Publisher's Synopsis
The Middle High German narrative poet inherited from his literary precursors
a conception of his art as consisting primarily in the translation and poetic
adaptation of given source material, which was allegedly historical truth and
which his patron and audience would expect him to follow. And yet the works
produced by the German poets are often strikingly different from their French
sources. This book describes the origin and history of the German poet's rule
of fidelity to a literary source and considers both the constraint which this
rule imposed upon him and the scope of his legitimate independence.
