experiences, but for our purposes, it suffices that he is halted here on his trail because the drops of blood take him back to where he has left all of his happiness.28 For Parzival, this crucial moment represents a kind of vision, a mystical revelation, combining his love for Condwiramurs with deep reflections upon himself and God, as Joachim Bumke had unearthed already in his seminal study Blutstropfen im Schnee, drawing from Augustinian theology, Aristotelian philosophy, and courtly love theory.29 By contrast, Tristan, who has operated up to that point in a most circumspect fashion, demonstrates a striking carelessness in this situation. Does he even understand the significance of this trail from the men’s bedroom to the women’s? Does he not pay attention to the snow? He is obviously so much driven by love for Isolde that he discards all of his previous precaution and thus makes it possible that their secret relationship becomes public knowledge.

Significantly, Gottfried later incorporates an almost parallel scene where the lovers are meeting in the orchard late at night. They have been betrayed by the dwarf Melôt, who is sitting, together with King Mark, in the tree below which the lovers intend to come together. Here again, the moon is illuminating the ground very clearly, and this time Tristan pays close attention and thus recognizes the shadow of the two persons sitting in the tree and watching him secretly. He immediately realizes that Isolde and he have been betrayed, and he quickly changes his demeanor, his gestures, his words, and overall behavior, which alerts his mistress right away that some danger is looming for them. Instead of flying into each others’ arms, they approach each other hesitantly and engage in a polite conversation in which Tristan only asks the young queen for her help because he is in grave danger of being maligned by the courtly spies who falsely claim that he has an affair with Isolde. The two lovers display a perfect show of illusion, pretending that they suffer badly from evil accusations and yet are completely innocent. Yet, every word and every gesture by both of them proves to be a lie, but they achieve the desired effect and make King Mark completely convinced that they are innocent. This does not end the constant persecutions and temptations, but this scene in the orchard at night clearly indicates that Tristan has rediscovered his usual skill to control his own trail and to follow it with considerable precaution and intelligence. Even the best courtier can fall of the trail, as the narrator had emphasized in the prologue where he explained the metaphorical path of virtues. It would go too far, of course, to blame Tristan for outright wrongdoing when he walked through the snow to visit his beloved, but that short moment of inattentiveness destroys their secret and launches an endless series of accusations, suspicions, hatred, and outright persecutions. Whereas before Tristan’s path through life had been fairly straightforward, here disregarding many challenges and even dangers, allowing him to develop into the most esteemed individual all over the world, loved and hated both in Cornwall and Ireland, not even talking about his home country of Parmenie, once he has walked through the snow without noticing that he was leaving tracks, his happiness is destroyed. In fact, although Tristan can defuse the danger in the nightly orchard by a clever pretense in which he plays an ingenious game with Isolde for the two spies in the tree, the subsequent situation is not getting better for either one of them. In essence, everyone knows that the two are lovers and commit outright adultery, and this right under Mark’s nose. However, they are too clever to be easily betrayed, and we as readers/listeners follow their performance with great attention because they attempt with more or less success to pursue their own path, resorting to two different kinds of discourses, using the language of the court in public and the language of love in private.30 In the long run, however, the king’s suspicions grow, and the dwarf Melot develops ever better traps for the lovers, so they finally leave traces which are almost good enough to convict them for having convicted adultery. After having taken a bath and having been bled, all three spend time in their chamber, resting until the next morning. At that moment Mark wants to go to mass and takes only Melot with him, leaving the two lovers alone. But the dwarf has spread flour between their beds to catch them, a clear parallel to the snow which long ago had betrayed Tristan to Marjodô. Tristan is warned about the danger by Brangaene, and so he decides to jump over to Isolde’s bed in order to avoid leaving traces in the flour.

However, because of this great exercise his veins open up again, so leaves many blood stains on both beds. The narrator coldly comments that Tristan has become too emotional and is extremely driven by his love: “der minnen blinde” (15186; blind by love), but this does not yet mean that they both are lost. However, Mark then discovers extensive stains of blood on Isolde’s bed, and then also on Tristan’s, but Isolde’s explanation that her vein had opened again does no longer convince him sufficiently. The suspicion is growing so much in him that he is forced to take action calling for a political assembly of the great lords in his kingdom. He has strong indications that adultery has occurred, but he is lacking definite proof, which cause a great quandary in him. This then leads to the decision to subject Isolde under the trial of an ordeal (hot iron), which changes the course of the entire romance because from here on Isolde assumes the central role and gains superior agency.31 However, this does not mean at all that the concept of the trail is abandoned. What we observe is nothing but a switch of the major traveler, now no longer being Tristan, but Isolde, who has learned all her lessons and is now ready to go all the way in the name of her love for Tristan. We follow her strategic operations in the preparation for the ordeal, both fasting and praying, and instructing her lover what role to play in her grand scheme of deceiving everyone, and this even with the help of God (15554–59). Her plan proves to be fairly simple, but it is extremely effective insofar as she never lies and can swear an honest oath that she had never lied in the arms of any other man but her husband Mark and of that poor pilgrim, who had fallen down while carrying her off the ship to the beach. The narrative follows very specific directions and outlines how Isolde moves forward, first on the ship, then on the shore, and from there to Carliûne/Caerleon where the ordeal is carried out and where she gets out of it completely unharmed because even Christ has proven to be willing to let Himself be manipulated by those who pray for His help (15735–42). Again, this rather ambivalent commentary about Christ has already been discussed from different perspectives, but what matters for us here concerns only the trail which Isolde pursues. She can return home, entirely unharmed, and enjoys from then on her husband’s love and friendship again. For her, the journey to the site of the ordeal constituted a circular one, during which she could prove, at least officially, her innocence. Curiously, however, immediately following we learn of Tristan who is losing track of his own life and begins to roam the world without a clear sense of direction. In the episode with the magical dog Petitcreiu, for instance, he makes every effort to acquire this unusual animal because the sound of the bell hanging around its neck produces happiness in anyone who perceives it. In a way, this proves to be a musical drug, and strangely Tristan believes that this would help his beloved to get over her pain resulting from their separation (15897–904). He does not seem to understand the true nature of their love relationship, whereas Isolde flatly refuses to be consoled with an artificial means. As soon as she has realized the temptation resulting from this music, she tears off the belt and thus destroys the magic, which means that she can stay true to her feelings of love. But where is Tristan? He has left for Wales and spends time with the young Duke Gîlan, obviously not clear about how to handle his difficult situation. He badly abuses his friend whose only happiness consists of his dog Petitcreiu, and that’s exactly the one object which

Tristan later demands from him after he has killed the giant Urgân. Since Gîlan had made an open-ended promise to grant him anything he might want for eliminating that enemy (15956), he has no choice but to turn over the dog, and this to his greatest pain. We feel pity for this young man, not enjoying any emotional relationship, except with his dog, not being married, not having family or relatives. At the same time, Tristan does not achieve any of his goals with Petitcreiu because Isolde destroys the music anyway, being deeply subscribed to her love pangs that allow her to maintain her ethical ideals even in this adulterous relationship. At the same time, she has called Tristan back to her, assuring him that after the ordeal the relationship with her husband had been amended, and that Mark no longer felt any grudge against his nephew. However, with the music having been destroyed, the two lovers cannot withstand their own feelings for each other, and despite their best efforts, the king observes clearly their looks, their gestures, and their behavior, and eventually it becomes impossible for him to continue with this terrible triangular relationship and sends the couple away from his court. He could have killed them for their wrongdoing, but he loves them both too much and could not stand the idea of losing them through execution (16587–90). Likewise, their presence at his court has become intolerable to him, which finally catapults Tristan and Isolde out of the Cornish world somewhere into the forest where they hide in a mysterious love cave and thrive there only on their feelings for each other. They have entered utopia and can exist there for some time, but eventually King Mark discovers them and is deceived yet another time, which convinces him, foolishly, that they are not lovers and thus should be allowed back to his court.32 Considering their long way from Ireland to Cornwall, and now further on into the wilderness, we recognize Gottfried’s deliberate strategy to follow his protagonists on their trails and to transform those trails into meaningful tracks. For a long time, Tristan operates all by himself, impressing and also manipulating his social environment in a superb, masterfully manner. When dangers arise, he travels to Ireland, but he is always independent. Once he has fallen in love, however, his freedom to follow his own trail is gone, and he becomes increasingly helpless, as the preliminary closure also indicates. The lovers have once again been invited back to Mark’s court, but they cannot contain themselves, so the king finally catches them in flagrante. They know it, they have seen him turning around and leaving to get the other members of the court as witnesses. This then forces Tristan to leave for good if he wants to preserve his life, but the romance concludes with him simply roaming the world without knowing what to do with himself. Certainly, there is the new relationship with Isolde Whitehand, but it is only her name which attracts him, reminding him of his true love.33 He himself admits how much he is really confused, and emotionally lost, not knowing where his true trail lies or where it might take him (18995), so he pretends to pursue this new woman, but his heart and mind rest with the Irish princess. While Tristan increasingly woos Kaedin’s sister more seriously, as she thinks, he really longs for Mark’s wife, and so he really does not know any longer where his heart stands (19391). Tristan spends much time in the new company, but he really feels lonely (19495), not knowing how to handle his own life because he has lost his direction. Whereas before, he

