Images of AdventureModern audiences are most likely to encounter Yvain and other Arthurian characters in literature. We read Chrtien de Troyes's Yvain or Hartmann von Aue's Iwein, and easily slip into the assumption that during the Middle Ages the title character existed primarily, or even exclusively, in these canonical texts. James A. Rushing, Jr. contends, however, that many times the number of people who heard or read Chrtien or Hartmann must have known the Ywain