ABSTRACT
Discussing the relationship between Chretien de Troyes's Li Contes del Graal and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival sometimes seems as difficult as playing rugby in a cow pasture: it's hard to make it to the goal without either getting tackled or stepping in something. The narrator's apparently more straightforward presentation of Perceval's actions articulates basic themes of his development, such as the relation between socialization and natural ability. A principal reason for this uncertainty seems to be that Chretien's emphasis on exploiting the rhetorical possibilities of individual episodes or themes avoids the organization and orchestration of interrelationships that characterize more overtly dialogic forms of narrative. Wolfram transposes Chretien's episode at Belrepeire into a narrative that subverts the hero's relationship to the heroine, altering the thematic elaboration of events and substantially increasing their dialogic potential. Wolfram's excursus suggests that Parzival and Condwiramurs combine the features of two very different kinds of relationship, marriage and courtly love.
