The stories of King Arthur and his noble knights have fascinated audiences for many centuries
and continue to being retold and fashioned to attract modern audiences. Amongst these stories is
the tale of Wigalois, the son of the reputable Gawain. This dissertation traces the story of
Wigalois across different languages, cultures, and media in order to show how this is a shared
German-Yiddish narrative. Furthermore, this dissertations challenges traditional understanding
of adaptation within a diachronic and teleological framework by uncovering dialogical and
dynamic processes inherent in this narrative tradition. Using the theoretical framework of a
combined Adaptation Studies and Medieval Literature Studies’ notions of unstable texts my
argumentation focuses on eight specific examples: Wirnt von Grafenberg’s Wigalois (1st half 13th
ct.), Italian murals from the fourteenth century, Wigoleis von dem Rade (1483/93), Viduvilt
(Yiddish, 16th ct.), Johann Christoph Wagenseil’s Belehrung der Jüdisch-Teutschen Red- und
Schreibart (Yiddish and German, 1715), Gabein (Yiddish, 1789), the illustrations by Ludwig
Richter (before 1851), and Die phantastischen Abenteuer der Glücksritters Wigalois (Comic,
German, 2011).
