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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival" is a masterful medieval epic that intertwines chivalric romance with profound philosophical inquiry. Written in Middle High German, this narrative presents the quest of the titular hero, Parzival, as he seeks the Holy Grail, a potent symbol of divine grace and human achievement. Eschenbach's literary style is characterized by its lyrical poetics and intricate characterizations, set against a backdrop of courtly love and moral dilemmas, reflecting the complexities of knightly ideals in the Arthurian tradition. The work does not merely recount adventures; it delves into the internal struggles faced by Parzival, forming a rich tapestry that explores themes of redemption, innocence, and spiritual enlightenment. Wolfram von Eschenbach, a prominent figure of the German medieval literary canon, likely drew on the cultural currents of his time, including the Crusades and the evolving ideals of knighthood, to write "Parzival." Influenced by earlier legends and the works of his contemporaries, Eschenbach's portrayal of the hero's journey resonates with the quest for self-knowledge, manifesting his own wrestling with the moral questions of existence. His nuanced understanding of human nature imbues the text with a timeless quality, appealing to both the medieval audience and modern readers alike. This seminal work is highly recommended for those interested in the intersection of literature, philosophy, and history. Readers will find in "Parzival" not only a captivating tale of adventure and heroism but also an invitation to reflect on their own spiritual quests and the nature of fulfillment. Eschenbach's profound insights and poetic flair make this text an enduring cornerstone of medieval literature that continues to inspire and challenge. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Parzival
Table of Contents
Introduction
Parzival is the story of how the pursuit of honor becomes a quest for compassion. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s long Arthurian romance, the glitter of tournaments and the glamour of court meet the stubborn demands of conscience. A boy who knows little of the world learns that strength without understanding wounds both self and others, and that courage sometimes looks like humility. The poem measures success not by trophies but by the capacity to see and relieve suffering. It asks how a person moves from eager innocence to responsible wisdom, and what must be unlearned before true knighthood can be earned.
Composed in the early thirteenth century in Middle High German, Parzival is an epic romance set in the world of King Arthur and the wider courts, forests, and battlefields of medieval Europe. Wolfram von Eschenbach, a German knight and poet, crafts the narrative in rhymed couplets, blending chivalric adventure with spiritual inquiry. The poem participates in the broader Arthurian tradition while developing its own distinctive emphasis on interior growth. Its settings shift from royal halls to lonely wilderness, from ritualized ceremony to urgent personal trials, situating the hero’s path within a lively network of companions, antagonists, and customs recognizably shaped by courtly culture.
At the poem’s outset, a well-meaning mother shelters her son from the perils of knighthood, hoping to spare him the fate that took his father. He escapes his rustic childhood with untested zeal and arrives at Arthur’s court naive, eager, and dazzled. Under guidance from seasoned figures, he learns the forms of chivalry and the price of misreading them. Rumor and prophecy draw him toward the enigma of the Grail, and an early, puzzling encounter leaves a quiet ache that shapes his journey. The narrative follows his travels, trials, friendships, and mistakes as he seeks a knighthood worthy of the name.
Wolfram’s narrative voice is strikingly personal: he interrupts, confides, and argues, inviting readers into a shared examination of virtue. The poem’s digressive architecture allows side paths to illuminate the main road, so that feasts, debates, and side quests refract the hero’s education. Its tone moves fluidly from playful satire to grave meditation, balancing courtly polish with a stubborn insistence on truthfulness. Though composed in rhymed couplets, the story reads with the rhythm of conversation, surprising and humane. The result is a romance that feels expansive rather than linear, a tapestry in which moral insight emerges through variation and return.
At its core, Parzival redefines prowess by tethering it to empathy, asking whether ritual excellence without compassion can ever be just. The hero must learn when to act and when to inquire, how to balance loyalty with honest attention to another’s pain, and how to accept responsibility without despair. The poem explores the pressures of lineage, the comforts and burdens of community, and the way faith can both guide and mislead when separated from love. Parallel episodes with other knights provide a mirror for alternatives, contrasting smooth worldly competence with the rougher, riskier labor of moral growth.
