The problem of fictionality has come to the fore recently in research on the medieval German romance, even though, surprisingly in view of the seminal importance of Chrétien de Troyes, the same is not so true of French scholarship. The two most important representatives of German scholarship in this field are W. Haug and F. P. Knapp. Haug confines himself to medieval authors' reflections as found in prologues and digressions, whilst Knapp offers a more theoretical approach to problems of genre. By contrast, my aim is practical rather than theoretical (how did various authors make use of the potentialities of fictionality in organising their narratives?), but also genetic rather than generic (in concentrating on the period 1150–1220 I focus on a short period of crucial importance for the birth of the romance and of medieval fiction in the vernacular). German narrative fiction after 1220 reacts to the preceding generation, it rings changes on it, deviates from it, parodies it, but scholarship dealing with this later fiction suffers from the lack of consensus over the nature of narrative fiction before 1220. Like Knapp, I am convinced that the time is too early for a systematic treatment of this complex problem, so that, like him, I deal with it in interrelated approaches, homing in on it from different angles.

A word needs to be said about another delimitation of the problem. I am concerned with the emergence of fictional writing in the twelfth century in one genre alone, the romance.