SOURCE: "Hartmann's Humanitas: A New Look at Iwein," in Germanic Studies in Honor of Edward Henry Sehrt, Frithjof Andersen Raven, Wolfram Karl Legner, James Cecil King, eds., University of Miami Press, 1968, pp. 37-51.

An English educator specializing in Germanic studies, Batts has written and edited several studies of German literature, including Die Form der Aventiuren im Nibel-ungenlied (1961) and Gottfried von Strassburg (1971). In the following excerpt, Batts argues that, in Iwein, Hartmann attempts to formulate a doctrine of aventiure ("adventure") that opposes Arthurian convention.

Past interpretations of Hartmann's Iwein have been to a considerable extent based upon a comparison both with his earlier Erec and with Chrëtien de Troyes' Yvain. The view that Iwein is a counterpart toErec finds some justification in the passage in which Gawain introduces the warning example of Erec, in order to persuade Iwein to leave Laudine, but the comparison results in undue...