For contemporary readers, the poem’s drama of failure, repair, and accountability speaks to debates about leadership, care, and belonging. Its world is animated by encounters across languages, customs, and beliefs, acknowledging difference without reducing it to spectacle. Parzival’s progress suggests that purpose is not seized by force but discovered through attentive relationship, a lesson as urgent in civic life as in private conscience. The Grail functions less as a trophy than as a horizon of ethical attention, refining ambition into service. In tracing that arc, the story models how institutions and individuals might change without betraying what they most value.
Reading Parzival means welcoming a pace that alternates glittering action with reflective pauses, ritual catalogues with sudden intimacies, and apparent detours that clarify the way forward. Expect the markers of medieval courtly life alongside a frank appraisal of error, forgiveness, and renewal. The spiritual framework is explicit, yet the poem’s insights into listening, courage, and care travel well beyond their original milieu. Wolfram shows that growth is rarely tidy and that worthiness is proven in attention to others. That vision, humane and demanding, helps explain why this medieval romance still feels like a living conversation about how to live.
Synopsis
Parzival, an early thirteenth-century Middle High German romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach, interweaves Arthurian adventure with a distinctive treatment of the Grail. The poem follows a youth’s passage from ignorance to insight, setting questions of honor, compassion, and spiritual responsibility against the glitter of courtly life. Wolfram’s narrator balances irony and earnest counsel, inviting readers to assess the merits and limits of knightly fame. The work opens in the world of tournaments and dynastic bonds yet persistently tests their moral foundations. Across wandering episodes and converging quests, it asks what truly heals a wounded realm and what kind of speech or silence serves justice.
Before the protagonist appears, the narrative outlines his lineage. Parzival’s father, Gahmuret, a brilliant but restless knight, gains renown abroad and dies in the pursuit of honor, leaving Herzeloyde a widowed mother. Determined to shield her son from the dangers that killed his father, she withdraws from the courtly world and raises Parzival in isolation, ignorant of knightly customs, names, and arms. This protective seclusion, meant to preserve life, inadvertently fashions a different peril: naivety. The poem frames his eventual departure as both an escape from maternal caution and the beginning of a path on which good intentions and misread rules collide.
Parzival’s first encounters with armored riders kindle an overwhelming desire to become a knight. Leaving his mother with awkward promises, he sets out wearing rustic garments and grasping half-understood advice. His eagerness produces comic and harmful blunders: rough manners, misguided boldness, and an inability to read situations or people. Reaching King Arthur’s court, he seeks knighthood without grasping its ethical burden. By defeating a celebrated opponent to seize armor, he gains the outer signs of status while revealing inner incompleteness. The episode establishes the central tension between appearance and understanding and foreshadows the higher demands that honor and compassion will eventually impose.
Guided by the experienced lord Gurnemanz, Parzival receives systematic instruction in restraint, courtesy, and measured action. He learns that prowess without self-command endangers others and oneself, and he takes to heart counsel about disciplined speech. His education soon faces practical tests. He aids a besieged young queen, Condwiramurs, defending her realm and earning a bond of love and marriage. The union affirms the social dimension of knighthood—service that safeguards communities—while also deepening the hero’s responsibilities beyond personal fame. Yet the prudent maxim to speak sparingly, useful at court and in war, will carry unforeseen consequences when compassion requires questions rather than silence.
Drawn by adventure and destiny, Parzival comes to a mysterious castle where a grievously afflicted ruler presides over an awe-inspiring ritual. The scene confronts him with suffering he scarcely understands, and the counsel to hold his tongue restrains him at a crucial moment. He departs praised for skill yet unawakened to what he might have done to help. Only later does he learn that a question withheld can wound as deeply as a blow, and his confidence collapses. Estranged from certainty and courtly acclaim alike, he turns to wandering inquiry, searching for a form of knighthood that heals as well as conquers.
In a parallel thread, the renowned knight Gawan undertakes entangled missions of diplomacy, trial by combat, and delicate negotiation. His path moves through contested inheritances, besieged strongholds, and exacting ordeals that test judgment more than ferocity. Where Parzival grapples with inward meaning, Gawan refines the outward protocols of justice and courtesy, often restoring civic order by balancing mercy and retribution. Their alternating stories create a double mirror: worldly competence without spiritual insight, and spiritual longing without settled social mastery. The juxtaposition underscores the poem’s inquiry into what a complete knight might be and how personal virtue interacts with institutional peace.
