SOURCE: "The 'Fortune' of Hartmann's Erec," in German Life and Letters, Vol. XXX, No. 2, 1976-77, pp. 94-109.

Pickering is an English scholar whose books include Literatur und darstellende Kunst im Mittelalter (1966; Literature and Art in the Middle Ages, 1970) and Essays on Medieval German Literature and Iconography (1980). In the following excerpt, he asserts that, typical of chivalric romances generally, Erec's storyline exemplifies an essentially Boethian view of history as fortune.

… I have contended that it is the Boethian view of history as fortune which is reflected in virtually all works of medieval narrative literature, even in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, a grail romance, and in Hartmann von Aue's Gregorius, a so-called 'courtly legend'. The two authors undoubtedly show a deep concern for the salvation of their respective heroes; they nevertheless as laymen tell and gloss their stories in terms of medieval fortune doctrine.…

Hitherto, anticipating greater difficulties elsewhere, I...