Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival

Marion E. Gibbs
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The best known work of Wolfram von Eschenbach is his

Parzival,

and at almost 25,000 lines in rhyming couplets, it is also the most substantial. At its core is a courtly romance with many of the ingredients familiar to the audience of Chrétien de Troyes and, in Germany, Hartmann von Aue. The source for his tale of the hero's quest for the Grail is Chrétien's unfinished

Perceval

or

Li Contes del Graal

of about 1185, but Wolfram has extended and deepened the material and given to the traditional theme of the knight's quest the spiritual significance of man's search for his identity and his destiny. He has placed this story centrally in a multi-faceted work that stands alone in Middle High German literature and is justly regarded as one of the masterpieces of European literature. Composed,…

2131 words

Citation: Gibbs, Marion E.. "Parzival". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 January 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13213, accessed 19 March 2024.]

13213 Parzival 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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