Reading Iwein in the Garden: A Study of Medieval Mediality

This article examines the forms and practices of mediation employed by Hartmann von Aue in his version of the Arthurian romance Iwein. By depicting and enacting both contemporary media forms and processes of mediation, this article argues, Hartmann's text constantly foregrounds the technologies and processes of mediation through which its story reaches its public. Drawing on theories of medieval mediation put forward by Christian Kiening, this article analyzes Iwein as an example of engagement with concerns of mediation centuries before the establishment of explicit media discourses. The analysis targets depicted scenes of literary activity — reading, composing, and storytelling — that are laden with inherent cultural and religious iconography and are manipulated to produce moments that both reflect on and encourage processes of mediation in the discursive and narrative levels of the romance. This focus reveals how medieval textuality relied on and exploited a diverse landscape of existing medial forms and practices.