Topographies Of Gender In Middle High German Arthurian Romance (studies In Medieval History And Culture)

First published 2001 by Garland Publishing. This edition published 2013 by Routledge. The book examines, in approximate chronological order, Hartmanns' 'Erec' and 'Iwein', Wolfram's 'Parzival', and Gottfried's 'Tristan' to describe "the way in which the construction of romances pace participates in... gender construction", and the way in which the works show increasingly complex patterns of gender topography. The author combines various theoretical approaches, most notably those of Judith Butler's 'Gender Trouble' (1990), Derek Gregory's 'Geographical Imaginations' (1994), and Sigrid Weigel's 'Topographien der Geschlechter' (1990), to reach a definition of gender topographies as culturally specific patterns of spaces in which encounters integral to the process of becoming male or female take place. In the latter half of the twelfth century, the Arthurian romance made its entrance onto the stage of medieval vernacular literature and found an eager audience in German courtly culture.

This book explores the metaphor of topography as a mechanism for the inscription of gender roles in Arthurian romance.