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The Representation of Visual Reality in Perceval and Parzival

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Annemarie E. Mahler
Annemarie E. Mahler*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio
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Abstract

The image projected in the reader's mind by an author's description offers a basis for comparison with the visual arts. Art historical criteria are applied to equivalent descriptions—a portrait, an architectural complex, and a scene involving motion—in the Perceval of Chrestien de Troyes and the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Chrestien's traditional rhetorical portrait of Blancheflor is a still, frontal, symmetrical image; his description of chastel merveile gives meticulous surface detail but instead of a logical spatial connection the parts are simply juxtaposed in the plane; Gavain's fight with the lion shows no real motion but breaks down into a series of still vignettes which represent rather than show the action. On the other hand, Wolfram's portrait of Condwiramurs is glimpsed from various angles and distances as she moves through space; Schastel Marveile is vaguely described but spatially self-consistent; motion in Gawan's lion fight is continuous in both space and time. Thus Chrestien's descriptions relate to the dominant tradition of medieval art which shows figures and objects in characteristic poses or arrangements outlined in the plane, Wolfram's to that uncommon strain which attempts to cope with natural relationships, particularly those of volumes in space.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , May 1974 , pp. 537 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 547 Pickering, Literature and Art in the Middle Ages (Coral Gables: Univ. of Miami Press, 1970), pp. 3–63; Kuhn, “Struktur und Formensprache in Dichtung und Kunst,” in Dichtung und Welt im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959), pp. 15–21.

Note 2 in page 547 Helmut Hatzfeld, Literature through Art: A New Approach to French Literature (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952), pp. 3–33; D. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1962); Fern Farnham, “Romanesque Design in the Chanson de Roland” Romance Philology, 18 (1964), 143–64; John V. Fleming, The Roman de la Rose: A Study in Allegory and Iconography (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969).

Note 3 in page 547 (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1917), pp. 56–74.

Note 4 in page 547 See my “Perceval, Parzival, Paris and Bamberg: Stylistic Analogies in Certain Medieval Descriptions and Depictions,” Diss. Indiana 1970.

Note 5 in page 547 René Wellek & Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: Harcourt, 1956), p. 130.

Note 6 in page 547 “Der Wandel der Bildvorstellungen in der deutschen Dichtung und Kunst des romanischen Zeitalters,” in Festschrift Heinrich Wolfflin: Beitrdge zur Kunst und Geistes-geschichte zum 21. Juni 1924, Uberreicht von Freunden und Schiilern (Munchen: H. Schmidt, 1924), pp. 63–81.

Note 7 in page 547 Editions of grail romances used: Chrestien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. William Roach, 2nd ed. (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1959), and Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, ed. Karl Lachmann, 6th ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1926).

Note 8 in page 547 In the grail scene when Perceval is brought before the king he is flanked by the two serjants:

Cil qui li amainent son hoste Si que chascuns li fu d'encoste

3103–04

Note 9 in page 547 Alice M. Colby, The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Literature (Geneva: Droz, 1965), p. 168.

Note 10 in page 547 For a related observation see Marianne Stauffer, who writes: “Parzival wird dargestellt in seinem raumlichen und zeitlichen Sich-Nàhern. Bei Chrestien gibt es in erster linie ein Da- und Dortsein.” Der Wald: Zur Darstellung und Deutung der Natur im Mittelalter, Studiorum Romani-corum Collectio Turicensis, No. 10 (Bern: Francke, 1959), p. 114.

Note 11 in page 547 André Grabar, “Plotin et les origines de l'esthétique médiévale,” Cahiers Archéologiques, 1 (1945), 15–36.

Note 12 in page 547 For the classical descriptions of these tympana see: Emile Mâle, “Le Portail Sainte-Anne à Notre-Dame de Paris,” Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, 1897, rpt. in Art et artistes du Moyen Age (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), pp. 140–52. Wilhelm Voge, “Uber die Bamberger Domskulpturen,” Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, 24 (1901), rpt. in Bild-hauer des Mittelalters: Gesammelte Sludien von Wilhelm Vôge (Berlin: Mann, 1958), pp. 171–80.

Note 13 in page 547 For a set of rigorous criteria for the plane versus space polarity see Erwin Panofsky, “Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie: Ein Beitrag zu der Erörterung über die Möglichkeit kunstwissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe,” Zeitschrift fiir Aesthetik und Kunstwissenschaft, 28 (1925), rpt. in Aufsdtze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft, ed. Hariolf Oberer and Egon Verheyen (Berlin: Hessling, 1964), pp. 49–75.

Note 14 in page 547 For a critique of Wolfram's rendition of space in this scene see Hauttmann, p. 68; Diether Roth, “Dargestellte Wirklichkeit im frühneuhochdeutschen Prosaroman: Die Natur und ihre Verwendung im epischen Gefüge,” Diss. Gôttingen 1959, pp. 210–15; R. Gruenter, “Zum Problem der Landschaftsdarstellung im hôfischen Versroman,” Euphorion, 56 (1962), 251.

Note 15 in page 548 For a comprehensive survey of the problem see Miriam S. Bunim, Space in Medieval Painting and the Forerunners of Perspective (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1940).

Note 16 in page 548 The text used in the Hilka edition, MS. BN 794, has the windows rather than the walls painted, creating an additional contradiction with their transparency and sug gesting even greater indifference to natural relationships.

Note 17 in page 548 Richard Krautheimer, “Introduction to an Iconography of Medieval Architecture,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 5 (1942), 1–20.

Note 18 in page 548 Anna G. Hatcher, in “Epic Patterns in Old French: A Venture into Stylistics via Syntax,” Word, 2 (1946), 77, suggests that the perfect tense indicates an action already concluded and shows resultant state.

Note 19 in page 548 The relief sculpture showing Lazarus and Dives at Moissac has the dogs, who are under the rich man's table, licking the sores of the beggar outside the door with their long tongues.