German Romance VII: Ulrich Fuetrer, Iban

Composed in the 1480s by the Munich painter and writer Ulrich Fuetrer, Iban is the story of a young knight at King Arthur's court, who pursues adventure abroad, wins a land and its lady as his wife, loses both through his immaturity and negligence, and eventually regains his country and his spouse in a series of adventures that teach him to place the welfare of others above his own desires. A retelling of Hartmann von Aue's Middle High German classic Iwein from circa 1200, itself an adaptation of the Old French writer Chrétien de Troyes' earlier Yvain, the Knight with the Lion, Fuetrer's Iban is one of fifteen narratives making up his massive Arthurian anthology, The Book of Adventures, which the author compiled for Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria-Munich. Among the last premodern retellings of the story of the knight Ywain, Ibanoffers modern readers an invaluable window onto how the most beloved Arthurian tales were reinterpreted at the end of the Middle Ages and at the threshold to the early modern period.

This book offers an edition of the romance, the first for nearly a quarter of a century, accompanied by a facing translation, the first into a modern language of any part of the Book of Adventures. It also includes an introduction, putting the romance into its wider contexts, and explanatory notes.