SOURCE: Gosse, Edmund W. “Walther von der Vogelweide.” In Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe, pp. 197-229. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879.

In the following essay, Gosse examines Walther's life, traces the succession of his patrons, and explains how politics, religion, and folk songs influenced his poetry.

When the history of mediæval poetry comes to be written we shall understand, perhaps, what must remain very dark till then, how it was that during the marvellous twelfth century, amid all the chaos of the shattering and building of empires, such sudden simultaneous chords of melody were shot crosswise through the length and breadth of Europe, interpenetrating Iceland and Provence, Acquitaine and Austria, Normandy and Italy, with an irresistible desire for poetic production. In that mysterious atmosphere, in an air so burdened with electric force, the ordinary rules of germination and growth were set aside; out of barbarous...