Erzählend erinnern

This paper analyses how Heinrich von dem Türlin creates a metadiscourse about generic issues and conventions of Arthurian tales in his Romance Diu Crône by outlining the importance of narration itself for the Arthurian court. Based on two scenes where first the Arthurian court and than Gawein as main character of the tale are on the verge of forgetting themselves, the anaysis shows how processes of telling one’s own story are crucial not only for memoria but even for one’s own existence. By shifting these observations from the level of the narrated world to the narration itself the close connections between telling and being can be understood as an implicit theory of performative narration.