Edition Practices

Parzival Project

Creation of a synoptic edition of Wolfram’s ‘Parzival’ on the basis of the entire textual transmission. Under the supervision of PD Dr. Martin Schubert.

The long and complex Arthurian Grail romance ‘Parzival’ composed by Wolfram von Eschenbach around 1200 is one of the central works of courtly literature of the high Middle Ages. The sustained research interest in this work has created an urgent need to make the text available in a form that meets today’s editorial expectations. This task has been pursued for some years now by a group of researchers at the University of Bern (www.parzival.unibe.ch). This group has developed a way of presenting the four different versions of the ‘Parzival’ (*D, *G, *m, *T) that does justice to the variation in the textual transmission, both in the traditional medium of print and in an electronic component.
 
The large project in Bern, initiated by the Swiss National Science Foundation, has since December 2011 been joined by modules in Berlin and Erlangen funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation). Since December 2014 work has been underway on the subproject ‘The versions of Wolfram’s “Parzival” in relation to the genesis of the text and to its French model. A synoptic edition’. Further, on the basis of the entire transmission critical texts of the versions will be created that make visible the early metamorphoses of the work’s text.
 
This subproject will run until 30 November 2017.
 
Completed subproject:
From 1 December 2011 to 30 November 2014 the subproject ‘Version *m in the context of the versions of Wolfram’s “Parzival”’ was carried out. The aim of this subproject was to produce a critical text of Version *m on the basis of the manuscripts containing this version, which document the later transmission of the ‘Parzival’ at the eve of the print era. This includes Books IV and VIII to XI and will be presented in synopsis together with the three other versions.