had constantly pursued a specific path, but as soon as the Irish princess had taken actions into her own hand to save herself from the ordeal, Tristan turned into a rather passive figure whose sense of orientation was no longer valid. Thus we can understand why he proves to be so confused in the new kingdom, in the presence of the second Isolde, although his true feelings still aim for the first one. He also realizes that Isolde is not looking for him, but not because of a sudden disinterest in him, but because the winds of destiny have driven him so far away from course that she would not be able to find him (19515–30). In short, the great trailer has abandoned his tracking, and he realizes that he is lost in the world of politics, military events, and personal interests, far away from his true love. Gottfried’s Tristan concludes with his realization that Isolde has not made any effort to trace him, and has not sent any messengers to the various kingdoms where he might reside. In despondency, he thus concludes: “nu ruochet sî mîn cleine” (19541; she cares little about me). The traveler is no longer capable of making sense of his world; he is abandoned to the roads that do not take him anywhere because none of them leads back to Cornwall, a kingdom that is now off-limits for him. Little wonder that this famous romance has no ending and has survived only as a fragment because the trails that seemed to be so clear at the beginning have become intertwined, knotted, confused, and leave the protagonist behind as a prisoner of his own feelings that cannot be lived out. Of course, we do not learn about the destiny of the Irish princess Isolde, and even less of Isolde Whitehand, but both women seem to pursue their lives in a straightforward manner, not being turned back and forth. Both have to suffer, as the text makes abundantly clear, but they do not move from their courts; they do not have any freedom to pursue any different paths. Their trails are finite, whereas Tristan stares at the fact that he has countless trails to choose from and yet does not know which one to select. But there is one consolation, as we remember from the prologue. As Gottfried assures his audience, the story about Tristan and Isolde continues to live on in people’s memory. The account of their suffering provides nourishment for the lovers of today, but not through the sentimental recreation of their relationship; instead, the reader/listener has the opportunity to learn from Tristan’s and Isolde’s experience and thus to gain more loyalty and honor, that is, to deepen their own feelings of love and thus to gain a more profound perspective on life. The individual has to pursue a very narrow path through life, where everyone could easily slip. The narrator had explicitly emphasized in the prologue how important it would be for those who possess a noble heart to pursue those narrow paths in imitation of those lovers from the past: “wol ime, der si wege unde stege!” (40; praised be the one who walks and pursues those paths). Gottfried hence fittingly concludes with the reference to “vröude unde vrölîchez leben” 19548; joy and joyful life). But who can claim to have achieved that ideal? Not even Tristan and Isolde were fortunate enough to pursue their own paths to the full extent, although both tried their utmost. Trails are fragile and can easily disappear in the underwood, so to speak, and yet they always await the future hiker. Much depends on his/her constancy, drive, purity of thought, idealism, or energy. With respect to Tristan, we observe a high level of self-control and intellectual acumen which allow him to pursue his path for a very long time despite many enemies and opponents. However, as soon as love has struck him, the situation becomes murky for him,

and soon enough he seems to lose sight of his trail, while at the same time Isolde picks up where he has left off, pursuing then her own track through the thicket of the courtly cabals, successfully upholding her ideals of love for Tristan. We are, at the end, no longer so sure about that with regard to Tristan. As a coda, we can also refer to Gottfried’s contemporary, the famous poet Walther von der Vogelweide, who also reflected on the meaning and relevance of the trail as the guiding pilot in human life. In his highly acclaimed “Reichston,” in his “Ich saz ûf einem steine” (no. 2; or 8,4),34 the poet bitterly laments that people have lost the ability to combine three fundamental elements of life, “êre unde varnde guot, / . . . / das dritte ist gotes hulde, / der zweier übergulde” (11–13; honor and material goods, . . ., the third is god’s love, the crown of the two). Walther would have liked to enjoy all three together, but this desire leads to a paradox no one can overcome because two other aspects are lacking in this world, “fride und reht sint beide wunt” (23; peace and justice are wounded). However, once the external circumstances could be healed, then Walther perceives a possibility that honor, money, and God’s love could be united in one person. Yet, at that moment, as the poet states, “stige und wege sint in genomen” (20; paths and trails are blocked). Trails determine, as Walther thus underscores, the individual’s effort to make his/her way through life in an ethical, religious, and honorable fashion. Nevertheless, there are many hindrances everywhere: “untriuwe ist in der sâze, / gewalt ist ûf der strâze” (22–23; lack of loyalty lurks everywhere, and violence rules the roads). Tristan and Isolde would have fully concurred with Walther, and we as the audience are reminded, indeed, of the universal challenges that await us throughout our lives. It is not easy, as these examples drastically illustrate, to find the right trail, to pursue it directly without falling off or getting lost, and it is a highly risky enterprise especially if this trail proves to be so narrow and precipitous, as Gottfried outlines it in the prologue to his Tristan and Isolde. Finally, to round off this chapter, let us consider briefly the truly remarkable parallels to the epistemological approaches pursued by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his Titurel fragments (ca. 1220), where the trail also matters, but in a surprisingly different context. Wolfram here picked up a narrative thread left over from his Parzival (ca. 1205) and developed it further, but left open the outcome because the audience was supposed to know it already from the previous romance.35 The text consists of two parts: the first dedicated to the history of the Grail family and the budding love between Sigûne and Schionatulander, and the second to an episode in the forest where the two spend free time together, each pursuing their own entertainment. All of a sudden, a mysterious dog appears that has run away from its master, being on the hot pursuit of a bleeding animal obviously wounded by hunters. Schionatulander manages to capture the dog and bring it to his beloved, Sigûne, who immediately realizes that the dog had dragged a long and most valuable leash upon which a mysterious message has been embossed which she is most anxious to read. She discovers that the letters, consisting of gems, tell the stories of lovers who suffered their death because of their endeavor to come together. Tragically, however, Sigûne proves to be an impatient reader, and when she releases the knot with which the dog has been tied to a tent pole, the animal pulls hard and manages to

escape. This time, Schionatulander does not manage to catch it again because he is barefoot, having been preoccupied with fishing in the near-by stream. When he returns empty-handed, his feet and ankles are bloody, having been badly scratched by brambles and thorns. Likewise, Sigûne’s palms are bloody because she had tried to hold on to the leash, but the gems that make up the letters had ripped her skin. Both are, in other words, fatally marked, but they do not understand the significance of the bloody signs on their own bodies. She forces the young man to follow the dog’s tracks in order to recapture it; otherwise she would never grant her love to him. Schionatulander willingly accepts this challenge, but we know from Parzival that he will die on this quest, being killed by the knight Orilus who had gained hold of the dog. All that matters for us here is only the name of the dog written on the leash. As the narrator informs us: “Gardevîaz hiez der hunt. daz kiut tiuschen ‘Hüete der verte’” (stanza 148, 4; the dog was called Gardevîaz. That means in German: ‘Watch your way’). The subsequent text on the leash advises the reader that the name is truly relevant for all those who want to possess a noble heart or want to be counted among the “werden” (stanza 149, 2; the worthy ones). Then the narrator becomes most explicit, just as Gottfried von Straßburg before him: “man unt wîp die hüeten verte schône” (stanza 149, 3; men and women guard well the trail). Following the right trail, as we have observed already numerous times, constitutes a good life, a life filled with honor and glory, both here on earth within human society, and in the afterlife in heaven (stanza 149, 4). Next, Sigûne learns from the mysterious text written with those precious stones that those people who know how to follow the right path would not easily become corrupt, or, literally, would not so easily sell their honor (stanza 150, 2). The worthy persons – Gottfried called them the members of the community with the noble heart – would live within a strong heart that could not be found on the marketplace determined by instability and constant change (stanza 150). The rest of the account on the leash illustrates those messages with the help of specific examples, but the rest is not told because the dog runs away, and thus the text. We face here, in fact, concrete evidence that Wolfram experimented with the notion of the fragment because the external fragment is mirrored by the internal one.36 Or, as we could say, Sigune’s life becomes as fragmented as that of the various lovers talked about in the dog-leash account. Of central importance, though, and this in close parallel to all the other examples examined above and also in the following chapters, proves to be the dog’s name and the central idea: guard your way, keep the fragility of honor and respect in mind, and be mindful of the supreme importance of following the proper trail through life. That would hence be the guarantee for those noble individuals also to gain access to a worthy afterlife in heaven. However, as the subsequent events in this text and as the account contained in Wolfram’s Parzival fully indicate, despite their best efforts and education, neither Sigûne nor Schionatulander knows how to follow this narrow path of honor and respectability, and out of extreme passion – Schionatulander being overly anxious to gain knightly fame; Sigûne excessively desirous to read the rest of the text, and also too much in need to learn about her lover’s superior skills and abilities – they both lose track in their world and ultimately

encounter their death, just as in the case of the lovers talked about in the story written or embossed into the dog leash.37 All three authors, Gottfried von Straßburg, Walther von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, specifically employed the notion of the trail as a central metaphor for their ethical, moral, religious, and philosophical reflections. Tragically, however, they all had to admit that this trail tends to be too narrow, too demanding, and ultimately not sustainable. Utopia is not possible in their worldview.

