IMC 2007: Sessions

The second session on Arthurian fiction and the cities will focus on vernacular texts. The depiction of cities in Italian Arthurian romance, which has been written within the Northern Italian city republics, including their illustrations (Patriza Mazzadi), will be contrasted with a typically aristocratic text, Wolfram's Parzivaland its late medieval adaptation in the Buch der Abenteuer, a compilation written by a citizen of Munich, Ulrich Fuetrer, for the Duke of Bavaria. Both German texts use the description of cities and castles as a means to distinguish the foreign (Oriental) sphere from the 'own' (Occidental) world, as well as to depict similarities between these two worlds. While the first paper deals with the description of cities in Arthurian fiction (partly produced by citizens or in cities), the last paper focuses on the productive reception of Arthurian literature in typically civic literary genres: in the ‘Meistersang’ and in Carnival plays. The paper will investigate the Arthurian matter’s potential for civic identification; it will question the compatibility between the socio-literal identity of late medieval civic societies and the aristocratic ideals and virtues that are expressed in Arthurian fiction (Claudia Lauer).