1. In accordance with Horace's injunction that the purposes of poetry be prodesse et
delectare.
2. See Ursula Liebertz-Grün, "On the Socialization of German
Noblewomen
1150-1450," Monatshefte 82 (1990), 17-37; Roberta Krueger, Women Readers and
the
Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance (Cambridge, 1993); Simon Gaunt,
Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge, 1995).
3. Jo Ann McNamara, "The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender
System, 1050-1150," Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed.
Clare A. Lees (Minneapolis, 1994), 3-30, here p. 3.
4. McNamara, "Herrenfrage," p. 22. The gradual process of power redistribu-
start of page 63
tion
through the family is described in Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, "The Power of
Women through the Family in Medieval Europe: 500-1100," Women and Power in the
Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowalewski (Athens, Georgia, 1988), 83-101.
5. McNamara, "Herrenfrage," p. 5.
6. According to McNamara, in a more recent article, this revisionary and reactionary
trend continues as one of the effects of increasing urbanization and restrictions on the activities of
women through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. See Jo Ann McNamara, "City Air Makes
Men Free and Women Bound," in Text and Territory. Geographical Imagination in the
European Middle Ages, ed. Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles (Philadelphia, 1998), 143-59.
7. For a discussion of Wolfram's apparently progressive, yet ultimately conservative
portrayal of women, see Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, "Women on the Edge in
Parzival: A Study of the 'Grail Women'," Quondam et Futurus: A Journal of Arthurian
Interpretations (renamed Arthuriana), 3.2 (1993), 56-68.
8. For discussion of geography defined in terms of the cultural process, see Kay
Anderson
and Fay Gale, eds., Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography (Melbourne, 1992).
9. Stuart C. Aitken and Leo E. Zonn, "Re-Presenting the Place Pastiche," Place,
Power, Situation, and Spectacle. A Geography of Film, ed. Stuart C. Aitken and Leo E.
Zonn (London, 1994), 3-26, here p. 6. See also the recent collection of essays Text and
Territory, cited in note 6 above, edited by Tomasch and Gilles.
10. See Harvey Birenbaum, Myth and Mind (Lantham, MD, 1988), p. 56.
11. See Trevor Barnes and James Duncan, eds., Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text
and
Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape (New York, 1992). The authors could be
describing courtly literature when they write, "We construct both the world and our actions
towards it from texts that speak of who we are or wish to be" (8).
12. D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of
German
Literature 800-1300 (Cambridge, 1994). See particularly Chapter 9.
13. See Walter Haug, "Wandlungen des Fiktionalitätsbewusstseins vom hohen zum
späten Mittelalter," Entzauberung der Welt. Deutsche Literatur 1200-1500, ed.
James F. Poag and Thomas C. Fox (Tübingen, 1989), 1-18.
14. "[E]in bewusstes strukturelles Experiment" (Haug, p. 8).
15. "Erkenntnis der wahren' Fiktion" (John M. Clifton-Everest, "Fingierte
warheit," Von Aufbruch und Utopie. Perspektiven einer neuen Gesellschaftsgeschichte
des Mittelalters. Für und mit Ferdinand Seibt aus Anlass seines 65. Geburtstages, ed.
Bea Lundt and Helma Reimöller [Köln, Weimar, Wien, 1992], 203-15, here p. 203).
16. "den herzen, den ich herze trage, / der werlde, in die min herze siht"
start of page 64
(Tristan,
ll. 48-9). Throughout this discussion, the English text comes from the following translation:
Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde, ed. and rev. Francis G. Gentry, Foreword by
C. Stephen Jaeger (Continuum, 1988). Line numbers refer to the following edition of the Middle
High German Tristan, cited throughout this discussion: Gottfried von Strassburg,
Tristan, ed. Gottfried Weber (Darmstadt, 1967).
17. Gentry, p. 4: "der werlt wil ich gewerldet wesen, / mit ir verderben oder genesen" (ll.
64-5).
18. Gentry, p. 4: "von diu swer seneder mære ger, / der envar niht verrer dane her"
(ll. 123-24).
19. Gentry, p. 5: "und ist ir doch niht vil gewesen, / die von im rehte haben gelesen" (ll.
133-34).
20. Wolfgang Iser, "The Play of the Text," Languages of the Unsayable, ed.
Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (New York, 1989), 325-40, here p. 325. According to Iser,
the author uses the existing world to create a text "made up of a world that is yet to be identified
and is adumbrated in such a way as to invite picturing and eventual interpretation by the reader"
(327).
21. Barnes and Duncan, Writing Worlds, p. 5.
22. See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,
trans. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1953), especially p. 183-202. The two are connected, of
course. See also Christian Schmid-Cadalbert, "Der wilde Wald. Zur Darstellung und Funktion
eines Raumes in der mittelhochdeutschen Literatur," Gotes und der werlde hulde, ed.
Rüdiger Schnell (Bern, 1989), 24-47. He points out that the locus amoenus in
romance often lies on the far side of the forest and that, most importantly, the forest functions as a
"threshold between the world on this side and the other place" (33-5).
