Abstract
This article discusses a number of fidelity-testing tales and episodes, focusing on the function of characters and narrators who provide interpretations of the outcome of the tests. The testing of a series of characters takes place during a social gathering, involves a testing device, most often a mantle or a drinking horn, and discloses infidelity or other shortcomings. In most tales, ethical interpreters confront the spectators with social criticism and moral lessons, either seriously, as in Ulrich’s Lanzelet and Albrecht’s Jüngerer Titurel, or humorously, as in the Manteau mal taillé. In Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône, however, the interpreters are innocuous. Kei the seneschal and the narrator participate in an intratextual as well as literary game. Their comments are meant to amuse other characters, and to challenge the literary expertise of the listeners to Heinrich’s romance.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Bernd Bastert, Frank Brandsma, Jessica Quinlan and Sacha Voogd for their comments on an earlier version of this article, that was presented at the XXIInd International Congress of the Arthurian Society in Rennes (July, 2008).
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Besamusca, B. Characters and Narrators as Interpreters of Fidelity Tests in Medieval Arthurian Fiction. Neophilologus 94, 289–299 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-009-9193-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-009-9193-5