For a Germanist to devote a book to the presence of irony in the medieval romance stands in need of justification nowadays, for both the hunt for irony in medieval literature and the very preoccupation with it have called forth objections. There are some, like Batts, who doubt the relevance of irony to medieval literature at all and protest against the anachronistic application of what is held to be a specifically modern mode to an earlier period (although in practice Batts himself uses the term which in theory he rejects). Others fall back to another position and, like Kramer, deny irony to a German author such as Hartmann, but concede it to his predecessor Chrétien, thereby tacitly admitting the equally important point that irony was therefore employed in the romance from its beginnings at the hands of Chrétien. Others again are suspicious of the fashionable standing of irony in literary studies and unwilling to be taken in by a passing mode (Wells approves of a scholar's approach because he sees in it a welcome ‘antidote to the current fashion for realism and irony’). We may share this reluctance, but also recognise that a critical method need not be wrong just because it is currently practised. Elsewhere irony has deservedly fallen into disrepute when very real difficulties of interpretation can be swept aside with a reference to an underlying irony.