The Crusaders' Quest
The Crusaders' Quest
The Holy Sepulcher
This chapter argues that Wolfram's two great epics, Parzival and Willehalm, are a poet's protest against the whole notion of religious crusade, and in particular against Christian-Muslim enmity. In both works he attempts to make his contemporaries realize that a Christian crusade aimed at killing Muslims in order to secure possession of Christ's grave and restore his feudal territory to him is a mistake of literalness concerning the whereabouts of the Lord Christ's rock grave and the location of his “territory.” He suggests that the literalness is a sign of profound sickness causing both suffering and ugliness among the baptized who live on Mount Salvation. In his attempt at enlightenment, Wolfram's unexpected poetic weapon is the gemstone.
Keywords: Wolfram, Grail, Crusades, Christians, Muslims, gemstone, Parzival, Willehalm
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
