Der deutsche Artusroman

From the early Latin historical chronicles to the great novels of Chretien and Hartmann von Aue, and the Grail novel, and on to the huge narrative works of the late 13th century: the author of the present volume traces in detail and vividly the emergence and development of the figure of Arthur as an ideal courtly ruler. He marks the individual steps of this process, inquires into the political background, and shows the literary implications of that strange transfiguration in the course of which a historically insignificant Breton commander became the crystallization point of a literary genre and left his mark on an entire spa epoch.