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The Knight without Boundaries: Yiddish and German Arthurian Wigalois Adaptations
Series: - Explorations in Medieval Culture, Volume: 17
Author:
This volume explores a core medieval myth, the tale of an Arthurian knight called Wigalois, and the ways it connects the Yiddish-speaking Jews and the German-speaking non-Jews of the Holy Roman Empire. The German Wigalois / Viduvilt adaptations grow from a multistage process: a German text adapted into Yiddish adapted into German, creating adaptations actively shaped by a minority culture within a majority culture. The Knight without Boundaries examines five key moments in the Wigalois / Viduvilt tradition that highlight transitions between narratological and meta-narratological patterns and audiences of different religious-cultural or lingual background.
Annegret Oehme, Ph.D. (2016), is an Assistant Professor in the Department of German Studies at the University of Washington. She has published articles on pre-modern German and Yiddish literature in The German Quarterly, Ashkenaz, Daphnis, and Arthuriana, and a short monograph (“He Should Have Listened to His Wife.” The Construction of Women’s Roles in German and Yiddish Pre-modern Wigalois Adaptations [De Gruyter, 2020]).
"The strength of the book lies in its application of newer directions in narratology across the centuries. In this regard it is a welcome contribution to the fields of German and Yiddish literature, medieval studies, and transmedial theory." - Adam Oberlin, Princeton University, in: The Medieval Review, 23.10.19
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction
1 Adapting Wigalois
2 The Return of Wigalois: Disentangling a Shared Tradition
3 A Tradition Revisited: Contemporary Research
4 The Knight without Boundaries: Reconnecting the Disentangled
1 From Arthurian Romance to Fairy Tale: Concepts of Adaptation in Ammenmährchen and Beyond
1 Retelling, Transforming, and Transferring Medieval Literature
2 Ammenmährchen as Adaptation
3 Storytelling within the Wigalois/Viduvilt Tradition
4 Conclusion
2 Wigalois: The Heterogeneous Hero and His Narrative World
1 God and Fortuna’s Chosen One
2 Between Heathendom and Sorcery
3 Intertextual Hero(in)es
4 Conclusion
3 Viduvilt: The Arthurian Knight Who Speaks Yiddish
1 Viduvilt’s Origins, Humor, and Alterations
2 Viduvilt as a “Jewish Text”
3 May God Send the Messiah: Religion and Religious Forces in Viduvilt
4 Knighthood and the Jewish Imagination
5 Knighthood in a Nutshell: The Sketch in Cod. Hebr. 255
6 Arthurian and Anti-Arthurian Adaptations
7 Conclusion
4 Language Matters: Crossing Linguistic and Ethnocultural Borders in a Seventeenth-Century Yiddish Textbook
1 Wagenseil’s Textbook: Mission, Audience, and Language Philosophy
2 Wagenseil’s Artis hof Adaptation as Transcultural Narrative
3 Wagenseil’s Artis hof as Translational Union
4 Adaptation and Power
5 Conclusion
5 An Arthurian Knight on the Chinese Imperial Throne: Navigating Divine Providence and Cosmopolitan Identity in Gabein (1788/1789)
1 Is That Yiddish?! Text and Edition of Gabein
2 Nowhere in Camelot: Abandoning the Arthurian Realm
3 Eastwards: Familiarity and Otherness in the Depiction of China
4 The Pious Hero
5 Gabein’s Prayers and Christian Theology
6 The Chinese Rites Controversy
7 A Jewish Cosmopolite?
8 Conclusion
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
List of Figures
Introduction
1 Adapting Wigalois
2 The Return of Wigalois: Disentangling a Shared Tradition
3 A Tradition Revisited: Contemporary Research
4 The Knight without Boundaries: Reconnecting the Disentangled
1 From Arthurian Romance to Fairy Tale: Concepts of Adaptation in Ammenmährchen and Beyond
1 Retelling, Transforming, and Transferring Medieval Literature
2 Ammenmährchen as Adaptation
3 Storytelling within the Wigalois/Viduvilt Tradition
4 Conclusion
2 Wigalois: The Heterogeneous Hero and His Narrative World
1 God and Fortuna’s Chosen One
2 Between Heathendom and Sorcery
3 Intertextual Hero(in)es
4 Conclusion
3 Viduvilt: The Arthurian Knight Who Speaks Yiddish
1 Viduvilt’s Origins, Humor, and Alterations
2 Viduvilt as a “Jewish Text”
3 May God Send the Messiah: Religion and Religious Forces in Viduvilt
4 Knighthood and the Jewish Imagination
5 Knighthood in a Nutshell: The Sketch in Cod. Hebr. 255
6 Arthurian and Anti-Arthurian Adaptations
7 Conclusion
4 Language Matters: Crossing Linguistic and Ethnocultural Borders in a Seventeenth-Century Yiddish Textbook
1 Wagenseil’s Textbook: Mission, Audience, and Language Philosophy
2 Wagenseil’s Artis hof Adaptation as Transcultural Narrative
3 Wagenseil’s Artis hof as Translational Union
4 Adaptation and Power
5 Conclusion
5 An Arthurian Knight on the Chinese Imperial Throne: Navigating Divine Providence and Cosmopolitan Identity in Gabein (1788/1789)
1 Is That Yiddish?! Text and Edition of Gabein
2 Nowhere in Camelot: Abandoning the Arthurian Realm
3 Eastwards: Familiarity and Otherness in the Depiction of China
4 The Pious Hero
5 Gabein’s Prayers and Christian Theology
6 The Chinese Rites Controversy
7 A Jewish Cosmopolite?
8 Conclusion
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
The book aims to raise awareness of the German-Yiddish tradition and will appeal to a broad audience of readers with interests in medieval literature, German and Yiddish literature and culture, German-Jewish history, Adaptation Studies, and Arthurian Studies.