ABSTRACT
Henry Kratz is a vigorous critic of Arthurian christianism. 2 The connection between the Crusades and Wolf ram's Parzival makes ready sense within the political-economic framework of feudalism: fighting for the cause of Christianity constitutes service to both a temporal and an eternal Lord, and will be well rewarded, perhaps by both but certainly by the latter. Nor do Wolfram's allusions to the Crusades add up to a concrete portrait of some particular representative of contemporary Christendom. The Grail Knights may well be modeled on the Knights Templar, but not in order to sharpen our picture of Richard the Lion-Hearted.
What if Wolfram's Book I originally had nothing to do with the rest of the story? The Anjou (Richard) material has a bearing on the structure of Wolfram's masterpiece.
In addition to his own robust reading, Kratz affords fellow readers a road map to the secondary literature (Total Evaluation 5–8).