Notes 1 For a good introduction and critical review, see Christoph Huber, Gottfried von Straßburg: Tristan. Klassiker Lektüren, 3. 3rd, newly rev. and expanded ed. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013). See also Mark Chinca, Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan. Landmarks of World Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); see also the contributions to Tristano e Isotta: La fortuna di un mito europeo, ed. Michael Dallapiazza. Quaderni di Hesperides: Serie Manuali, 1 (Triest: Edizioni Parnaso, 2003); and Peter K. Stein, Tristan-Studien, ed. Ingrid Bennewitz (Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 2001). 2 See the contributions to Gottfried von Strassburg, ed. Alois Wolf. Wege der Forschung, CCCXX (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973). See also the excellent study by Alois Wolf, Gottfried von Strassburg und die Mythe von Tristan und Isolde (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989); cf. also the contributions to Der “Tristan” Gottfrieds von Straßburg: Symposion Santiago de Compostela, 5. bis 8. April 2000, ed. Christoph Huber and Victor Millet (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002). 3 See, for instance, Kristine K. Sneeringer, Honor, Love, and Isolde in Gottfried’s Tristan. Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature, 61 (New York, Washington, DC, et al.: Peter Lang, 2002). 4 C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility. The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 5 Albrecht Classen, “Der Text der nie enden will. Poetologische Überlegungen zu fragmentarischen Strukturen in mittelalterlichen und modernen Texten,” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, Heft 99: Anfang und Ende, ed. Wolfgang Haubrichs (1995): 83‒113. Gottfried’s Tristan is one of the examples that I discuss in this study. 6 Mark Chinca, Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan. Landmarks of World Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). See also the contributions to Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook, ed. with an intro. by Joan Taasker Grimbert. Arthurian Characters and Themes (1995; New York and London: Routledge, 2002); Stein, Tristan-Studien (2001); A Companion to Gottfried von Strassburg’s “Tristan,” ed. Will Hasty. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003); Tristano e Isotta: La fortuna di un mito europeo, ed. Michael Dallapiazza. Quaderni di Hesperides. Serie Manuali, I (Triest: Edizioni Parnaso, 2003). 7 Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture, ed. Patrick J. Gallacher (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989); cf. now Heather Bamford, Cultures of the Fragment: Uses of the Iberian Manuscript, 1100‒1600. Toronto Iberic, 37 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2018); see also, although focusing on a different genre, the contributions to Lyrische Kohärenz im Mittelalter: Spielräume – Kriterien – Modellbildung, ed. Susanne Köbele, Eva Locher, and Andrea Möckli. Germanisch Romanische Monatsschrift. Beiheft, 94 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2019). Undoubtedly, many medieval sources have survived only as fragments, but this because of external circumstances; see the contributions to Fragmente: der Umgang mit lückenhafter Quellenüberlieferung in der Mittelalterforschung. Akten des internationalen Symposiums des Zentrums Mittelalterforschung der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, 19. ‒ 21. März 2009, ed. Christian Gastgeber (Vienna: Verl. der ÖAW [Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften], 2010). 8 See, for instance, the contributions to Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde, ed. Jutta Eming, Ann Marie Rasmussen, and Kathryn Starkey (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). 9 Anna Keck, Die Liebeskonzeption der mittelalterlichen Tristanromane: Zur Erzähllogik der Werke Bérouls, Eilharts, Thomas’ und Gottfrieds. Beihefte zur Poetica, 22 (Munich: Verlag Wilhelm Fink, 1998). 10 Monika Schausten, Erzählwelten der Tristangeschichte im hohen Mittelalter: Untersuchungen zu den deutschsprachigen Tristanfassungen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts. Forschungen zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen

Literatur, 24 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1999). 11 Uta Drecoll, Tod in der Liebe – Liebe im Tod: Untersuchungen zu Wolframs Titurel und Gottfrieds Tristan in Wort und Bild (Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 2000). 12 Patrizia Mazzadi, Autorreflexionen zur Rezeption: Prolog und Exkurse in Gottfrieds ‘Tristan.’ Quaderni di Hesperides, Serie Saggi, 2 (Triest: Edizioni Parnaso, 2000). 13 Alois Wolf, Gottfried von Strassburg und die Mythe von Tristan und Isolde (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989); see also the contributions to Der “Tristan” Gottfrieds von Straßburg: Symposion Santiago de Compostela, 5. bis 8. April 2000, ed. Christoph Huber and Victor Millet (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002). 14 Anna Sziráky, Éros Lógos Musiké: Gottfrieds ‘Tristan’ oder eine utopische renovatio der Dichtersprache und der Welt aus dem Geiste der Minne und Musik? Wiener Arbeiten zur germanischen Altertumskunde und Philologie, 38 (Bern, Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 2003). 15 Hugo Bekker, Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan: Journey through the Realm of Eros. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1987). 16 Tomas Tomasek, Die Utopie im ‘Tristan’ Gotfrids von Straßburg. Hermaea. Germanistische Forschungen, Neue Folge, 49 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1985). 17 Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde, ed. Jutta Eming, Ann Marie Rasmussen, and Kathryn Starkey (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). The contributors focus, above all, on courtly bodies, seeing, and emotions (section I), on media, representation, and performance (section II), and on visual culture (section III). 18 See the journal Tristania, last published in 2009, with volume 25, edited by Albrecht Classen (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press). 19 There are many valid critical editions available; here I consult Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan. Nach dem Text von Friedrich Ranke neu herausgegeben, ins Neuhochdeutsche übersetzt, mit einem Stellenkommentar und einem Nachwort von Rüdiger Krohn (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1980). For a solid English translation, see Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan: With the Surviving Fragments of the Tristran of Thomas. With an Intro. by A. T. Hatto (1960; London: Penguin, 1967). However, for the purpose of this study, I must offer a very close reading of the original, so I quote the Middle High German original and then offer my own translation. 20 Birgit Zacke, Wie Tristan sich einmal in eine Wildnis verirrte: Bild-Text-Beziehungen im ‘Brüsseler Tristan’. Philologische Studien und Quellen, 254 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2016). 21 See, for instance, the contributions to Fiktion und Fiktionalität in den Literaturen des Mittelalters: Jan-Dirk Müller zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Ursula Peters and Rainer Warning (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2009), especially the study by Walter Haug, “Literaturtheorie und Fiktionalitätsbewußtsein bei Chrétien de Troyes, Thomas von England und Gottfried von Straßburg” (219‒34). 22 For a summary, see, for instance, Tomas Tomasek, Gottfried von Straßburg (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2007), 96‒ 97. 23 See the contributions to Chess in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: A Fundamental Thought Paradigm of the Premodern World, ed. Daniel E. O’Sullivan. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 10 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). 24 For the role of the forest here, see Albrecht Classen, The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective. Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, et al.: Lexington Books, 2015), 103‒20. 25 C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals 939‒1210. The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 102‒05, 220‒24. 26 In the Middle Ages and beyond, the concept of the maze mattered deeply for the fundamental epistemology; see Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1990). 27 One of the best studies dealing with this dream was published by William C. McDonald, “The Boar Emblem in Gottfried’s ‘Tristan’,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 92.2 (1991): 159‒78. 28 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival: Studienausgabe. Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der sechsten Ausgabe von Karl Lachmann, Übersetzung von Peter Knecht, Einführung zum Text von Bernd Schirok (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998); for a good English translation, see Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. A. T. Hatto (London: Penguin, 1980).

29 Joachim Bumke, Die Blutstropfen im Schnee: Über Wahrnehmung und Erkenntnis im ‘Parzival’ Wolframs von Eschenbach. Hermaea. Germanistische Forschungen, Neue Folge, 94 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2001), 54‒76. 30 Rüdiger Schnell, Suche nach Wahrheit: Gottfrieds “Tristan und Isold” als erkenntniskritischer Roman. Hermaea. Germanistische Forschungen, Neue Folge, 67 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1992). 31 Albrecht Classen, “Female Agency and Power in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan: The Irish Queen Isolde: New Perspectives,” Tristania XXIII (2005): 39‒60. 32 Tomasek, Die Utopie im ‘Tristan’ Gotfrids von Straßburg (1985). 33 See Ute Nanz, Die Isolde-Weißhand-Gestalten im Wandel des Tristanstoffs: Figurenzeichnung zwischen Vorlagenbezug und Werkkonzeption. Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2010). 34 Walther von der Vogelweide, Leich, Lieder, Sangsprüche. 15, veränderte und um Fassungseditionen erweiterte Auflage der Ausgabe Karl Lachmanns. Aufgrund der 14, von Christoph Cormeau bearbeiteten Ausgabe neu herausgegeben, mit Erschließungshilfen und textkritischen Kommentaren versehen von Thomas Bein (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2013). 35 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und mit einem Stellenkommentar sowie einer Einführung versehen von Helmut Brackert und Stephan Fuchs-Jolie (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003). Albrecht Classen, Utopie und Logos. Vier Studien zu Wolframs von Eschenbach “Titurel-Fragmenten.” Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1990); Alexander Sager, Minne von maeren: On Wolfram’s Titurel. Transatlantische Studien zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); Larissa Schuler-Lang, Wildes Erzählen ‒ Erzählen vom Wilden: “Parzival,” “Busant” und “Wolfdietrich D.” Literatur – Theorie – Geschichte, 7 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2014). 36 Albrecht Classen, “Der Text der nie enden will. Poetologische Überlegungen zu fragmentarischen Strukturen in mittelalterlichen und modernen Texten,” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, Heft 99: Anfang und Ende, ed. Wolfgang Haubrichs (1995), 83‒113. 37 Petrus W. Tax, “Tragische Spiegelungen: Herrschaft und Sukzession, Rang und Stand in Wolframs ‘Titurel’,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 140.1 (2011): 38‒57.

