King Rother and His Bride: Quests and Counter-Quests is a study of the earliest Middle High German minstrel epic, King Rother. These epics, which often are more like romances than what is usually called an epic, were long thought to be the products of minstrels “either itinerant or resident before a courtly audience” (1). All of these epics show strong connection to oral tradition, whether through the use of folktale motifs or because of stylistic traits characteristic of oral delivery. They show connections to oral traditions thematically as well, particularly the folktale. As Thomas Kerth notes, one of the elements linking these epics is their “creation of a narrative world that integrates the East into the European experience by means of a symbolic and dangerous exploration of its geographical space by a prince who travels there in order to win a bride” (6), which also creates a folktale-like narrative world.
Kerth’s approach to King Rother is through a close reading of the epic, primarily as literature, but with some attention to oral traditional aspects of the epic, including the use of folktale motifs. He discusses the background of the epic in two closely related chapters, “Minstrels and Bridal Quests” (1–20) and “Sources and History” (21–44), reviewing the definitions of these epics from the first scholarly studies of the genre in the early-nineteenth century to recent scholarship, the relationship of the genre to other types of the epic, the characteristics of the bridal quest epic, and the relationship of the epic to literary and historical sources. These epics are often argued to be early for stylistic reasons: as Kerth writes, “[i]t is precisely their stylistic features, which could be deemed primitive when compared to the great flowering of German literary culture around the year 1200, that led scholars to date all of the minstrel epics to the twelfth century, even in those cases where they are only preserved in manuscripts from the late Middle Ages” (7). In fact, the manuscript evidence suggests that these epics were popular throughout the Middle Ages, and, further, the stylistic traits often invoked for this early dating are traits that are characteristic of oral traditions. Dating the epics on stylistic grounds is thus likely to be misleading. Kerth nonetheless sees the epic as having “probably been composed in its present form around the middle of the twelfth century” (21).
Kerth’s close reading of the epic in chapters 3 through 11 is on the whole a convincing reading, but it is marred by his constantly referring to historical facts as a way of explaining the epic. Kerth turns to historical sources in a number of places in the book, in fact, usually to connect some event in the epic with its potentially real-life equivalent. Thus, for example, after a description of the Byzantine emperor’s lack of formality in greeting some of Rother’s men, Kerth writes, “[t]he lack of any reference to the extremely formal and rigid rituals of the Byzantine court, fixed as they were in the Book of Ceremonies…indicates that the poet is either unfamiliar with them or has purposely omitted their description from his fictional Constantinople” (64–75). Kerth consistently writes as though the performers of King Rother would have had access to accurate information and documents about Byzantium, yet in each case where he makes a connection to real documents, rituals, or events, the actual scene in the poem shows only a folktale-like generalization of what Byzantium would have been like. While the information provided about Byzantine culture and politics is interesting, there is no reason to believe that the performers of King Rother saw Byzantium as anything more than a strange country of the East in which to place their tale—indeed, some of the ways that Byzantium is described are paralleled in other romances and folktales that are set in other locations.
It is clear from his analysis of the epic that Kerth has read deeply in the scholarship on Middle High German romance and minstrel epic, and he does a real service for those who do not read German by outlining this research in detail in his book. But he seems unaware of other romances or folktales, or of the scholarship about the structure and style of these genres, from outside of the German-speaking areas. A familiarity with this comparative material would have shown him that much of what happens in King Rother is to be expected stylistically as part of the genre.
King Rother and His Bride is, nonetheless, a very good close literary reading of the epic, and one well worth the attention of scholars of folk narrative, epic, and romance.
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[Review length: 769 words • Review posted on May 12, 2011]