Hartmann von Aue, Erec

William McDonald (University of Virginia)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1180

Places

Germany (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)
Romance

Resources

Around 1180, Hartmann von Aue, a knight in Southwestern Germany, composed the first German Arthurian romance, Erec in 10,000 rhymed couplets. The plot line is an amalgam of fairy tale, Mirror of Princes (Fürstenspiegel, i.e. rules for young princes and rulers, composed since classical antiquity and through the Middle Ages), and the hero journey familiar to myth – a rite of passage that involves crossing the threshold and emerging from the Realm of Death. Hartmann very freely adapted a French romance that had appeared a generation before, Erec et Enide (ca. 1170) by Chrétien de Troyes. Other literary sources, the Norwegian Erexsaga and the Welsh tale of Gereint and Enid from the Mabinogion, were perhaps known to him in some form. The manuscript transmission of the German Erec is incomplete and frustrating for researchers. No...

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1174 words

Citation: McDonald, William . "Erec". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 October 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13997, accessed 09 June 2026.]

Hartmann von Aue, Erec

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

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