23. Corinne J. Saunders, The Forest of Medieval Romance. Avernus, Broceliande,
Arden (Cambridge, 1993), p. 80.
24. Saunders, The Forest of Medieval Romance, p. 94.
25. Gentry, p. 225. See Weber, ll. 17091-99.
26. Ivan Illich, Gender (Berkeley, 1982), p. 118.
27. Sigrid Weigel, Topographien der Geschlechter, kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur
Literatur (Hamburg, 1990), 11-12. For a similarly compelling analysis of women inscribed
paradoxically both as uncolonized wilderness and as innocent nature in the literature of the
Enlightenment, see Weigel's essay "Die nahe Fremde--das Territorium des 'Weiblichen.' Zum
Verhältnis von 'Wilden' und 'Frauen' im Diskurs der Aufklärung," Die andere
Welt. Studien zum Exotismus, ed. Thomas Koebner and Gerhart Pickerkodt (Frankfurt,
1987), 171-99.
28. "als verräumlichtes Sinnbild einer Kultur, als paradigmatischer Ort von
Zivilisationsarbeit," Weigel, Topographien der Geschlechter, p. 156.
29. Weigel, Topographien der Geschlechter, pp. 11-12.
start of page 65
30. In this way, Gottfried's narrative seems to combat McNamara's trend toward
increasing restriction of women's spaces, as urban centers expand in the thirteenth century. This
is all the more interesting since Gottfried is considered a very urbane author, one who was not a
knight/ministerial, in contrast to Wolfram or Hartmann.
31. "wurze und aller crute craft" (l. 6949).
32. "arzatliche meisterschaft" (l. 6950).
33. Gentry, p. 93: "diu kan eine disen list / und anders nieman, der der ist" (ll. 6951-52).
34. "diu wise Isot" (l. 7291), "diu sinneriche künegin" (l. 7299).
35. Salerno also figures prominently in Hartmann's Der arme Heinrich. This
reference underscores the special status of the elder Isolde for the German-speaking audience.
36. See Petra Kellermann-Haaf's detailed study Frau und Politik im Mittelalter.
Untersuchungen zur politischen Rolle der Frau in den höfischen Romanen des 12., 13. und
14. Jahrhunderts (Göppingen, 1986).
37. "ir tougenliche liste" (l. 9301).
38. "alle ir vlizekeit" (l. 7721).
39. "an ir [Isolde] so lit min beste leben" (l. 11471).
40. Gentry, p. 260, note 51.
41. Gentry, p. 107. See Weber, ll. 8132-41.
42. "tranc von minnen" (l. 11435).
43. Ann Marie Rasmussen, "Bist du begert, so bist du wert. Magische und
höfische
Mitgift für die Töchter," Mütter-Töchter-Frauen:
Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur, ed. Helga Kraft and Elke Liebs (Stuttgart, Weimar,
1993), 7-35, here p. 18.
44. Rasmussen, p. 18.
45. Gentry, p. 144. See Weber, ll. 10940-57.
46. Gentry, p. 145. See Weber, ll. 10977-85.
47. Gentry, p. 147. See Weber, ll. 11130-41.
48. Margaret Higonnet, "New Cartographies, an Introduction." Reconfigured
Spheres. Feminist Explorations of Literary Space. Ed. Margaret Higonnet and Joan
Templeton (Amherst, 1994), 1-19, here p. 6.
49. See James F. Poag, "Lying Truth in Gottfried's Tristan," Deutsche
Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 61 (1987), 223-37.
50. One need only look at the scenes commonly known as the "Assignation by the
Brook"
(Baumgartenszene) or the "Ordeal" (Gottesurteil).
51. Gert Kaiser, "Liebe ausserhalb der Gesellschaft. Zu einer Lebensform der
höfischen Liebe," Liebe als Literatur. Aufsätze zur erotischen Dichtung in
Deutschland, ed. Rüdiger Krohn (München, 1983), 79-97, here p. 91.
52. Gentry, p. 222. See Weber, ll. 16847-908.
53. Gale Sigal, "Courted in the Country. Woman's Precarious Place in the
start of page 66
Troubador's
Lyric Landscape," Text and Territory, ed. Tomasch and Gilles, 184-207, here p. 203.
54. Clifton-Everest, "Fingierte warheit," p. 207 ff.
55. "[C]ristallinen wortelin" (l. 4629).
56. Clifton-Everest, p. 212.
57. Michel Foucault, "Space, Knowledge and Power," The Foucault Reader, ed.
Paul Rabinow (New York, 1984), 239-57, here p. 252.
58. According to Joachim Bumke, the game of courtly love finally serves the
self-justification of an aristocracy that left women no room for self-development. See "Liebe und
Ehebruch in der höfischen Gesellschaft," Liebe als Literatur. Aufsätze zur
erotischen Dichtung in Deutschland, ed. Rüdiger Krohn (München, 1983), 25-45,
here p. 40.
59. McNamara, "City Air Makes Men Free and Women Bound."