6 The Walk through the Garden of Love in Medieval Literature, with a Focus on Le Roman de la rose by Guillaume de Lorris. Dreamful Trailing and Awakening with Surprises This chapter begins with a larger overview of relevant examples in medieval European love literature where the trail matters centrally, before I turn to the most important allegorical romance, Guillaume de Lorris’s part of the Roman de la rose from ca. 1230/1240. As we will observe in quite impressive quantity and quality, medieval poets were fully subscribed to the idea of the trail which their lovers have to pursue in order to achieve their goals. Failing to do so tends to lead to a tragic outcome, as Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Titurel fragment (ca. 1220) illustrates so drastically, explicitly calling the mysterious dog with its ominously inscribed leash, “Gardeviaz” (guard thy way). Unfortunately, this is exactly the point which the two young lovers, Sigune and Schionatulander, do not understand or do not know how to interpret for their own lives, so their death is waiting for both, for him in a joust, which Wolfram refers to only in his earlier work, Parzival (ca. 1205), and for her in continuous grieving for her deceased lover, which makes her wither away in her status of a virtual anchorite.1 Every lover knows that he/she must make great efforts to reach the beloved person, if that is even possible in the first place. When love blooms the first time, both persons need to find ways to get together, which normally entails many hurdles of material and psychological kinds. When both individuals find each other attractive, they easily focus their energy on the goal of meeting each other and then staying together, if circumstances permit it. When one of them does not feel the same any longer, the lover faces serious difficulties in overcoming the emotional and physical distance, if that is ever possible. When the parents, for instance, stand in as barriers, further complications arise, but as we know from countless examples in world literature, the young lovers mostly discover ways to meet and share time together after all. Tragedy, of course, might always lurk in the background if the father or the mother fights with all their might to prevent the love relationship to develop, or if both families oppose the lovers, such as in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Often, however, although circuitous, lovers overcome all those difficulties and discover the necessary trails to the secret meeting

spot, whether we think of Walther von der Vogelweide (“Under der linden”), Boccaccio’s Decameron, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, or many early modern comedies or tragedies by a variety of playwrights. Modern and postmodern authors or poets do not essentially differ from them in that regard, basically because falling in love means struggle, endeavor, hard labor, striving, and following the one trail which makes the accomplishment of the erotic goal possible. In ordinary life, this trail then commonly leads to marriage, about which poets then normally keep quiet. However, the trail does not end there, of course, but it takes a different course and requires a rather different set of strengths, qualifications, growth potential, learning abilities, commitment, communication skills, and so forth, especially when children are subsequently involved. Love grows throughout time if the two persons involved understand how to continue on that path, move forward, continue to climb throughout life, and embrace this trail as the one shared by both. Achieving the goal of fulfilled love, however, has always constituted a huge challenge, being one of the central tasks in human life as an adult. We could go so far as to claim that falling in love sets into motion the pursuit of that universal trail because the individual suddenly feels prodded to abandon an old trail (childhood and youth) and to step onto to a new path in his or her existence, irrespective of the challenges, burdens, difficulties, or opposition. In short, the experience of the early feelings of love can be described as in terms of embarking on a new trail and pursuing it as far as possible. These are universal phenomena and can be identified in ancient, medieval, or modern literature. Nevertheless, there remain many important questions as to the kind of trail which the lovers have to pursue, what means there are available to follow that track, and how to realize the continuous hike throughout life. A wonderful example proves to be Gottfried von Straßburg in his Tristan where the lovers meet in their private accommodations, then in the orchard, and finally in the love cave; another example would be the cosmic trailing by Dante the pilgrim in his Divina Commedia. Other ‘classical’ example of the pursuit of the beloved over large distances and in direct confrontation with seemingly endless hurdles would be the pan-European Apollonius of Tyre, Andreas Capellanus’s De amore (see below), the many different versions of Floire and Blanschefleur, the famous legend of Tristan and Isolde (Thomas of Brittany, Eilhard of Oberg, Gottfried von Straßburg, etc.), the unique Aucassin et Nicolette, Juan Ruiz’s El libro de buen amor, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and many others. One of the major sources for this central interest in medieval secular literature to explore the meaning of the iconic trail on which lovers endeavor to find each other proves to be a short and highly curious tale included at the end of book II of famous Andreas Capellanus’s treatise De amore (ca. 1180‒1190), closely modeled after Ovid’s Ars amatoria from 2 B.C.E., where the fulfillment of love is possible only after the male protagonist has pursued his path toward the desired goal with bravery and resolution, accomplishing all the tasks which the goddess of love – if that is the right term for this mysterious woman – has set to him as a precondition for his personal success in winning his lady’s love.2

This is the more curious the more the subsequent third book entirely condemns courtly love and any attempts to win love outside of the bonds of marriage, not to speak of the vehement misogyny voiced by the narrator who seems to be bent on undermining everything which the first two books have tried to teach about the nature and challenges of love. Why would this trail here suddenly be cut off? Would it be even conceivable that Andreas seriously intended to alert his readers/listeners that the entire plethora of trails outlined both in the first two books and then in this enigmatic Arthurian tale were completely wrong and should be dismissed? Is it even imaginable that the fundamental human effort to pursue a path toward the goal, whether the right one or not, ought to be dismissed? Once a trail has come to an end, life has also ended, so it seems. The little narrative is set somewhere in the world of King Arthur when a young British knight traverses a deep forest on his quest to see the king. He suddenly encounters a beautiful lady sitting on a horse who knows everything about him and his intentions, but who also warns him that he would not achieve his goals if he would not accomplish certain tasks; otherwise his own lady would never grant her love to him. The parallels to Marie de France’s “Lanval” and to the various versions of the Melusine by Jean d’Arras, Couldrette, or Thüring von Ringoltingen are quite obvious, and each time the male protagonist realizes suddenly that his trail led him straight to a mysterious woman somewhere at a most pleasant location in nature. In the case of Andreas’s text, the young man must win a particular hawk seated on a golden perch at Arthur’s court, but he would be required first to succeed in a variety of jousts against other knights blocking his way before he would be entitled to take hold of that hawk. Setting the pattern for many other medieval accounts to come in the following centuries, the young knight equips himself, traverses the forest, reaches a river, where he fights and defeats the bridge keeper, crosses the bridge, fights a giant on the other side and drowns him in the water, and continues on his path until he reaches a delightful meadow, something like a locus amoenus: In this meadow was a palace, marvellously built in a circular form and very beautifully decorated. He could not find a door anywhere in the palace, nor could he see any inhabitants; but in the fields he found silver tables, and on them were all sorts of food and drink set among snow-white napkins. (180) Subsequently, he encounters several other adventures, but he triumphs each time and can make his way to King Arthur’s court where he publicly proves through yet another fight the validity of his claim that his lady-love is the most beautiful one in the world. Not only does he then win the desired hawk, but, attached to the golden perch, also a parchment with the rules of love written on it, as promulgated by the King of Love himself. This parchment he takes with him, along with the hawk, delivering both to the mysterious lady in the forest and then to his lady-love, who thereupon accepts him as her faithful and loyal servant. But not content with this happy outcome, she has then those rules copied and distributed among all the members of her court, ladies, and knights, who carry those with them and can thus spread the teachings of love all over the world.

As Andreas Capellanus thus indicated, the ideal of love was not something simply abstract or emotional, but a central value and feeling fundamental for the entire courtly society. Those rules, however, had to be conquered first by the young knight through a series of highly challenging jousts and other fights, which he faced along his way. Pursuing his trail first through the forest, then across the river, from there to a palace, and then to the court of King Arthur, the protagonist realizes the ideals of love because he did not deviate from his path and closely followed the forest lady’s instructions, always demonstrating courage and resoluteness in his pursuit of love. We could thus argue that for Andreas Capellanus the trail itself amounts to a metonym of love and life. Only those who are motivated enough and possess sufficient energy to use this trail, despite many nearly fatal dangers, would ultimately be rewarded with the greatest gift of life, that is, love. This theme was then to resonate deeply throughout the literature of the following centuries, although the third book of Andreas’s De amore radically changes entirely the tone and direction of the discourse and dismisses both the rules of love and the trail pursued by the young knight as meaningless. This paradox, however, does not impact our analysis because the third book operates primarily, so it seems, as a dramatic provocation (dialectics) that might not carry as much weight over the first two books as it seems at first sight, although scholars have debated this issue rather controversially or in complete ignorance of the complexity of the issue.3 For our purposes, by contrast, all that matters concerns the concept of the trail which the young British knight has to follow without fail, even at the risk of his life because all his efforts are the price he has to pay to gain his lady’s love. What Andreas Capellanus projects here in miniature, later poets expanded vastly, especially if we consider the many different versions of the Floire and Blanscheflor romance, first published at the end of the twelfth century in Old French, then in Low German as the Rhenish Floyris, ca. 1170, followed by Konrad Fleck’s Middle High German version, Flore und Blanscheflur (ca. 1220); the Middle English Floris and Blanscheflour, before 1250; the Italian Florio e Biancifiore, after 1300; the Old Norwegian Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr, which, in turn, was translated into Swedish around 1312 as Flores och Blanzeflor; the Greek Florios kai Platziaflora, around 1400; and the Castilian La Reina Jerifa Mora, before 1500.4 Flore, in Fleck’s version, is about to commit suicide because he has lost Blanscheflur to death, as his mother claimed to him in order to hide what she and her husband have done with the young woman. This frightens his parents so much that they finally give in, and the mother then reveals the truth to him (2470‒2557). But the young man’s joy is then immediately coupled with the need to plan on how to track his beloved down and to bring her back home because his parents had sold her into slavery. Even though his father is still trying to turn his mind away from this plan, Flore is totally determined to follow his beloved irrespective of any danger that he might encounter, and thus he embarks on his trail that will take him to distant lands and expose him to numerous dangers. And at that point of his departure, his father comes around and provides his son with all the necessary provisions thus helping him to accomplish his goal, including the valuable cup for which Blanscheflur had been sold, a miraculous horse, and a magical ring.5 He now wants him to follow the only possible trail and to achieve what he desires, to recover his beloved.

