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258 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1819
He that supper for is dight,
He lyes full cold, I trow, this night!
Yestreen to chamber I him led,
This night Gray-steel has made his bed!
SIR EGER, SIR GRAHAME, and SIR GRAY-STEEL.
The erudite reader, well versed in good-for-nothing lore, will perceive that the above Tale must have been suggested to the old Swiss by a little French anecdote, a circumstance said to have taken place in Paris.
[Katzenellenbogen] I.e., CAT’S ELBOW—the name of a family of those parts, and very powerful in former times. The appellation, we are told, was given in compliment to a peerless dame of the family, celebrated for a fine arm.
She could read without great difficulty, and had spelled her way through several Church legends and almost all the chivalric wonders of the Heldenbuch [...] and knew all the tender ballads of the Minnelieders by heart.
Heldenbücher (singular Heldenbuch "book of heroes") is the conventional title under which a group of German manuscripts and prints of the 15th and 16th centuries has come down to us. Each Heldenbuch contains a collection of primarily epic poetry, typically including material from the Theodoric cycle, and the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich and Ortnit. The Heldenbuch texts are thus based on medieval German literature, but adapted to the tastes of the Renaissance.
Minnesang was a tradition of lyric- and song-writing in Germany that flourished in the Middle High German period. This period of medieval German literature began in the 12th century and continued into the 14th. People who wrote and performed Minnesang were known as Minnesänger, and a single song was called a Minnelied. The name derives from minne, the Middle High German word for love, as that was Minnesang's main subject. The Minnesänger were similar to the Provençal troubadours and northern French trouvères in that they wrote love poetry in the tradition of courtly love in the High Middle Ages.