Gyburc and Herzeloyde Wolfram's remarkable women /

by 1969- Rowe, Julie L.

This thesis seeks to examine two of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s female characters: Herzeloyde from his work Parzival and Gyburc of his subsequent epic Willehalm. This paper focuses on these figures primarily by contrasting them to the characters from which they were derived, namely, Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval: the Story of the Grail and the anonymous French epic poem The Song of Aliscans. It is my intention to investigate Wolfram’s dual representation of women; he both exalts them and undermines their potential to establish independence. As women of medieval literary works are often strong enough to initially disrupt and challenge the patriarchal structure, they are ultimately forced to resign to it, relegated back to their conventional gender roles. Wolfram, however, ultimately devises one female character who contradicts this paradigm and transcends her subservient role as a woman, placing herself as an equal to her male counterparts.