Despite many challenges, the outcome proves to be a happy one, which does not need to be pursued here further because the by-then married couple simply returns to Spain, takes over the throne since Flore’s father has passed away, and subsequently both make their people convert to Christianity, once the young king has performed that ritual himself. Yet, one more time, without this trail, the specific path from home to the foreign world Flore would not have been able to demonstrate his true love and would not have grown into a full man worthy of Blanscheflur’s hand in marriage, quite apart from the fact that he would thus not have found and rescued his beloved. Not that Flore always knows how to find this trail, which is also the case in Andreas Capellanus’s narrative, and will become a most pronounced theme in Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia. Instead, a guide is often necessary to point the protagonist into the right direction. Here, Dâries assumes that function as guide: “nâch dem imbîze / wîsete in Dâries ze wege / in getriuwer huote pflege / unz er den turne ane sach” (4924‒27; after the meal Dâries showed him the way, advising him loyally, and so he reached the point where he saw the tower). Happy love is thus, once again, identified as the outcome of the steady pursuit of one’s individual trail.6 And if we traced the entire journey to Babylon in detail, we would recognize that the various poet/s projected a kind of mappa mundi, with all the stops and intervals clearly marked.7 Geography and philosophy thus merge, all held together by the desire for love, which in turn can only be realized if the protagonist understands what is the only right path taking his life forward until he can find happiness with Blanscheflur even at the risk of both of their lives. This applies, of course, also to the female characters, despite their often much more limited means, such as the lady in Marie de France’s lai “Guigemar,” Isolde in Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan, Nicolette in the anonymous “chantefable,” Aucassin et Nicolette, Beaflor in the anonymous Mai und Beaflor, or the various ladies in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Let us examine some of those examples at greater length below. This phenomenon finds its impressive expression in many ways throughout Fleck’s romance, but in one tiny example, in particular, we discover the maybe perfect proof for this claim that the trail constitutes for Flore, above all, his ultimate life-line. Almost near the end with its happy outcome, when he overhears Clarîs and Blanscheflûr conversing with each other, while he himself is standing below the tower, Flore realizes that he has reached his goal and is close to his beloved: “dâ bî er wol erkande / daz er reht was gevarn” (5826‒27; thereby he recognized that he had taken the correct route). Many times, of course, the opposite can also be the case, such as in the various late medieval prose or verse versions of Melusine (Jean d’Arras, Couldrette, Thüring von Ringoltingen), where midway the trail pursued by the married couple suddenly gets twisted and confused, which forces Melusine to depart from her human existence and to wait for the salvation of her soul until the Day of Judgment, while her husband Raymondin (and other spellings) falls into deep despair and cannot find any consolation.8 The same principle providing a fundamental narrative structure by way of trailing through the world can also be found in the late thirteenth-century romance Mai und Beaflor by an anonymous Middle High German poet, where the lovers are also separated by dangerous external circumstances but manage at the end to reunify after they have traveled across the

Mediterranean at different times and without knowing about the true destiny of the other. Beaflor, above all, escapes repeatedly from evil family members and thus disappears from their mental horizon; even her own husband Mai at one point assumes that she has been killed. But he then travels himself across the sea, which ultimately allows the two protagonists to find each again and to experience greatest joy as a married couple.9 At first, however, Beaflor has to escape from Rome where her father, the emperor, had tried to rape her after his wife had died. Later, once she has married the Greek Count Mai, she has to flee again because her mother-in-law Eliacha attempts to get her assassinated, while her son is on a crusade in Spain. Beaflor secretly returns to Rome where she hides from her father, until much later her deeply grieved husband follows the same trail because he wants to receive absolution from the pope for his sin of matricide (he had learned of the truth after his return from Spain and had avenged his mother’s terrible deed). The couple finally recognizes each other again, and she is then fully accepted by her father who, filled with a profound sense of guilt over his own evil intentions with his daughter a long time ago, steps down as emperor and vacates the throne for Mai. Love is constantly determined by trails and movement along those tracks. Another simple but highly meaningful example stands out in Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1350), a famous collection of ten stories told every day over a period of ten days during which the story tellers try to pass their empty time after they have escaped the horrendous scenes in pest-infected Florence. Whereas the introduction offers a grisly picture of the effects of the Black Death, the stories themselves do not engage with the epidemic itself; instead, they focus on particular themes, motifs, subject matters, or objectives relevant in the world of love, mostly in the urban context.10 So it does not come as a surprise that we often hear of cases where lovers have to make the greatest efforts to find a way to their ladies, often traveling over large distances and aiming for exotic countries in order to retrieve the beloved. One meaningful case valuable for our reflections proves to be story five on the fifth day in which the youth Ricciardo de’ Manardi da Brettinoro falls in love with the young daughter of Messer Lizio da Valbona and his wife Giacomina while visiting the family regularly. The parents are not at all aware of the emotional relationship, which develops right under their noses. However, the parents carefully watch their daughter Caterina, which forces the couple to conceive of a sophisticated plan to get together at night. He suggests to her that she should try to convince her parents to let her sleep one night on the balcony overlooking their garden, and he would then try his best to climb up to her. Caterina manages to convince her parents that she really needs to spend one night out there because the heat has made it impossible for her to fall asleep. After much complaining, troubling her mother for a whole night, she is finally allowed to set up a bed on the balcony, and during the day signals to Ricciardo that his opportunity has come. The parents then retire to their own bedrooms and lock the door to the balcony. Now, the male lover can finally embark on his enterprise and follow the direct path to his beloved: When there was no longer any sound to be heard, Ricciardo climbed over a wall with the aid of a ladder, then climbed up the side of the house by clinging with great

difficulty to a series of stones projecting from the wall. At every moment of the ascent, he was in serious danger of falling, but in the end he reached the balcony unscathed, where he was silently received by the girl with very great rejoicing. After exchanging many kisses, they lay down together and for virtually the entire night they had delight and joy of one another, causing the nightingale to sing at frequent intervals. (196) Of course, as to be expected, they fall asleep only at early dawn and are thus surprised by her father, who quickly takes the necessary steps to avoid any scandal. Instead of falling into a major rage, he seemingly threatens the young man and forces him to pledge to take Caterina as his wife. The outcome is a happy one, and although the narrator includes barely veiled pornographic allusions to the so-called nightingale which the young woman has caught at night and is still holding when the couple is surprised by her father, all the female listeners to this story laugh heartily about the story, probably both out of endearment and sympathy. We can also add that the young man had achieved his goal in close cooperation with his beloved, who demonstrated a considerable degree of sophistication in arranging this complicated setting allowing her lover to visit her at night in full secrecy. While she was in charge of getting her parents’ agreement to let her sleep outside on the balcony, he was in charge of pursuing the trail of love despite extensive barriers and danger for his life. The narrator outlines in clear terms how much Ricciardo struggles to climb over the wall reaching the inner courtyard, and from there dares to reach the balcony simply by holding on to some of the stones sticking out of the wall. Love does not know any real barriers, and even though the young man has to overcome two major challenges, his desire for his lady is so great that he does not even fear his death and can thus reach the balcony ‒ the tragic opposite occurs, unfortunately in Fernando de Rojas’s famous Celestina (1499; see below). In a Middle High German verse narrative (mære), “Nachtigall,” twice copied sometime during the early (ms. A: Staatsbibliothek Bremen, ms b. 0042‒02, fol. 164v‒169v) and the late fifteenth century (ms. B: Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibl., Cod. Oct. 145, 44v‒ 48r),11 very parallel to Boccaccio’s story, probably based on it directly, the male lover is also forced to pursue a highly difficult path to reach his beloved.12 First, however, the entire setting is different. In front of the house the knight/father has built a garden, or rather an orchard surrounded by a strong hedge. The entrance to the garden is possible only through a narrow door. In front of the garden, there is a pergola, where the knight tends to take his meals during hot summer days. Similar to Boccaccio’s version, the maid instructs the young man to try to come to see her at night, but in this version not on the balcony; instead in the pergola situated within the garden. The maid uses the same strategy to get her parents’ permission to spend the night outside in the garden to catch better sleep in the fresh air. At night, the young man arrives and makes his way into the hidden spot as follows:

and since he was very skillful, he managed to find his way through the hedge. He brought a stick with him that he leaned against the hedge, which allowed him to climb over, and so he met the maid. (121) The subsequent events are the same and do not need to be summarized here. Again, the young people’s marriage is the happy outcome. But it deserves to be noted how much both authors outlined the need for the male lover to overcome strong physical barriers and to pursue a trail, while the young woman is waiting for him at night. Yet, because of his dexterity and courage, neither the wall nor the hedge proves to be a real hindrance, and the maid is then overjoyed to welcome the lover, with whom she is then going on the metaphorical hunt for the nightingale. But in some cases, the pursuit of love can also conclude in tragic death because the trail proves to be too dangerous and difficult. The most dramatic example might well be Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina from 1499 in which a prostitute or madame runs a brothel but encounters severe problems leading to her own death, the death of one of her male customers, and of her servants.13 But those are all people involved in the sex business, whereas the focus rests on the two lovers. Calisto and Melibea, who are ultimately able to achieve their physical union (probably resulting in a sexual union, as she later admits: “I lost my virginity,” 191) with the help of the go-between. Almost at the end of this dramatic prose novel determined mostly by dialogues, Calisto climbs the wall to get to Celestina’s garden, where he can finally meet his beloved in private, who is already expecting him: Boys, put the ladder against the wall, and shut up, because I think I can hear my lady speaking inside. I’ll climb over the wall and listen and see if I can hear any pleasant signs of my love in my absence. (180) The narrator then injects an almost classical image of this garden, a locus amoenus, such as: “Listen to the water running from their little fountain, how it bubbles and chatters through the cool grass. Listen to the branches of the tall cypresses peacefully entwine and rock in the gentle breeze” (ibid.). But then Calisto finds out that he had been betrayed because his servant Sosia, waiting outside for him, is calling for help. In his rush, Calisto quickly climbs up the ladder to get back to the other side but falls off and dies from this accident (184). To achieve the dream of love is dangerous and at times even fatal, for which there are many reasons, depending on the narrative context. We can observe, however, always the same fundamental feature, the pursuit of love in spatial terms, following a trail. However, as the two lovers, but then also her parents have to realize, “life is strife” (193). Whereas Boccaccio and the anonymous German writer projected a happy end after the two lovers have enjoyed each other, resulting in marriage, Fernando de Rojas envisions nothing but tragedy and a bitter outcome, obviously because for him those lovers pursued the wrong trail and were not able to correct the course of their lives. Medea has only those words to say before

