The Middle High German text which follows in this volume has been reprinted, with the kind permission of Max Niemeyer Verlag, from my 1995 critical edition of Daniel. The facing-page English rendition is based upon my translation which first appeared in 1990 in the Garland Library of Medieval Literature, and which was the first full English version of the Daniel story.

Sometime during the early decades of the thirteenth century--probably between the years 1210 and 1225--a German poet who called himself der Stricker set about composing an Arthurian romance, Daniel of the Blossoming Valley (Daniel yon dem Bliihenden Tal). He wrote his story in Middle High German, a language which had already become the vehicle for a great flowering of German chivalric literature during the High Middle Ages.

While falling short of the lofty literary achievement of his two great Arthurian predecessors in Germany--Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach--der Stricker nevertheless earned his place in the annals of German medieval literature. For he appears to have formulated his tale in a radically new fashion. Prior to der Stricker's Daniel, German poets writing about King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table had for several decades been relying upon French models for the basic outlines of their own works. In fact, the earliest German Arthurian romance--Hartmann's Erec (ca. 1185)--was a free adaptation of Chrrtien de Troyes' Old French Erec et Enide. With Daniel, however,der Stricker established an abrupt break with this imitative pattern, since no French source has ever been uncovered for Daniel. Indeed, despite der Stricker'sclaim--in the prologue--that he derived his story from the French poet Alberich de Besan~on, scholars are convinced that the story of Daniel was largely the product of poetic fantasy. In other words, der Stricker's Daniel was in all likelihood the first original, freely invented Arthurian romance in the German tradition.

The Middle High German text which follows in this volume has been reprinted, with the kind permission of Max Niemeyer Verlag, from my 1995 critical edition of Daniel. The facing-page English rendition is based upon my translation which first appeared in 1990 in the Garland Library of Medieval Literature, and which was the first full English version of the Daniel story.

Introduction

Daniel von dem Bluhenden Tal

Notes

Bibliography

Index of Names