Wirnt von Grafenberg

Wirnt von Grafenberg was a Middle High German poet of the thirteenth century.

Grafenberg was a Bavarian nobleman who between 1202 and 1205 wrote an epic, entitled Wigalois, which describes the adventures of Gawain's son, the name being a corruption of Guinglain le Galois. Wirnt likely took material from French sources, and earlier portions of his work parallels the French romance Le bel inconnu of Renaud de Beaujeu,^[1] but otherwise has taken great liberties with the material,^[2] and his claim that he learned the material orally from some squire is thought to be a pretext for not constraining himself to the norm.^[3] Though extravagant and didactic,^[2][4] the poem was one of the most popular and distinguished romances of the Arthurian cycle written in Middle High German,^[1] apart from the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Hartmann von Aue.^[2]

Wirnt is thought by many to have been of an elite noble family in Gräfenberg, Bavaria,^[1][2] possibly having served as ministerial (clerical administrator) for the town.^[3] His literary patron was most likely Berthold IV of Andechs-Merania (d. 1204).^[1][3]

The fully illustrated Wigalois manuscript produced in 1372 (MS LTK 537) is held at Leiden University Libraries and a digital version is available on its Digital Collections.^[5] A prose version Wigoleis vom Rade was made toward the close of the fifteenth century and printed at Augsburg in 1493.^[1] Wigalois has been edited by Georg Friedrich Benecke (Berlin, 1819), Franz Pfeiffer (Leipzig, 1847) and others.^[6]

Wirnt appears a central character playing the role of the knightly servant of Frau Welt in Konrad von Würzburg's Der Welt Lohn [de], Wirnt von Grafenberg himself becomes a literary figure, but otherwise little is known about his life.^[1][7][8][9]