59 pages • 1 hour read
Wolfram Von EschenbachParzival
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1215A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Chivalry and Honor
Chivalry is an essential part of the world of Parzival. The chivalric code is a loose, informal system of etiquette that governs behavior in the literary world of medieval Europe (See: Background). To be a knight is to adhere to the code, which dictates how and why people should behave. For the aspiring knights in Parzival, understanding of, and adherence to, the code is essential, and its primary importance is emphasized throughout the story.
Parzival and Gawan want to prove their worth as men, as knights, and as potential members of the Table Round. As such, they strive to live by the code of chivalry at all times. The code demands a devotion to God, it governs the rules of battles and duels, and—most importantly—it establishes the importance of honor in courtly society. A knight’s honor is very important and, if a knight wishes to preserve or add to their good reputation, they must act in an honorable fashion, as dictated by the code. As such, the characters in Parzival do not only want to adhere to the code. They want to embody it: They protect the weak, offer their services to lords, fight for God, and duel against anyone who might besmirch their honor. In doing so, Parzival and Gawan increase their reputation as honorable men and good knights.
Since women are marginalized in the patriarchal society, their honor is associated with sex and chastity. An honorable woman is a chaste woman, meaning that women’s only permitted means of expressing romantic interest in a man is conducted through the chivalric code. A knight may pledge his loyalty to a woman as an expression of love or romance. The chivalric code then dictates that a woman may give the knight a token to wear during his battles. These tokens take on many forms, but they represent the socially-permissible way in which to demonstrate love or affection in public.
Knights wearing tokens from honorable women may be inspired to carry out heroic deeds, indicating the way in which love is associated with honor. An honorable act functions as a public declaration of love, while a romantic token is an inherently honorable expression of romance or affection. Chivalry performs an essential intermediary function between love and honor, allowing women to preserve their honor while expressing their love. Similarly, the code of chivalry allows men to perform heroic acts as a demonstration of their love. Since courtly society believes itself to be chaste and honorable, a rigid dedication to the code of chivalry provides an important mediation of social interaction.
The chivalric code also functions as a means of social control. In Parzival, courtly society is organized along chivalric lines. Knights are as bound to the code as they are to the lords and kings whom they serve, creating a predictable and functional society governed by a rules-based order. The relation of knights to the status quo and to power is governed by the code, with only the singular figure of King Arthur able to operate beyond social expectations. Late in Parzival, for example, Gramoflanz and Gawan are bound by the code to fight one another. To not fight would be an affront to their individual honor. Both knights know that they must fight, as the code governs their lives. Arthur does not want two of his kinsmen to fight, so the situation is only resolved when Arthur intervenes.
Parzival’s journey throughout the story reinforces the importance of chivalry by tracing his gradual awareness of, and acceptance into, the courtly society he aspires to join. Parzival’s idealization of chivalry and his successful fulfillment of his knightly quests enables the importance of the chivalric code to be elucidated and reinforced in the story from beginning to end.
The Idealization and Limitations of Femininity
Though Parzival is a story about men performing heroic deeds, women play an essential role in courtly society. The patriarchal nature of this society means that most women are prevented from exercising political power. The most powerful rulers are kings, and such queens as do appear in the story are typically widows or unmarried women who are eventually married away to aspiring knights. Given the patriarchal arrangement of power in the chivalric age, women exist in an idealized form, with Parzival revealing both the nature and limitations of this idealization. The narrator’s assertion in Book 9 that “women are, let’s face it, always women” characterizes women as having a homogenous identity that will never change (9.450.3-4). As such, Parzival’s women struggle to define themselves as individuals, especially outside of the rigid gender restrictions that form a central part of courtly life.
Amid the portrayals of women as trophies of love and prizes to be won, certain individual women stand out. Herzeloyde is distinct in the story as she actively asserts agency over her world. After the death of her husband in a knightly duel, she decides that Parzival should be shielded from the world of chivalry. Though she tries to protect Parzival, she fails. He learns about knights and, without a moment of hesitation, sets out to become a knight himself. Herzeloyde’s attempts to assert agency and move beyond her role as an idealized mother become active barriers in Parzival’s story, obstacles that he must overcome if he is to achieve his ambitions. Her failure to defy courtly society through isolation reinforces The Importance of Chivalry and Honor, suggesting that no woman is ever powerful enough to undermine the social structure entirely.
There are, however, two women who do actively push back against the limitations of courtly femininity in their own lives. The first is Cundrie, who operates in a liminal space as both a foreigner and as someone who seems to exercise a degree of magical powers against the backdrop of Arthurian Christian chivalry. Her mystical status invites suspicion but also gives her a degree of power usually denied to other women in the story: She operates independently of men and continues to do as she pleases, undeterred by social censure. The second is Orgeluse, who openly mocks and defies her knightly suitors, including Gawan, demanding that they woo her on her own terms. When she does consent to Gawan’s love at the story’s end and marries him, she does so on far stronger and more equal terms than most of the story’s other female characters.
The presence of Cundrie and Orgeluse in the story therefore suggests that, in order to achieve any degree of agency, a woman must be willing to forgo the idealized vision of femininity pushed by chivalric society. However, the relative scarcity of such women and the disapproval they often face suggest that defying social expectations can be difficult, if not impossible, for most courtly women.
The Centrality of Christian Culture
Christianity is an essential part of Parzival, from the masses held by the characters to precepts of the chivalric code to the acts of devotion performed by the knights. Von Eschenbach’s version of Arthurian mythology replaces the mysticism and magic of the traditional Welsh folklore with a more overtly Christian theology. Everything is done in the name of the Christian God, with adherence to the code of chivalry being read as an act of devotion in itself. In this sense, Christianity is the fundamental bedrock on which the code of chivalry—and thus the plot of Parzival—is constructed, stressing the centrality of Christian culture.
Due to the unquestioned presence of Christianity in the world of Parzival, the true nature of the bond between culture and Christianity only becomes apparent during moments of cultural contrast. In the opening books, Gahmuret travels to the Middle East and Africa. These parts of the world are considered by the narrator to be inherently non-Christian. They are described as “heathen” (1.13.15), places where Christian law and Christian belief are not present. These non-Christian worlds exist outside the parameters of cultural expectations. There, knights are not bound by the same rules that govern them in Christian cultures. Gahmuret marries a woman and fathers a son with her, for example, but he is permitted to abandon her and return to Europe because she is not a Christian woman and their son is not a Christian child. In essence, sins against people who are not Christian do not count. The non-Christian world is separate from the culture of Europe, separate from the grace of God. The result of this is that the culture in Europe is much more clearly defined through contrast, by demonstrating what is permissible in the non-Christian world that would never be considered permissible in a Christian culture.
If Gahmuret’s journey to the non-Christian world helps to elucidate the relationship between faith and culture, then his son’s arrival in Europe reinforces this arrangement. Parzival begins with Gahmuret traveling to “foreign” lands and ends with his son coming to Europe from those same lands. In Europe, Feirefiz experiences Christian culture for the first time. He is warmly-received by Arthur and his court. When he is shown the Grail procession, however, he cannot see the Grail. The Grail is invisible to non-Christians, which inspires Feirefiz to be baptized and convert to Christianity. He is so overwhelmed by the sight of the Grail and his conversion to Christianity that he becomes an evangelical spreader of the religion, returning to the non-Christian world to spread news of his faith.
The ending of the book therefore subverts the opening: Rather than Gahmuret abandoning his non-Christian wife, his actions provide the catalyst for the spread of Christianity in a non-Christian world. Through faith, he creates cultural links that broaden the Christian world, with Parzival becoming about the ratification of an essentially Christian culture.
