Willehalm

Willehalm is an unfinished Middle High German poem from the early 13th century, written by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. In terms of genre, the poem is "a unique fusion of the courtly and the heroic, with elements of the saintly legend attaching to it."

==Sources== Willehalm is based on French sources. Its foremost source is the Old French chanson de geste Aliscans, which was written a few decades earlier. The French sources were provided by Wolfram's patron, Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia. Willehalm represents (even in its unfinished form) a drastic but artistic condensation of the sprawling French adventures Wolfram inherited. For the poem Aliscans is, in turn, likely derived from the earlier Chanson de Guillaume, inspired by a historic battle in 793 wherein the Carolingian figure of Count William of Toulouse, who featured in the Carolingian song-cycle La Geste de Garin de Monglane, was defeated by an invading Muslim army from Spain.