Hartmann von Aue was the first Middle High German poet who introduced his audiences to the Arthurian material directly borrowed from Chrétien de Troyes, who in turn had borrowed it from Celtic sources. Nevertheless, Hartmann's romances Erec and Iwein, his verse novella Poor Henry, and his religious verse narrative Gregorius, not to mention his wonderful courtly love poetry and his dialogue poem Das Klagebüchlein, are rightly considered masterpieces of late twelfth-century German literature and prove to be far more than simple translations from Old French. In fact, Hartmann's oeuvre constitutes one of the pillars of the late twelfth-century Middle High German literary canon and has enjoyed uninterrupted popularity since rediscovery more than 200 years ago. Translations and interpretive studies abound, and the present volume does not necessarily add anything new, except for the fact that Tobin, Vivian, and Lawson have put together English translations of all of Hartmann's texts in one affordable paperback. Instead of reprinting previous translations, they have made the effort of retranslating and have indeed succeeded in rendering the Middle High German original into a smooth and yet precise modern English. They stay close enough to their sources to meet their primary function as translators, and at the same time their texts read well and are easily understandable. Hartmann's verse structure is transformed into straightforward prose, which proves to be the only reasonable and most pragmatic approach to a medieval text today. Random checks have not unearthed any significant problems in the translations -- after all, all three translators have proven their supreme expertise in this field many times before the publication of this volume -- although one could easily imagine a variant formulation here and there without necessarily improving the translation overall. Brief introductions to each individual text provide some general information about the context and content which will be useful for the novice reader, but at times these also contain erroneous statements and viewpoints (e.g., regarding Andreas Capellanus' De amore, allegedly written at the court of Marie de Champagne, but in reality at the royal court in Paris) which have by now been superseded by much new research. The translations are accompanied by some useful comments in the footnotes which barely interrupt the pleasure of reading but offer helpful explanations.

Unfortunately, two subtle but significant problems mar the overall positive impression of this volume. First, all translations are based on outdated editions of the original Middle High German text; and second, the bibliography of the secondary literature does hardly any justice to the expansive and constantly growing body of Hartmann research in the last ten to fifteen years. With the exception of two titles published in 1996 and 1997, respectively, the vast majority of entries date from pre-1990. Even though this volume is targeted at students and other non-German medievalists, the bibliography should have been updated considerably. The fact, however, that now we have available all Hartmann texts in English translation in one volume will prove to be a step in the right direction for the teaching of German medieval literature to non-German speakers at least in the English-speaking world.