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Wigamur is an anonymously-authored, thirteenth-century Middle High German romance about a king's son who is lost to his parents in infancy. The eponymous hero, after being carried off in childhood by a mermaid, rescues an eagle which becomes his constant companion; in subsequent adventures he also rescues a maiden, becomes a Knight of the Round Table, and finally confronts a knight who of course proves to be his father, from whom he inherits a kingdom. The romance is perhaps the most most fully realized example of the Fair Unknown, or Bel Inconnu, motif in both the German and larger European Arthurian traditions.
Owng in part to the lack of an English translation, unlike other contemporary German romances, Wigamur has been comparatively little studied. This volume aimsto fill this need. It presents an edition of the text ( based on the only complete manuscript, Wolffenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 51.2. Aug. 4 (W), dating from the last half of thefifteenth century), accompanied by facing translation, notes, and introduction.

Joseph M. Sullivan is an Associate Professor of German at the University of Oklahoma.

German poetry --- Romances, German. --- German romances --- German literature --- Wigamur. --- Arthurian romance. --- Bel Inconnu. --- European Arthurian traditions. --- Fair Unknown. --- Knight. --- Medieval German. --- Middle High German. --- Round Table. --- hero. --- mermaid. --- translation.

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First ever English translation, with facing edition, of an important medieval German Arthurian romance. Composed in the 1480s by the Munich painter and writer Ulrich Fuetrer, Iban is the story of a young knight at King Arthur's court, who pursues adventure abroad, wins a land and its lady as his wife, loses both through his immaturity and negligence, and eventually regains his country and his spouse in a series of adventures that teach him to place the welfare of others above his own desires. A retelling of Hartmann von Aue's Middle High German classic Iwein from circa 1200, itself an adaptation of the Old French writer Chrétien de Troyes' earlier Yvain, the Knight with the Lion, Fuetrer's Iban is one of fifteen narratives making up his massive Arthurian anthology, The Book of Adventures, which the author compiled for Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria-Munich. Among the last premodern retellings of the story of the knight Ywain, Ibanoffers modern readers an invaluable window onto how the most beloved Arthurian tales were reinterpreted at the end of the Middle Ages and at the threshold to the early modern period. This book offers an edition of the romance, the first for nearly a quarter of a century, accompanied by a facing translation, the first into a modern language of any part of the Book of Adventures. It also includes an introduction, putting the romance into its wider contexts, and explanatory notes.