Parzival’s later travels bring him to a hermit who is kin to him, a mentor who reframes guilt, grace, and duty. Instruction turns his quest from restless proving toward attentive compassion, aligning prowess with repentance and hope. He resumes his search not as a collector of feats but as a servant answerable to suffering, to God, and to community. Without disclosing decisive outcomes, the poem ultimately binds Arthurian adventure to a rigorous spiritual ethic. Its enduring resonance lies in the claim that right words at the right time, spoken with informed mercy, can mend more than steel ever can, including oneself.
Historical Context
Parzival is a Middle High German narrative poem composed by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the early thirteenth century, generally dated to about 1200–1215. It emerges from the courts of the Holy Roman Empire, where aristocratic households fostered vernacular literature alongside Latin ecclesiastical learning. The poem belongs to the Arthurian romance tradition and treats chivalry, kinship, and religious responsibility. Its imagined geography spans Britain and the Continent, but its social frame is that of German-speaking court culture. Feudal bonds among lords, vassals, and ecclesiastical institutions structured life, while itinerant poets performed for noble patrons. Within this milieu, Wolfram reshaped inherited stories for audiences accustomed to tournaments, counsel, and ritualized hospitality.
Parzival adapts and expands material from Chrétien de Troyes’s unfinished Perceval, composed in northern France in the late twelfth century for aristocratic patrons. By Wolfram’s time, Arthurian subjects had entered German literature through figures such as Hartmann von Aue, who rendered Erec and Iwein into Middle High German, and Gottfried von Strassburg, author of Tristan. Courts valued polished narratives that modeled behavior and entertained. The fashioning of romance in the vernacular paralleled the Minnesang lyric tradition, which refined courtly speech and ideals. Wolfram participated in this competitive milieu, asserting an individual voice while engaging shared motifs recognizable to transregional audiences.
The work arose during a volatile phase of the Holy Roman Empire. After Emperor Henry VI died in 1197, rival claimants Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick were elected in 1198, plunging the realm into prolonged conflict. Philip’s assassination in 1208 and Otto IV’s brief ascendancy gave way to the election of Frederick II in 1212, with shifting allegiances among princes and prelates. Knightly service, counsel, and honor were debated amid these contests for legitimacy. Audiences attuned to oaths, feuds, and negotiated peace could read romance as a mirror of princely conduct, exploring how loyalty and justice might be reconciled with ambition.
Latin Christianity framed moral expectations for nobles and communities. The crusading movement remained influential after the Third Crusade (1189–1192), and the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) dramatically refocused warfare eastward. Monastic reform, especially the Cistercian emphasis on discipline and interior devotion, informed ideals of humility and penitence. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council codified doctrines including annual confession and clarified teaching on the Eucharist, intensifying lay attention to conscience and sacrament. Wolfram’s romance aligns chivalric striving with spiritual evaluation, presenting religious authorities and ritual obligations as consequential for reputation and fate. The nexus of piety and prowess is central to its horizon of meaning.
Intercultural contact shaped European imagination at the turn of the thirteenth century. Merchants, pilgrims, and crusaders circulated between Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the Levant, bringing reports of Islamic polities and varied customs. The Teutonic Order, founded in the 1190s and recognized as a military order in 1198, offered a specifically German vehicle for crusading ideology and service. Romances incorporated distant courts, unfamiliar religions, and cosmopolitan itineraries, often juxtaposing Christian and non-Christian codes of honor. Parzival reflects this widened horizon through travel, embassy, and confrontation that test courtesy and judgment, situating knightly renown within a broader map of peoples and beliefs.
Aristocratic life centered on ritualized practices that romances made vivid. Knighthood involved apprenticeship, proving oneself in tournaments and campaigns, and mastering codes of speech and generosity. Heraldry, hunting, and the etiquette of the hall signaled status and discipline. Noblewomen exercised influence as patrons, mediators, and arbiters of reputation; their presence in literature reflects their roles in gift-giving networks and dynastic politics. Armor and weapons were primarily mail, shield, and lance, with horses essential to display and mobility. Parzival draws on these institutions to stage tests of conduct, where recognition, hospitality, and measured speech determine advancement as much as force.
