Conk/Robillard Family Tree » Titurel "The Grail King" DeBriton (247-300)

Persoonlijke gegevens Titurel "The Grail King" DeBriton 

• Hij is geboren in het jaar 247 in Britton, France.
• Hij is overleden in het jaar 300 in Britton, France, hij was toen 53 jaar oud.
• Een kind van Manael Castellors DeBriton en Manael Catheloys Castellors

Gezin van Titurel "The Grail King" DeBriton

Hij is getrouwd met Orgeluse DeBriton.

Zij zijn getrouwd te France, Germany.

Kind(eren):

1. Boaz Anfortas DeBriton  288-350 

Notities over Titurel "The Grail King" DeBriton

The basic Grail account opens with a young man, Perceval, encountering knights and realising he wants to be one. Despite his mother’s objections, the boy trains for the knighthood and begins a series of travels. On one such trip, he comes across the Fisher King, who invites him to stay at his castle. While there, he witnesses a strange procession in which young men and women carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before him at each course of the meal.

In Wolfram, the father of the Grail King Amfortas.

Titurel (1216 (?))Founder Knights of the Grail; 8th Grandmaster

Author: Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Domain: Literature. Genre: Romance, Poem. Country: Germany, Continental Europe.

Both Parzival and Willehalm show the highly innovative skill of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and his Titurel, too, is a unique work which, like Willehalm, defies generic description. The complex strophic form, four long lines of differing metrical patterns rhyming in pairs but with occasional additional internal rhyming and frequent enjambement, recalls the Nibelungenlied and some of the more metrically complex lyric poetry of the day, but it is uniquely intricate and, sustained over the 175 strophes which constitute the two fragments, it is a tour de force of poetic mastery. It is capable of conveying moments of high drama and tender lyricism, and both qualities are present to superb effect in this fragile, yet powerful work, the least well known of Wolfram’s compositions, but a significant part of a complex oeuvre. Scholarship, with quite enough to occupy it in the two lengthy poems, particularly Parzival, which come to mind at the mention of the name of Wolfram von Eschenbach, has tended to overlook the two fragments traditionally known as Titurel, though Sigune and Schionatulander has been proposed as a more appropriate title. This situation is changing, however, with the tendency to see Wolfram’s work in its entirety, and the recent appearance of a new edition by Helmut Brackert and Stephan Fuchs-Jolie, with a translation into modern German, critical apparatus and commentary, must surely open up the work to the wider consideration it merits and the appreciation it so richly deserves.

At this point it is appropriate to interject a strange circumstance relating to Wolfram’s Titurel. The medieval audience did not like fragments, it seems, and the craving for completeness, the “whole story”, is evident in the continuations of Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and the various attempts to supply not only a conclusion but also a pre-history for Wolfram’s Willehalm. In the case of Titurel the exercise went to extremes, in a huge work by one who eventually gives his name as Albrecht, after masquerading for most of his work as Wolfram himself, a subterfuge rendered ridiculous by a number of factors and not least by the fact that the work emerged probably three or four decades after Wolfram’s death. This is not the place for an evaluation of the narrative known as the Jüngerer Titurel (The Younger Titurel), but knowledge of its existence helps to show the impact of Wolfram’s fragments in their day, and to further one’s insight into medieval priorities.

Many questions surround Titurel: how it came to be composed, why it remained so incomplete, whether more ever existed than survived and – a startling proposition – whether it was intended as a fragment, an artistic oddity surely alien to the Middle Ages, but not inconceivable when viewed in the context of the remarkable individuality of Wolfram von Eschenbach.

The two fragments, the first of 136 strophes and the second of 39 strophes, are not consecutive. Though clearly linked in terms of content, they appear to be two parts of a long story, and how much time has elapsed between the “end” of the first and the “beginning” of the second is not known. Nor can one say with any certainty whether the closing strophe of the first fragment was intended as the end of a section, though it does bring a phase to a kind of conclusion, while the opening strophe of the second fragment begins in medias res and seems to assume a knowledge of events leading up to the situation described, of two young people encamped with their retinue in the forest. The end of the second fragment is full of anticipation but it has in itself no suggestion of finality. One can justifiably make the concession “in itself”, because in fact the end of the story has already been told and the outcome anticipated is already known. This is because Wolfram’s Titurel, for all its distinctiveness, cannot be divorced from his Parzival. One of the fascinating features of this enigmatic work is that Wolfram himself supplied the source.

Central to the fragile “plot” of Titurel is the love story of Sigune and Schionatulander, only hinted at in Parzival. In Book III the young Parzival encounters Sigune, who turns out to be his first cousin, with a recently slain knight in her arms. She is grieving uncontrollably and, in response to Parzival’s questions, she utters words of self-accusation which include the enigmatic statement that “a hound’s leash caused him his agony”. This strange explanation is not followed up, and the circumstances of Sigune’s bereavement remain untold, though she goes on to perform an important function in Parzival’s progress. We may be sure, however, that the strange remark did not escape Wolfram’s audience, and it would appear that Titurel is his attempt to supply an explanation, though in the event it is a far from satisfactory one. The first fragment, it is true, tells of the meeting and blossoming love between the two young people, and the second introduces a remarkable hound’s leash, bejewelled with lettering. When the leash comes into the hands of Sigune – seemingly by chance, but fate plays a crucial role here – she is intrigued and eager to read the words which clearly tell of love. When the hound chases off, dragging the lead with it, the young woman, in love herself, becomes obsessed with it, and her lover Schionatulander, eager to do anything to secure her commitment to him, pledges to retrieve it for her. A happy pact is made, but the memory of Parzival is lurking to tell us that, beyond the point where the work breaks off so tantalizingly, the death of the young knight will lead to lasting grief for Sigune, and her withdrawal from the world.

Other facts and events from Parzival are given a different perspective in Titurel. The work opens with the old king Titurel handing over the rule of the Grail to his son Frimutel, but what Titurel does not tell is that Frimutel will die and that the custody of the Grail will pass to his second son, Anfortas, who will betray his sacred trust by a human error and so make Parzival’s mission inevitable. The theme of kinship, the importance of the Grail dynasty, is pervasive but not emphasised in this subtle poem. At least two other love stories are passed over in Titurel: Parzival’s father Gahmuret’s first marriage to the heathen Belakane, and the marriage between Gahmuret and Herzeloyde which produced Parzival. It is not for Titurel to retell these stories, but what the knowledge of them contributes is the awareness of love and its importance in the environment in which Sigune and Schionatulander, each of them the product of a tragic love match, meet and themselves fall in love.

Although Wolfram reveals himself once again as a consummate narrator in these many-layered fragments, this aspect of his talent is possibly less remarkable than his capacity to evoke many and contrasting moods and emotions: love and grief, ecstasy and loss, the exuberance of youth and the resignation of old age. The power of suggestion and the reader’s imagination is very strong and, one might venture to suggest, the more so because Titurel remains a fragment

Tijdbalk Titurel "The Grail King" DeBriton

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