THE BRIDAL QUEST in its various forms is one of the major themes of international folklore and world literature. Individual treatments of this theme reflect varying cultural traditions, but their superficial differences reveal themselves to be mere variations on the same basic set of narrative structures and the same constellation of narrative motifs. The overwhelming majority of bridal quests are structured solely from the perspective of the wooer, and logically so, since in most cultures it is, at least officially, the male who initiates the courting ritual. The main conflict in the quest does not concern the willingness of the bride to accept the proposal of her wooer, but whether the prospective father-in-law deems the wooer of sufficient status to marry his daughter. The bride herself is almost always a relatively passive figure in these negotiations.

Bridal quests were particularly popular in German and Scandinavian literature of the twelfth century, both as episodes within larger narratives and as independent works. The German minstrel epics dating from the last half of that century are all structured as perilous bridal quests, in which the wooer, concealing his identity and true purpose through a series of successful ruses, defies the objections of the bride's father or guardian and abducts her with her consent. König Rother (King Rother), the earliest of the minstrel epics, differs from those to follow, in that the quest structure is doubled: Rother must win his bride a second time from her father, who has re-abducted her.