Hybride Helden: Wigalois und Willehalm. Beitrage zum Heldenbild und zur Poetik des Romans im fruhen 13. Jahrhundert.

THOMAS, NEIL

Stephan Fuchs, Hybride Helden: Wigalois und Willehalm. Beitrage zum Heldenbild und zur Poetik des Romans im fruhen 13. Jahrhundert, Frankfurter Beitrage zur Germanistik 31 (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1997). 425 pp. ISBN 3-8253-0482. DM 88.00.

Stephan Fuchs's Hybride Helden, based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1995, is an analysis of the hero role in Wigalois and Willehalm (taken as relatively late representatives of the romance and chanson de geste genres respectively). The methodology used is twofold, involving a long theoretical section followed by textual analyses of each work separately. Strangely, in view of a heavily theoretical opening section (p. 11-99), the author seems diffident about the relevance of this part to the textual-analytical chapters. He prefaces his work with some words of Bakhtin (`Im Hinblick auf den Roman erweist sich die Literaturtheorie als vollig hilflos') and regrets that his theoretical trawl did not provide him with a `sinnvolle Leitung fur die Textanalyse (nach der Sichtung der theoretischen Entwurfe)' (p. 98).

Fuchs's discussion of Wigalois, although he rejects the term `epigonal' as being a form of `Verlegenheitsterminologie', is often reminiscent of an older critical school. He sees Wirnt's romance as a somewhat anarchic development of Chretien's `classical' model in which a profusion of `ethical layers' (mirrored in the `hybrid' hero who is at various stages chevalier errant, servant d'amour, warrior saint, and practical administrator) remain insufficiently problematized. However, he concludes, Wirnt's use of `paradigmatische Kombinatorik' and a profusion of narrative montage yields `einen faszinierenden, weil offenen und zur Deutung herausfordenden Roman' (p. 238). If there is an element of faint praise there, his judgement on the incomplete Willehalm seems more positive because more in harmony with a commissioned work whose source material probably did not correspond with the author's own convictions: `Es stellt sich so eine Wahrhaftigkeit des Erzahlens ein, die eben in der Pluralitat der diversen Diskurse, Handlungsmotivationen, der Aporie des ethischen Diskurses, der Diversitat der Heldenfigur ihre Entsprechung in der Form des Erzahlens finden' (p. 363).

The tripartition of this book into a theoretical section followed by discrete discussions of two rather dissimilar primary texts inevitably leads to the suspicion that three books have been amalgamated. Meanwhile the application of modern critical perspectives to works whose genesis and mode of production were different from those of the present book market results in some rather problematical readings. For instance, the Oriental elements in Wigalois are simply accounted a `Faszinosum' rather as in the Spielmannsepik. Such a view fails to take account of the ways in which Wirnt evidences a toleration of his hero's Saracen enemies which -- given the late datings for Wigalois most recently mooted -- could possibly have been influenced by the Matribleiz section of Willehalm. Despite the ingenuity of Fuchs's arguments the overall impression is that they do not always represent accurately the ambitions of medieval writers.

NEIL THOMAS Durham