Contracting love versus courtly love: Jans Enikel’s “Friedrich von Auchenfurt,” the anonymous Mauritius von Craûn, and Dietrich von der Gletze’s “Der Borte”

A surprisingly large number of late medieval German verse narratives are deeply occupied with conflicts in love due to the commodifying nature of the relationship established by the male wooer or his beloved lady. Instead of pursuing love in accordance with the ideals and norms of courtly culture, in these texts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we observe that suddenly contracts are set up either to force the woman to grant her body to the wooer, or to block the lover from imposing himself upon the lady. Late medieval poets such as Jans Enikel, the anonymous author of Mauritius von Craûn, or Dietrich von der Gletze/Glezze present increasingly problematic cases where love is substituted by contractual conditions, bartering, and exchange commercializing and perverting the erotic aspect altogether.