Wolfram composed in Middle High German, using rhymed couplets suited to oral delivery and courtly listening. Romance circulated through performances by professional singers and through written copies produced by scribes attached to monasteries and courts. No autograph of Parzival survives; the text is known from later thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts that preserve variant readings, reflecting active transmission and reception. The poem’s diction mingles elevated formulas with colloquial turns, a style that early audiences could recognize and remember. This environment of shared recitation and manuscript culture shaped expectations about pacing, repetition, and moral commentary embedded within scenes of adventure and counsel.
Within this setting, Parzival offers a pointed meditation on the knight’s vocation. It aligns prowess with moral maturation, measuring fame by compassion, prudent inquiry, and responsibility to communities. Wolfram reworks the Grail motif to stress service, legitimacy, and providential order, drawing on contemporary emphases on confession, intention, and grace. Courtly spectacle remains attractive, yet the poem tests it against the claims of conscience, clerical counsel, and the needs of the vulnerable. In doing so, it reflects the courtly world that sponsored it while critiquing reputations secured by force alone, urging reconciliation between worldly honor and the discipline of Christian ethics.
Parzival
Volume 1
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
In presenting, for the first time, to English readers the greatest work of Germany's greatest mediæval poet, a few words of introduction, alike for poem and writer, may not be out of place. The lapse of nearly seven hundred years, and the changes which the centuries have worked, alike in language and in thought, would have naturally operated to render any work unfamiliar, still more so when that work was composed in a foreign tongue; but, indeed, it is only within the present century that the original text of the Parzival has been collated from the MSS. and made accessible, even in its own land, to the general reader. But the interest which is now felt by many in the Arthurian romances, quickened into life doubtless by the genius of the late Poet Laureate, and the fact that the greatest composer of our time, Richard Wagner, has selected this poem as the groundwork of that wonderful drama, which a growing consensus of opinion has hailed as the grandest artistic achievement of this century, seem to indicate that the time has come when the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach may hope to receive, from a wider public than that of his own day, the recognition which it so well deserves.
Of the poet himself we know but little, save from the personal allusions scattered throughout his works; the dates of his birth and death are alike unrecorded, but the frequent notices of contemporary events to be found in his poems enable us to fix with tolerable certainty the period of his literary activity, and to judge approximately the outline of his life. Wolfram's greatest work, the Parzival, was apparently written within the early years of the thirteenth century; he makes constant allusions to events happening, and to works produced, within the first decade of that period; and as his latest work, the Willehalm, left unfinished, mentions as recent the death of the Landgrave Herman of Thuringia, which occurred in 1216, the probability seems to be that the Parzival was written within the first fifteen years of the thirteenth century. Inasmuch, too, as this work bears no traces of immaturity in thought or style, it is probable that the date of the poet's birth cannot be placed much later than 1170.
The name, Wolfram von Eschenbach, points to Eschenbach in Bavaria as in all probability the place of his birth, as it certainly was of his burial. So late as the end of the seventeenth century his tomb, with inscription, was to be seen in the Frauen-kirche of Ober-Eschenbach, and the fact that within a short distance of the town are to be found localities mentioned in his poems, such as Wildberg, Abenberg, Trühending, Wertheim, etc., seems to show that there, too, the life of the poet-knight was spent.
By birth, as Wolfram himself tells us, he belonged to the knightly order (Zum Schildesamt bin Ich geboren), though whether his family was noble or not is a disputed point, in any case Wolfram was a poor man, as the humorous allusions which he makes to his poverty abundantly testify. Yet he does not seem to have led the life of a wandering singer, as did his famous contemporary, Walther von der Vogelweide; if Wolfram journeyed, as he probably did, it was rather in search of knightly adventures, he tells us: 'Durchstreifen muss Der Lande viel, Wer Schildesamt verwalten will,' and though fully conscious of his gift of song, yet he systematically exalts his office of knight above that of poet. The period when Wolfram lived and sang, we cannot say wrote, for by his own confession he could neither read nor write ('I'ne kan decheinen buochstap,' he says in Parzival; and in Willehalm, 'Waz an den buochen steht geschrieben, Des bin Ich kunstelos geblieben'), and his poems must, therefore, have been orally dictated, was one peculiarly fitted to develop his special genius. Under the rule of the Hohenstaufen the institution of knighthood had reached its highest point of glory, and had not yet lapsed into the extravagant absurdities and unrealities which characterised its period of decadence; and the Arthurian romances which first found shape in Northern France had just passed into Germany, there to be gladly welcomed, and to receive at the hands of German poets the impress of an ethical and philosophical interpretation foreign to their original form.
