Would I lie to you? A mistake and a fake mistake in Wolfram's Willehalm

Abstract

This article analyses the way in which the medieval German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach reacts to an error in the Old French source material of his Willehalm. Wolfram notices a flagrant mistake in the chanson de geste La Bataille d'Aliscans and remarks on it: however, in doing so he creates his own error since he deliberately misnames the French poet of the source as Chrétien de Troyes. Wolfram has, in all probability, done this with a view to making an observation on the nature of narrative fiction.