she commits suicide: “‘. . . I offer my soul to Him. Keep this body safe that’s now hurtling down towards you’” (192). Whereas recent scholars have mostly emphasized the central importance of space and location, such as in the case of Geoffrey Chaucer’s life and works,14 emphasizing the context, the spatial connotations, and the objects interacting with the protagonists, there is no space without a trail since the individual – fictional or real – simply needs to depart from one location to reach another. Space and trail closely interact with each other, and this is also the case in all three examples dealt with above. One of the most dramatic cases, however, where the lover has to try the hardest to reach his goal and to overcome many barriers and hindrances, can be found in the greatest medieval ‘bestseller,’ the Roman de la rose by Guillaume de Lorris (ca. 1230), continued to a prodigious extent, by Jean de Meun (ca. 1260/1270).15 There is little wonder that since the early nineteenth-century scores of scholars have already plowed through this ‘classical’ text from the late French Middle Ages, focusing on the structural and rhetorical elements from very early on,16 then on the role of reason and rationality,17 the text’s organization and the relationship of those two parts to each other,18 the iconography employed in the many manuscripts and the tension between the carnal and the spiritual in this love discourse,19 the responses of the various groups of readers/listeners to this great narrative,20 among other topics. There is no doubt that the literary quality is deeply determined by the extensive use of allegory, satire, personification, allusions, and a very rich use of scholastic sources (Macrobius, Alanus de Insulis, Andreas Capellanus). Both the medieval contemporaries and posterity responded in a most lively manner to the Roman de la rose, adulating or condemning it, depending on the individual’s position vis-àvis the ancient gender debate, so it does not come as a surprise that this poem has survived in almost 300 medieval manuscripts.21 We have solidly moved away from previous efforts to evaluate this massive text with only the question in mind of whether this was still courtly literature or a literary document confirming the decline of the courtly ideals. Even though this might be true to some extent considering the drastic developments and changes in Jean’s part, such analytic tools appear rather irrelevant for an objective approach. But we do not gain a good handle of this huge poem if we compare it with earlier romances, lais, or similar courtly texts because we’ll end up comparing the proverbial apples with oranges.22 Thus, it makes much more sense today to pay greatest attention to structural and narrative elements per se,23 such as allegory and irony, voice and writing, narrative, imaginary, and intellectual play.24 It thus helps considerably to approach the Roman de la rose as an hermeneutic experiment that achieved a resounding success throughout the entire late Middle Ages and well beyond, and this obviously for many different reasons (content, style, themes, allegory, the theme of love, then also the manuscript illuminations, etc.).25 C. S. Lewis has been praised repeatedly for his novel approach regarding this major allegorical poem, examining it in light of the poet’s use of traditional sources, the relationship between fiction and reality, the dimension of the autobiographical element, and erotic psychology. As he emphasizes: “We have to reckon not only with the unfamiliar erotic psychology, but with the unfamiliarity of allegory in general . . . .”26 Even though the story

teller, the dreamer, does not perform in a really prominent fashion, he allows us to “look through the lover’s eyes, not at him” (148). The lover, approaching the meaningful garden, does not really encounter his lady, but various moods of the lady, which amounts to a psychogram, as we might say today, and in this process the literary account turns into a kaleidoscope of feelings, sentiments, attitudes, and personality traits (149). Exterior and interior forces emerge that stand in the way between the lover and his rose, and other allegorical figures mirror the lover’s fears and worries, his sexual desire and concerns, his insecurity and weakness, his boldness and courage (151‒52). Lewis also made completely clear that the central rose does not represent the lady, but her love for the young man on the outside, and he also added that Guillaume’s poetic genius rested in his ability to provide us with literary elements to visualize this actual act of falling in love (162). Although perhaps psychologizing more about the experience of love than many scholars might be willing to accept,27 Lewis rightly underscores that Guillaume simply provides allegorical images of the universal and timeless sensations and feelings concerning love as it consumes a young person at the first time (163). In a way, one could describe the entire section composed by Guillaume as a ‘How-To-Do’ manual for those who are unaccustomed to such experiences and do not yet know how to handle them. Although the number of barriers, hurdles, or challenges seems to be enormous, ultimately, the poet allows love to bloom and to come to fruition. Lewis finally goes so far as to call Guillaume’s portion a “sentimental novel. A love story of considerable subtlety and truth is hidden in the Romance” (169).28 But this sentimentality is not an unauthentic, maybe even fake projection of feelings; rather, as Lewis also confirms, a poetic strategy to examine in detail the psychological workings of love in a young man or woman who has to cope with those sensations for the first time in her life.29 Recent scholars have assiduously continued with their work on this virtually encyclopedic allegorical poem, addressing, for instance, philosophical concepts,30 reflecting on the relationship between the audiences and the poet/s,31 or examining further the interaction of the various manuscript version of the Roman.32 Issues of poetic style, meter, and rhyme in this allegorical romance were of prime interest for philologists during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.33 For many, this allegorical poem represents the non plus ultra of all of medieval courtly love literature, and it has obviously appealed to its audiences throughout the centuries, though often concealing its deeper meaning, which requires ever new efforts to identify the essential features and conceptual framework.34 However, against all possible expectations, this chapter cannot raise the bar a full notch higher in our interpretive approach to the Roman de la rose, although I still hope to reveal a small but very relevant aspect that will allow us to read this poem considerably better within the wider European context of medieval literature. After all, the narrator, a dreamer, does draw explicitly from the idea of the trail in order to pursue the concept of love. Guillaume combined many traditional literary strategies to achieve the desired effect of his poem, playing not only with the notion of the dream, but also with the typical trope of the locus amoenus, filled with the joys of warm Spring weather when nightingales, above all,

announce the beginning of the most pleasant season,35 filled with the sweet smell of flowers and the air permeated by the sensation of love. The dreamer wakes up and rises from his bed, rather hastily, because he wants to experience the beauty of the Spring weather, but at first without knowing the direction of his ambulation: “I yearned to wander far outside the town / To hear what songs the birds were singing there / In every bush, to welcome the new year” (1, 66‒68).36 Delightful sounds and smells appeal to the dreamer’s senses, who soon reaches a river that is very much to his liking. He does not yet know that he might be on a search, or filled with feelings of love; instead, the initial verses only situate us in a near utopian setting. Even though the dreamer approaches a river, it runs so smoothly that it reminds him of a fountain or well. He is completely delighted about the embankment and the river bed, and the crystal-clear water, and after he has washed his face, he follows “down the stream” (1, 89). Intriguingly, Guillaume underscores that the narrator does not even know where he is going, but that he simply follows the beautiful landscape, obviously not yet aware of the trail upon which he is moving already. The path leads him quickly from the meadow to a garden that is surrounded by a wall (2, 129‒520), which represents both a challenge and an opportunity for him to learn basic lessons about the human psyche in face of love. Here he encounters numerous sculptures that represent basic human emotions, vices, and virtues, so although he approaches the wall from the outside, he is in reality moving around within human nature. There are, for instance, images of Felony, Villainy, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Old Age, and even Pope Holy, representing hypocrisy. However, as much as the dreamer is interested in entering the garden, he does not find a gate and would need a guide to let him in: Willingly would I have found a guide / Who, by means of ladder or of stile, / Might bring me there within; for so great joy / And such delight as in that place might be / Were seldom known to man, as I believe.37 (2, 235–39) As is very common in high and late medieval literature, the garden attracts most of his attention, both because of its actual, natural delight and because of the allegorical attraction, the rose.38 Love and the delightful garden have always worked hand in hand throughout world literature, whether we think of Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan or Chaucer’s “Knight Tale” in his Canterbury Tales. But we would go wrong if we identified it as a purely idyllic space where no movement takes place. Instead, the lovers tend to meet there and have to struggle hard to gain access to this mysterious space where human efforts have acculturated nature for aesthetic but also culinary delights, not to speak of the religious significance of the garden where the Virgin Mary is commonly depicted as being seated in the center, with the symbolic unicorn having placed its horn onto her lap (Christ), the hortus conclusus.39 Here, the dreamer/lover finds himself in the same situation as many other people before and after him, filled with desires to enter the garden, but not able to do so, especially because

