The Literary Source of the Minnegrotte in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan

摘要

This article traces the literary source of the minnegrotte (“Cave of Love”) in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan to Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneit. The floor plan and interior design of the minnegrotte correlate with Heinrich’s description of two tombs that commemorate the fallen warriors of Pallas, son of Evander, who fights on the side of Aeneas, and Camilla, the woman warrior who fights on the side of Turnus. Numerous verbal parallels corroborate Gottfried’s use of the tombs (Pallas’ in particular) in the Eneit, and Gottfried’s interest in funerary architecture in designing the minnegrotte is consistent with the larger theme of love and death in the Tristan.