FRIAS Colloquium - Michael Stolz

‘Perspectives’ of Medieval Romance. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Arab Optics

Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval romance Parzival, written around 1200, deals with the mysterious search for the ‘holy grail’. The narrative is filled with a dazzling array of visual motifs and metaphors, while also demonstrating a rudimentary understanding of contemporary Arab knowledge. How does the ‘poetics of the visual’ inherent in the poem unfold under these circumstances? – This question will be explored using selected textual examples. Processes of optical perception will be interpreted through the “mirror” of intercultural contexts. One possible reference point is the city of Toledo in Spain, an important medieval centre of translation, mentioned several times in the poem.