there is no one who might help him: “. . . for I was all alone” (2, 261). But he does not give up, circles around the entire wall until he finally espies a “tiny wicket-narrow, fully barred” (2, 268), at which he knocks and is then allowed in. Although we do not forget that this all happens in a dream, the poet nevertheless projects the specific outline of the lover following a trail, which takes him now into the garden, invited in by the allegorical figure Idleness, who also introduces Mirth. He begs Idleness to let him enter the inner courtyard: “I hope the assembly may not so prevent / Me that I may not see them all today” (3, 69‒70). The lover wants to join that company because he hopes to learn courtliness with them, very similar to Rivalin in Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan (ca. 1210) who seeks out the court of King Mark in Cornwall because of its sophisticated courtly culture there. However, Rivalin thereby neglects his own kingdom Parmenie and his people, which soon leads to a catastrophe and his own death. The lover in Guillaume’s Rose finds himself in an entirely different situation, with no obligations, no social constraints, operating in a dream-world that soon transforms into a kind of poetic utopia: “. . . I thought the place / Was truly a terrestrial paradise, / For so delightful was the scenery” (3, 78‒80). Remarkably, the poet then includes a long list of birds by their names and reflects on the impact of music on people, all this with the purpose of conveying to the audience the complete delight associated with this place. In a way, the dreamer has arrived where he really wants to go, and yet, as we will recognize soon after, his true goal remains very remote. The dream of easy love is nothing but an illusion. Nevertheless, the concrete conditions of the garden are presented with great vividness, which allows us to follow the lover on his explorations of the entire place: “. . . Turning to the right / And following a little path, with mint / And fennel fringed, into a small retreat, / Straightway I found Sir Mirth taking his ease” (4, 133‒36). In short, the quest for love is here specifically described as an effort to follow a path through the greenery and the pleasant company of people making up, so to speak, a court. The narrator deeply marvels at the joys and beauties of the artists and women dancing, until he is finally invited by Courtesy to join them (4, 777‒ 1278). Happily, he accepts that invitation and mingles with the delightful ladies: Most pleasing ‘twas to me, who scarce had dared, / Though much I envied them, and greatly longed, / To join the band. But now, one of the crowd, / I covertly endeavored to observe / the faces and the forms of those who danced. (4, 12‒16) He has, in other words, moved closely into the inner circle and experiences a jubilant and glorious sensation, as expressed by the appearance of allegorical figures, such as Mirth, Gladness, and the God of Love himself, accompanied by Sweet Looks. The poet then fully dives into further allegorical interpretations and discusses a wide range of feelings, values, vices, virtues, experiences, etc., all pertaining to the world of love between two people. Once all those preliminary events have been presented, which amount to a veritable portrait of the various facets and aspects of human nature, the lover continues on his trail and explores deeper parts of the garden, operating like a world traveler, examining the various options in this mysterious place. The circumstances are just right for his purpose because the

dance has come to a stop, and all the young people disperse behind the bushes for some privacy in their intent to pursue love-making (5, 9‒11). The protagonist, however, finds himself alone and continues to wander among the trees, when he is actually stalked by the God of Love who takes aim at him with his arrows that are going to wound him badly. Whereas in most other medieval love narratives the protagonist departs from home and travels through the world, trying to identify the right trail for his life goals, here the opposite has now happened. While he is still walking among the trees, he is followed and becomes the object, instead of being the subject in the quest. The God of Love pursues him secretly: “Unheedingly I went upon my way; / But still he followed, for in no one spot / Unto the garden’s end did I make pause” (5, 32‒34). Before the God of Love shoots his arrows, however, the protagonist, as narrator, takes the opportunity to list many of the trees by name that grow in that splendid part of the garden. There are foreign and native trees, all heavily loaded with fruit, and we find ourselves almost in an encyclopedic context, which the next author, Jean de Meun, then expands even much further.40 In some ways, the list of tree names, flowers, seeds, then forest animals, and the detailed description of the streams and fountains divert the attentive gaze away from the trail and make the dreamer come to a halt because he feels so delighted about the entire setting. Nevertheless, he also turns back to the audience, apologizing for his inability to mention all the elements in this delightful garden, which is perfectly taken care of (if we consider, for instance, the careful planting of the trees to give each one an ideal space in relationship to the others, 5, 68‒74), and then comes to a complete stop in order to tell us the story of Narcissus once again (6), which he himself is reading from the inscription on the fountain.41 The parallels to Dante’s experiences in his Divina Commedia, where Virgil provides him with many instructions, prove to be striking, but this would be the topic of another study. Instead of moving forward, the young man is enraptured by the setting and does not pay attention to the imminent danger from the God of Love, who is soon about to shoot his arrows at him and then subjects him under his rule. But the narrator also admits that his gazing into the fountain also had to be blamed for his subsequent victimization through falling in love (6, 130‒34).42 But the dreamer cannot be really blamed, considering what he refers to in the next chapter, the most attractive rose bush: “Straightway I hurried toward the red rosebush; / and I can tell you that, when I approached / The blooms, the sweetness of their pleasant smell / Did so transfuse my being that as naught . . .” (7, 9‒12). Instead of pursuing his path directly, he gets withheld at that attractive location and thus becomes an easy prey for the God of Love, which is described in extensive detail in chapter 8: “The God of Love makes the Lover his man” (1681‒2010). Very similar to the short account in Andreas Capellanus’s De amore (see above), which might have served Guillaume as a source, the experience of love can only be achieved if the lover is able to retrieve the rules or commandments of love. In the Latin narrative, those rules are passed on in writing, fitting for the learned context, whereas here, the God of Love transmits them orally, fitting for the courtly context. Of course, there are also the negative aspects with love, which are subsequently listed, again in allegorical terms (10), which seems to be an indirect response to the third book of Andreas’s treatise, or to Ovid’s Ars amatoria,

that is, his Remedia amoris, in which he outlines strategies of how to avoid pain and suffering resulting from a bad love relationship.43 Considering that this section is followed by “Remedies for the Pains of Love” (2581‒2764), we gain even further evidence to support this claim. More noteworthy for our further considerations is the fact that subsequently the God of Love disappears from view, whereas Dante the pilgrim could always rely on his guide Virgil. Here, by contrast, the lover must pursue his own path, but since he has learned his lessons and is very close to the rose bush, he might be very close to his goal anyway. Nevertheless, even now, a new hurdle emerges, this time consisting of hedges, which symbolize his fear of being regarded as a thief stealing the rose. In short, another barrier, another hesitation to move forward toward his love, but he is not lost, not even now, and in contrast to Dante’s approach with one guide only, Guillaume integrates regularly new guides, here Fair Welcome, son of Courtesy (12, 2765‒2822) who allows him almost to reach the rose bud: “I circled round the tree toward the flower / Which seemed to me best perfume to exhale” (34‒ 35). As in so many other literary examples discussed here, no trail leads directly to the goal, and this is the case here as well, insofar as Danger appears and drives the Lover away, with the help of many companions, such as Evil Tongue; Shame; Fear; Reason; Misdeed; and, above all, Chastity. The situation becomes rather complicated for the Lover, and Fair Welcome then shrinks away, which forces the former to reconsider his intent and to figure out new approaches because his trail does not actually lead to the rose bud, which suddenly seems so far out of his reach, especially because the Lover feels “Astonished, shamed, and beaten, did [I] repent / Of what I’d said and done, recalling / My folly . . .” (13, 94‒96). The wanderer has run into a barrier, or a bifurcation, hesitates, gets mixed messages, and demonstrates confusion because he cannot continue on his trail as planned, and he needs a new direction, a new guide before he can proceed. The entire discourse on love, so brilliantly summarized and reformulated by Guillaume in his allegorical narrative thus proves to be predicated on the notion of tracking, wandering, pursuing a path, and orientation, both psychologically and physically. The Lover formulates this most explicitly when he vents his anger about his inability to proceed further and to find access to the rose: “But that for which I had the greatest ire / Was that I dared no more to pass the hedge. / No man knows ill who has not been in love!” (13, 98‒100). Of course, he blames himself the most, being so frustrated about his personal weakness to forge ahead and go for his rose. While Dante the pilgrim was about to despair at the beginning of Inferno because he had lost his direction and did no longer know how to proceed in making sense of his life, the Lover in Guillaume’s poem feels torn between his erotic desire and his shame, shyness, self-respect, and other ethical principles. In the case of Dante, the wanderer found himself at the end of a certain section of his trail and needed to regroup everything in his life before Virgil guides him into and through Hell; in the Roman de la rose, the Lover finds himself at the beginning of his adult life, a point at which the experience of the erotic catapults him out of his previous innocent self and into the world of love attaching him to another person. But the Lover also needs to receive help and to learn how to build a bridge to the other person, which is tantamount to a trail, of course. Reason

