Gwigalois does not have long to wait before finding adventure in his search for his father, nor does the audience wait long before the narrator provides another vivid pictorial image. As I discuss in greater detail below, Wirnt’s description of this image makes use of an important literary convention, the locus amoenus, to show his audience that something unusual is about to occur. The description of this next ekphrastic object once again marks a transition in the narrative from a point of relative repose to one of renewed action and indicates that the next important series of events is about to begin.
While riding along one day, Gwigalois meets a young page who informs him that King Arthur seeks knights to join him in a campaign against the King of England. The page gives Gwigalois directions on how to find Arthur. Along the way, he finds a great stone and thinks it a fine place to sit and rest a while:
Bî einer linden er dô sach Ligen einen breiten stein
Des tugent im inz herze schein... (v. 1477-1479) (He then saw, lying by a linden tree, a broad stone whose power affected his heart.)85
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Note that Wirnt’s use of the word tugent is especially rich in various connotations for his audience. In Middle High German, tugent did mean in one sense “virtue”, as it does in modern German; it is thus quite well placed in this scene meant to demonstrate the hero’s superior moral status. It also, however, means
Similar to King Arthur’s traditional refusal to eat breakfast until he has heard news of some splendid adventure, the linden tree was familiar to medieval audiences as a common motif that precedes a wondrous tale. A linden tree standing alone on a meadow near a brook is a type of locus amoenus, a literary topos in medieval landscape description that sets the stage for an important event.86 In Middle High German courtly literature, one of the most famous examples of such a locus amoenus is the magical spring and the great linden tree that protects it in Hartmann’s Iwein, where first Kalogreant undertakes a dangerous adventure, and later the hero Iwein, having heard his friend recount the experience, rides off in secret and follows suit (v. 565-772; 988-1118).87 Thus, by placing the stone in a locus amoenus
near a linden tree, Wirnt is participating in a well-established literary convention that indicates to his audience that something unusual is about to take place, and that everyone ought to listen closely. Wirnt then describes the stone for his audience in the most lavish of terms:
Gevieret und niht sinwel Striemen rôt und gel Giengen dar durch etteswâ; Daz ander teil daz was blâ, Lûter als ein spiegelglas. Sô grôziu tugent an im was Daz deheiner slahte man Der ie deheinen valsch gewan Die hant niht mohte gelâzen dran. Zuo der linden reit der gast; Sîn pfært haft er an einen ast,
“usefulness”, and is appropriate in this sense, too, since Gwigalois simply needs a place to sit and rest for a moment. Because Gwigalois’s sitting on the stone of virtue causes such astonishment among the Arthurian court, however, it seems most appropriate to me to emphasize the stone’s magical and wondrous nature, and I have thus chosen to translate tugent here as “power”, another of the definitions provided by Lexer. See Matthias Lexer, Mittelhochdeutsches Taschenwörterbuch. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 1992.
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Und saz enmitten ûf den stein. Sîn herze was âne mein, Und ledic aller bôsheit;
Sîn muot ie nâch dem besten streit. Swer dehein untugent ie begie Dern mohte dem steine nâher nie Komen dan eins klâfters lanc. Si tâten alle widerwanc, Sô si zem steine wolden gên; Si muosen alle hôher stên. Ezn was dâ vor nie geschehen, Daz ie ieman würde ersehen Ûf dem selben steine
Niwan der künic al eine;
Der was âne wandel gar. (v. 1481-1505)
(…squared- off and not round, with red and yellow streaks here and there; the other part of it was blue, clearer than a mirror. It had such great power that no man who had been false in any way could place his hand on it. The stranger rode to the linden, fastened his horse to a branch, and sat down in the middle of the stone. His heart was without guile and free of all evil, and his spirit always strove toward lofty goals. But whoever had committed an unworthy deed could not come within six feet of the stone. All who had tried to approach it had been obliged to back away and keep at a distance. It had never happened before that anyone else had been seen on the stone but the king alone; he was without fault and quite beyond reproach.)
With its square shape, multiple colors and mirror-like clarity, the stone of virtue resembles one of the splendid jewels that adorn the magic belt, only on a larger scale. Within the structure of the narrative, this marvelous stone follows closely behind Florie’s passing the magic belt on to her son, and thus becomes the second ekphrastic object that significantly marks a transition in the poem. In the vivid description of this unusual object, and by placing it in a locus amoenus, Wirnt uses the stone first to signal to his audience that they should once again pay close attention.
Furthermore, just as the first magic belt had brought the first stages of the story from repose into action, so the description of the stone of virtue indicates to the audience that the next sequence of adventures is about to begin. The stone’s description introduces King
Arthur’s active participation in the story; his earlier appearance in the first three hundred verses of the poem was simply a mention of his name and a general background description of the Arthurian court.
In this next action-phase, the audience also sees that Gwigalois is moving out of boyhood and into young manhood. The visualization of this process began with Florie giving the belt to Gwigalois, and continues here with the description of the stone, which provides the intermediate stage of Gwigalois’s transformation. As I discuss in greater detail below, Gwigalois not only approaches this stone without being hurt, but indeed, to the amazement of everyone, he sits down squarely upon it. With this act, the text-internal witnesses as well as the poet place Gwigalois on a par with King Arthur himself. Gwigalois becomes a part of the Arthurian circle, and can thus no longer be considered a mere boy. In his description of the stone, Wirnt shows that the hero Gwigalois has not only left his home and his mother, but indeed that he has left his childhood behind him. Yet although the young Gwigalois is already courtly and pure of heart to an exceptional degree, it is only with the next ekphrastic object of this second narrative section, the golden wheel, that the transition from boyhood to manhood – indeed to knighthood – is rendered complete.