Wolfram von Eschenbach
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Wolfram von Eschenbach (born c. 1170, died c. 1220) was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.
Wolfram is best known today for his Parzival, sometimes regarded as the greatest of all German epics from that time. Based on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, le Conte du Graal, it is the first extant work in German to have as its subject the Holy Grail. In the poem, Wolfram expresses disdain for Chrétien's (unfinished) version of the tale, and states that his source was a poet from Provence called Kyot. Some scholars believe Wolfram might have meant Guiot de Provins (though none of the latter's surviving works relate to the themes of Parzival), however others believe Kyot was simply a literary device invented by Wolfram to explain his deviations from Chrétien's version.
Wolfram is the author of two other narrative works: the unfinished Willehalm and the fragmentary Titurel. These were both composed after Parzival, and Titurel mentions the death of the Hermann I, which dates it firmly after 1217. Wolfram's nine surviving songs, five of which are dawn-songs, are regarded as masterpieces of Minnesang.
The modern rediscovery of Wolfram begins with the publication of a translation of Parzival in 1753 by the Swiss scholar Johann Jakob Bodmer. Parzival was the main source Richard Wagner used when writing the libretto to his opera, Parsifal. Wolfram himself appears as a character in another Wagner opera, Tannhäuser.
"...There are certain strongly marked points in which Wolfram's account of the Grail, and of all connected with it, coincided with that of later French version impossible for him to have known. The two most significant are the idea of an organized community, the center of whose life is the Grail, and the idea of a hereditary line of guardians. Both are absent from Chrétien's story. But Wolfram's order is an order of knighthood, the Templiesen, modeled on that of the Knights Templar..." - Noel Currer-Briggs.
Adapted from Wikipedia
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