It was in these romances that Wolfram, in common with other of his contemporaries, found his chief inspiration; in the Parzival, his master-work, he has told again the story of the Quest for, and winning of, the Grail; told it in connection with the Perceval legend, through the medium of which, it must be remembered, the spiritualising influence of the Grail myth first came into contact with the brilliant chivalry and low morality of the original Arthurian romances; and told it in a manner that is as truly mediæval in form as it is modern in interpretation. The whole poem is instinct with the true knightly spirit; it has been well called Das Hohelied von Rittertum, the knightly song of songs, for Wolfram has seized not merely the external but the very soul of knighthood, even as described in our own day by another German poet; Wolfram's ideal knight, in his fidelity to his plighted word, his noble charity towards his fellow-man, lord of the Grail, with Its civilising, humanising influence, is a veritable 'true knight of the Holy Ghost.' In a short introduction such as this it is impossible to discuss with any fulness the fascinating problems connected with this poem, one can do no more than indicate where the principal difficulties lie. These may be briefly said to be chiefly connected with the source from which Wolfram derived his poem, and with the interpretation of its ethical meaning. That Wolfram drew from a French source we know from his own statement, he quotes as his authority a certain 'Kiot the Provençal,' who, in his turn, found his information in an Arabian MS. at Toledo. Unfortunately no such poet, and no such poem, are known to us, while we do possess a French version of the story, Li Conte del Graal, by Chrêtien de Troyes, which, so far as the greater part of the poem (i.e. Books III. to XIII.) is concerned, shows a remarkable agreement not only in sequence of incidents, but even in verbal correspondence, with Wolfram's work. Chrêtien, however, does not give either the first two or the last three books as we find them in Wolfram. The account of Perceval's father, and of his death, is by another hand than Chrêtien's, and does not agree with Wolfram's account; and the poem, left unfinished by Chrêtien, has been continued and concluded at great length by at least three other writers, who have evidently drawn from differing sources; whereas Wolfram's conclusion agrees closely with his introduction, and his whole poem forms the most harmonious and complete version of the story we possess. Wolfram knew Chrêtien's poem, but refers to it with contempt as being the wrong version of the tale, whereas 'Kiot' had told the venture aright. The question then is, where did Wolfram really find those portions of his poems which he could not have drawn from Chrêtien? Is 'Kiot' a real, or a feigned, source?
Some German critics have opined that Wolfram really knew no other poem than Chrêtien's, and that he boldly invented all that he did not find there, feigning another source in order to conceal the fact. Others have maintained that whether 'Kiot' be the name of the writer or not, Wolfram certainly had before him a French poem other than Li Conte del Graal.
It certainly seems in the highest degree improbable that a German poet should have introduced the Angevin element, lacking in Chrêtien; Wolfram's presentment of the Grail, too, differs in toto from any we find elsewhere, with him it is not the cup of the Last Supper, but a precious stone endowed with magical qualities. It is true that Chrêtien does not say what the Grail was, but simply that 'du fin or esmereeestoit, pieres pressieuses avoit el graal de maintes manieres,' yet it seems scarcely likely that Wolfram should have interpreted this as a precious stone, to say nothing of sundry Oriental features peculiar to his description. But whence Wolfram derived his idea of the Grail is a problem which it is to be feared will never now be completely solved.
