Derivative, unstructured, morally offensive, crudely erotic such were the dismissive assessments made by German scholars of Heinrich von dem Turlin s Die Krone (The Crown) for many years. Today the peculiarities of this fascinating and eccentric text are viewed as serious critical challenges, and Die Krone has become one of the most-discussed Arthurian romances of the German Middle Ages. This volume provides for the first time a New High German translation of the often difficult to understand Middle High German text, and includes an afterword on the work s poetics together with a selected bibliography. and "