Acknowledgments
This project is the result of many years of engagement with the Wigalois/Viduvilt material, from a footnote that I found in a book at the library at Freie Universität Berlin, over a seminar paper for a Kathryn Starkey class at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a dissertation and beyond. Many friends and colleagues provided intellectual feedback, financial and academic support, and encouragement at various stages of this project. The list is certainly long and I can only name a few. Above all, Ann Marie Rasmussen and Ruth von Bernuth deserve special gratitude for offering advice, feedback, and encouragement from the early stages of this project to the finished version and beyond. They have become not only mentors but also friends. It’s not fair or right that two of the most wonderful and kindest people I have ever met are not here to be celebrating the publication of this book with me; Andrea and Jonathan. I often think of you; you inspire me to be a better person every day.
On the academic–scholarly side, my wonderful supportive colleagues in the German Studies Department at University of Washington – especially Ellwood Wiggins, Jason Groves, and Kye Terrasi – stand out as they have warmly welcomed me in an atmosphere of collegiality and respect. I am looking forward to working with you for the next 30 years! Further, I am deeply indebted to the University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, specifically to Noam Pianko, Sarah Zaides Rosen, and Emily Thompson, for providing me with a second, nondepartmental academic home, financial support, and encouragement. Many wonderful librarians at UW made many last-minute requests possible, especially Diana Brooking, Theresa Mudrock, and Sandra Kroupa – and at Duke University Heidi Madden has been an all-resourceful help in tracking down manuscripts and finding solutions to questions of access and copyright. Many inspiring colleagues have read various versions of this book or provided the perfect framework of intellectual stimulation and accountability – among them Mika Ahuvia, Stephanie Clare, and my fellow “Weiberschreiber” Jamele Watkins, Sonia Gollance, and Christine Kenison. Gillian Steinberg has patiently copy-edited the results of these sessions and offered many right words at the very right moments. Thanks to Brill, in particularly Larissa “Kat” Tracy, Marcella Mulder, and the board, this manuscript has found the ideal home.
Wigalois is alive and well – celebrated in his presumed hometown of Gräfenberg in Germany thanks to the Kulturverein Wirnt von Gräfenberg e.V. Limiting themselves not to ideas of the “original” version, the members of the Kulturverein have been supportive of this project from the beginning, especially the Wigalois adaptor Manfred Schwab – who even generously allowed me to reproduce an image from the graphic novel for this book.
Many friends have been part of this project attending talks or listening to enthusiastic impromptu lectures about singing dwarfs on horseback, Jewish giants, or obscure eighteenth-century nursery tales. Thanks to Silvia Ferreira and Maryam Fakouri, I have found such friends not just in Berlin and North Carolina but also in my new home in Seattle and even on campus! My fellow chorister Penny has become a family from home not just for me but also for my own little Peruvian–German–American family. My deepest gratitude goes to Jesús, who himself must be an expert on premodern Yiddish and German literature by now. I am grateful for his wonderful and respectful partnership, his support and encouragement. And my most-heartfelt thanks go to our little mapache for being the least complicated baby and toddler, enabling me to focus on research for many uninterrupted hours but also providing wonderful distraction. This book is for you.
The current work expands and builds on previous material published in Annegret Oehme, “He Should Have Listened to His Wife!” The Construction of Women ̓s Roles in German and Yiddish Pre-modern Wigalois Adaptations (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), 13–32, “Tu felix Camelot nube! Heiratspolitik und Familienbande im jiddischen Artusroman,” PaRDeS. Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany 26 (2020): 61–74, and the first-time English translation of Sir Gabein in “From Camelot to China or ‘Moral Tale about a young Sir Gabein’s marvelous adventures illustrating divine providence’,” Arthuriana 30/2 (2020): 48–72.