clearly spells this out when addressing the protagonist: “But ‘tis no wonder; men are fools in youth” (14, 36). The same observation can be made with respect to numerous other courtly love narratives, some of which I have discussed above, especially the lais by Marie de France, the romances by Chrétien de Troyes and Hartmann von Aue, and by the various authors of ‘sentimental romances’ (Konrad Fleck and many of his contemporaries). We could also refer to the panEuropean Apollonius of Tyrus, where the destiny of the protagonist and his family is determined by the successful or catastrophic outcome of the wandering.44 However, Guillaume’s particular successful strategy consists of his deliberate combination of the allegorical and the physical trailing, which allows us to follow the Lover’s endeavors in a mental and in a physical manner. He is indeed walking through the garden, and approaches the inner sanctum with the rosebush, but we are also privileged to trace his thought patterns and feelings while he approaches the garden itself, then wanders through the pleasant inner setting, finally approaches the central location with the rosebush, and yet then feels so deeply frustrated because of the protective hedge. Reason even advises him to abandon all desires for love because it is nothing but foolishness (14, 54‒55), which could be another echo of Andreas Capellanus’s treatise, now from the third book in which the entire concept of courtly love is vehemently condemned. Here, however, Reason does not achieve the desired effect and is rejected by the Lover, who then seeks out his Friend, thus moving away from his stalemate and trying to approach his goal by other means (15). This is made possible by Franchise and Pity who help him to return to the right path where Fair Welcome “Now guided me throughout all the rosary” (16, 74). In fact, this then finally allows the Lover to reach his goal, the rose, the symbol of all of his longing. As a side note, here again the poet offers a stunningly detailed and realistic description of the bud, the petals, the grains within the bud, and the colors, which we would hardly expect from a medieval poet, although many late medieval manuscript illuminations already demonstrate a significant increase in the awareness of natural features, such as beautifully demonstrated in the famous fourteenthcentury Luttrell Psalter.45 The Lover is deeply attracted to the flower and cannot turn his attention away, obviously also because he has no further need to follow his own trail: “The fairer the bud, the more Love fettered me; / The happier I, the more I felt his chains” (17, 12‒13). And yet, Fair Welcome cannot grant him the request to allow him to kiss the rose, which creates another significant delay, prolonging the trail to be covered once again, until the seemingly impossible happens after all because of the intervention by Venus; the Lover then gets free rein and is finally able to kiss the rose (17, 81). Guillaume could have ended his romance at this point because the Lover has accomplished what he had desired for a long time, and like Dante the pilgrim, or the British knight in Andreas’s treatise, he finds himself in complete bliss. Of course, it does not come as a surprise that the poet then also includes further challenges and difficulties since Jealousy arrives and hides the rose in a castle. In fact, the Lover has to withdraw, filled with shame, uncertain about how to proceed, attacked from various sides for his allegedly evil reputation and evil deed of kissing the rose. Once Jealousy has built the castle, Fair Welcome is entirely

removed and imprisoned, and all the previous gains are lost for the Lover (19). The trail toward his rose is thus completely blocked, and we are left wondering how the narrator might ever recover the right trail, or regain his love. While Dante the pilgrim constantly makes some progress, and while many of the other lovers in the various courtly romances succeed in the long run despite many failures and forced retreats, such as Perceval/Parzival in Chrétien’s or Wolfram von Eschenbach’s versions, in Guillaume’s case, at the closure of his allegorical romance, despair sets in because there does not seem to be any hope to proceed with the original plans to pursue the beloved rose. He can only lament the imprisonment of Fair Welcome, and exculpate himself as being innocent in this problematic case: “But blame your dire imprisonment on me. / Yet surely ‘twas no fault of mine, . . .” (19, 161‒62). We learn of more advice, but it remains unclear for the Lover what to do in this situation. He is thus much worse off compared to Dante the pilgrim, and at the very far end of where we encountered the British knight in Andreas’s treatise. Those two were strongly determined by hope, which here is utterly lost, as he admits to Fair Welcome: “So sorely troubles me that my heart fails” (19, 179).46 Granted, Guillaume’s part concludes with some comments by an anonymous author, who turns everything around once again, outlining what the future will hold in fulfillment of his desires, but that is clearly separate from the narrative outcome as outlined by the poet up to that point. Nevertheless, we need to take account how this poet envisioned the final outcome of the long road taken by the Lover, as brief as it might be. The various supportive allegorical figures manage to sneak out of the castle and to take the rose back to the Lover who is thus able to enjoy a whole night with her until the early morning, when the supportive figures are forced to return it to the castle – clearly a play on the well-known genre of the dawn song.47 All seems to be lost, then, the rose is removed, the lover feels deeply disappointed, and the dreamer thus wakes up. Guillaume projected an imaginary trailing, as many other poets had ventured to do before him as well. We can trace the Lover’s wandering in quite vivid terms, through the meadow to the garden wall, then through the enclosure into the orchard, and finally to the rose, which again is enclosed by a hedge. Many psychological forces come to play here, expressed in allegorical terms; but the entire process of falling in love, pursuing the lady, rallying all available forces, being beaten back by negative feelings and fear is developed in a most sophisticated fashion predicated on the notion of the movement from the outside to the inside, walking, so to speak, on the universal path of love. The anonymous thus offered a rather fitting conclusion, indicating just briefly the happy consumption of love between the Lover and the rose, and her disappearance, brutally indicated by the Lover’s waking-up. In the following part of the Roman de la rose composed by Jean de Meun, allegory continues to matter as the guiding principle of the narrative, but the focus then dramatically shifts away to an encyclopedic approach, using the Lover’s desire for the rose only as a platform to explore the wide range of philosophical, intellectual, political, moral, and ethical issues commonly discussed in the thirteenth century. Accounts borrowed from classical literature serve here as much to entertain the audience with scientific comments about astronomy, remarks about ethical concerns, misogynistic remarks, and virtually pornographic

descriptions of how the Lover at the end manages to storm the castle and gain access to the rose. While Guillaume predicated his poem on the sense of trailing, pursuing, wandering, and striving for the rose, Jean changed the overall orientation thoroughly and transformed the narrative framework into a medium for ironic and satirical reflections on life. It is not, as C. S. Lewis perceived it, a palinode of courtly love, but a transition from the discourse on courtly love to a discourse on life itself in its encyclopedic perspective.48 In that respect, for Guillaume, following the trail was of tantamount importance because the Lover thereby encountered the various barriers, allegorical figures, the garden, and the hedge protecting the rose. He relates a poetic dream in which the protagonist embarks on his journey and hopes to find love. For Jean, it seems, wandering itself loses significance because the focus then rests on the reflection of many different topics relevant in human life. In Jean’s part, dreaming itself has lost its significance, and the lover is no longer endeavoring to gain love in the traditional sense; instead, at the end, without pursuing the traditional road any longer, he attacks the castle, penetrates through a small opening in the wall, and takes the rose. This is truly sobering because, apart from the pornographic allusion, the lover no longer makes a true effort to rediscover and follow the right trail and instead conquers a body, forgetting about soliciting her love in the traditional courtly fashion.

Notes 1 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und mit einem Stellenkommentar sowie einer Einführung versehen von Helmut Brackert und Stephan Fuchs-Jolie (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003); see now Albrecht Classen, “Rivers as Crucial Stepping Stones in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (ca. 1205) and Titurel (ca. 1220),” to appear in Reading the Natural World: Perceptions of the Environment and Ecology During the Global Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. by Thomas Willard (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020; forthcoming); id., Utopie und Logos. Vier Studien zu Wolframs von Eschenbach “Titurel-Fragmenten.” Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1990); Alexander Sager, Minne von maeren: On Wolfram’s Titurel. Transatlantische Studien zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); Larissa Schuler-Lang, Wildes Erzählen - Erzählen vom Wilden: “Parzival,” “Busant” und “Wolfdietrich D.” Literatur – Theorie – Geschichte, 7 (Berlin and Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), ch. 3.4.2. 2 Andreas Capellanus: Andreas aulae regiae capellanus, De amore. Text nach der Ausgabe von E. Trojel. Übersetzung und mit Anmerkungen und einem Nachwort versehen von Fritz Peter Knapp (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006); for the English translation, I have drawn from Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love. With intro., trans., and notes by John Jay Parry (1941; New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1969). For a study on the reception history, see Alfred Karnein, De amore in volkssprachiger Literatur: Untersuchungen zur Andreas-Capellanus-Rezeption in Mittelalter und Renaissance. Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, Beiheft, 4 (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1985). See also Don A. Monson, Andreas Capellanus, Scholasticism, & the Courtly Tradition (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005); Kathleen Andersen-Wyman, Andreas Capellanus on Love? Desire, Seduction, and Subversion in a Twelfth-Century Latin Text. Arthurian and Courtly Cultures (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); cf. also Albrecht Classen, “Andreas Capellanus aus kommunikationstheoretischer Sicht. Eine postmoderne Auslegung von ‘De amore,’” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 29.1 (1994): 45–60; id., “Epistemology at the Courts: The Discussion of Love by Andreas Capellanus and Juan Ruiz,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen CIII.3 (2002): 341–62; id., “Dialectics and Courtly Love: Abelard and Heloise, Andreas Capellanus, and the Carmina Burana,” Journal of Medieval Latin 23 (2013): 161–83. 3 Albrecht Classen, “Andreas Capellanus: Der große Experte auf dem Gebiet der Liebe ‒ ein Satiriker, klerikaler Kritiker oder Philosoph?,” Künstler, Dichter, Gelehrte, ed. Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich. Mittelalter-Mythen, 4 (St. Gall: UVK, 2005), 687‒703; Paolo Cherchi, Andreas and the Ambiguity of Courtly Love. Toronto Italian Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). For a negative example, which indicates the extent to which this treatise

remains deeply misunderstood until today, which then carries over into academic teaching and thus blinds the future generations, see Hermann Reichert, Minne: Eine Vorlesung (Vienna: facultas, 2020), 99‒109. For a much more nuanced reading, see Monson, Andreas Capellanus (2005). He clearly recognizes the significant role of Aristotelian dialectics and antithetical relationships (83) and uncovers the importance of juxtaposing contrastive positions in the discourse of love (85). However, John W. Baldwin, The Language of Sex: Five Voices from Northern France around 1200. The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), though keen on uncovering the multitude of narrative voices in twelfth-century texts on love, bluntly admits, I have abandoned the search for overarching consistency and am content to accept the work as an encyclopedia rich in amatory love, replete with contradictions, perhaps irony . . . . I am no longer interested in deciphering contradictions to uncover authorial coherence. (19‒20) But is this not the very task of literary analysis? Imagine a chemist observing two contradictory properties of an element and shrugging his/her shoulder by saying that s/he cannot figure this out. Well, then stop working as a chemist, or, vice versa, as a philologist. 4 Christine Putzo, Konrad Fleck, >Flore und Blanscheflur