Der Held und sein Raum

The interpretation of the medieval Arthurian romances is often still burdened by the prejudice that the imaginings of space in these works are far less pronounced than in modern novels. This structuralist study, however, demonstrates that the poets of the Arthurian romances have developed a diverse and original repertoire of spatial concepts. In the comparative analysis of Hartmann's Erec and Iwein, Wolfram's Parzival, and Heinrich's Crône, distinctive structures such as threshold spaces, movement spaces, and visual phenomena emerge. At the same time, the uniquely elaborated poetic space proves to be the key to understanding each individual work.