Felicitas Hoppe gives an introduction to the art of adapting medieval poetry that is in itself a poetic work. In 2008, Hoppe adapted Hartmann von Aue’s Arthurian romance Iwein into a highly successful young adult novel. She speaks about this experience and about the art of adapting medieval literature more generally: about encountering popular images of knights looking like ladies and about inverted gender roles in Hartmann’s romance; about history as produced by wishes; about finding Iwein by chance in a bookshop and being captivated by its beauty; about the romance’s surprising timelessness in its psychologically astute characterisation, its sensible rationality and its uncompromising morality; about the dialectic between boredom and adventure, between the desire to grow up and the fear of growing up in all good children’s books (and Arthurian romances); about the relationship between honour and masculinity in the romance code of values; about Iwein’s insistence on physicality; and about narrative techniques for modernising the text (including the introduction of Iwein’s companion, the lion, as the narrator). As a whole, Hoppe’s piece is a remarkably sensitive analysis of how and why aspects of medieval literature exert a fascination on creative minds. It compellingly demonstrates the wealth of insights that adaptors of medieval texts gain, which can complement and inspire those of literary critics.
‘Wyȝe, welcum iwys to þis place!’: Emotions in the Schemas for Arrival, Return and Welcome at the Arthurian Court