The discussion as to the ethical meaning Wolfram attached to the story seems more hopeful of results, as here we do possess the requisite data, and can study the poem for ourselves. The question between critics is whether Wolfram intended to teach a purely religious lesson or not; whether the poem is an allegory of life, and Parzival a symbol of the Soul of man, hovering between Faith and Doubt, perplexed by the apparent injustice of God's dealings with men, and finally fighting its way through the darkness of despair to the clear light of renewed faith in God; or have we here a glorification of the knightly ideal? a declaration of the poet-knight's belief that in loyal acceptance of, and obedience to, the dictates of the knightly order, salvation is to be won? Can the true knight, even though he lack faith in God, yet by keeping intact his faith with man, by very loyalty and steadfastness of purpose, win back the spiritual blessing forfeited by his youthful folly? Is Parzival one of those at whose hands 'the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence'? It may well be that both these interpretations are, in a measure, true, that Wolfram found the germ of the religious idea already existing in his French source, but that to the genius of the German poet we owe that humanising of the ideal which has brought the Parzival into harmony with the best aspirations of men in all ages. This, at least, may be said with truth, that of all the romances of the Grail cycle, there is but one which can be presented, in its entirety, to the world of to-day with the conviction that its morality is as true, its human interest as real, its lesson as much needed now as it was seven hundred years ago, and that romance is the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Some words as to the form of the original poem, and the method followed in translation, may be of interest to the reader. The original Parzival is a poem of some 25,000 lines, written in an irregular metre, every two lines rhyming, reim-paar. Among modern German translators considerable difference of opinion as to the best method of rendering the original appears to exist. Simrock has retained the original form, and adheres very closely to the text; his version certainly gives the most accurate idea of Wolfram's style; San Marte has allowed himself considerable freedom in versification, and, unfortunately, also in translation; in fact, he too often gives a paraphrase rather than a reproduction of the text. Dr. Bötticher's translation omits the Gawain episodes, and, though close to the original, has discarded rhyme. It must be admitted that Wolfram is by no means easy to translate, his style is obscure and crabbed, and it is often difficult to interpret his meanings with any certainty. The translator felt that the two points chiefly to be aimed at in an English version were, that it should be faithful to the original text, and easy to read. The metre selected was chosen for several reasons, principally on account of the length of the poem, which seemed to render desirable a more flowing measure than the short lines of the original; and because by selecting this metre it was possible to retain the original form of reim-paar. As a general rule one line of the English version represents two of the German poem, but the difference of language has occasionally demanded expansion in order to do full justice to the poet's meaning. Throughout, the translator's aim has been to be as literal as possible, and where the differing conventionalities of the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries have made a change in the form of expression necessary, the meaning of the poet has been reproduced, and in no instance has a different idea been consciously suggested. That there must of necessity be many faults and defects in the work the writer is fully conscious, but in the absence of any previous English translation she can only hope that the present may be accepted as a not altogether inadequate rendering of a great original; if it should encourage others to study that original for themselves, and learn to know Wolfram von Eschenbach, while at the same time they learn better to understand Richard Wagner, she will feel herself fully repaid.
* * * * *
The translator feels that it may be well to mention here the works which have been principally relied on in preparing the English translation and the writers to whom she is mostly indebted.
For the Text Bartsch's edition of the original Parzival, published in Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, has been used throughout, in connection with the modern German translation by Simrock.
In preparing the Notes use has been made of Dr. Bötticher's Introduction to his translation of the Parzival, and the same writer'sDas Hohelied von Rittertum; San Marte's translation has also been occasionally referred to.
The Appendix on proper names has been mainly drawn up from Bartsch's article on the subject in Germanistische Studien; and that on the Angevin allusions from Miss Norgate's England under theAngevin Kings, though the statements have been verified by reference to the original chronicles.
For all questions connected with the Perceval legend in its varying forms the authority consulted has been Studies on the Legend of theHoly Grail, by Mr. Alfred Nutt, to whom, personally, the translator is indebted for much valuable advice and assistance in preparing this book for publication.
BOOK I GAMURET
ARGUMENT
In the Introduction the poet tells of the evil of doubt and unsteadfastness—against which he would warn both men and women; he will tell them a tale which shall speak of truth and steadfastness, and in which many strange marvels shall befall.
Book I. tells how Gamuret of Anjou at the death of his father, King Gandein, refused to become his brother's vassal, and went forth to seek fame and love-guerdon for himself. How he fought under the Baruch[1] before Alexandria, and came to Patelamunt. How Queen Belakané was accused of having caused the death of her lover Eisenhart, and was besieged by two armies, which Friedebrand, King of Scotland, Eisenhart's uncle, had brought against her. How Gamuret defeated her foemen, and married the Queen, and became King of Assagog and Zassamank. How he grew weary for lack of knightly deeds, and sailed away in secret from Queen Belakané, and left her a letter telling of his name and race. How Feirifis was born, and how Gamuret came to Seville.
BOOK I
GAMURET
