For more than 800 years the story of Tannhäuser, the rebellious German Minnesänger and courtier at the court of Frederick II of Austria, has moved people and influenced poetry written in his style. His name came to be synonymous with that of an eccentric artist who takes up fights with the mores of the day to the edge of self-destruction. Tannhäuser''s attacks were directed at the very foundation of Christian order, held in that day to be unshakeable: Lovemaking was subject to the laws of convention and moral order. His revolt against society''s strict norms of ideal love, however, was only one of the things we associate with Tannhäuser; his deviations from the strict rules of minnesong was of his very own construction.
