The event began with a concise rendition of the novel's content, which from the outset drew attention to the resistant, previously overlooked and surprising. Reference was made, for example, to a female messenger who defies the assembled Arthurian court. With this literary staging of female resistance, Ms Becker outlined a current research project that makes overlooked forms of refusal by marginalized groups visible in pre-modern narrative literature. Another focus of the lecture was on the religious dimensions of the novel. In a moment of existential distress, it is the protagonist's trust in God that expands his previously purely secular role as a knight into a fighter for God. The Arthurian romance was presented and impressively illustrated using a magnificently illustrated medieval manuscript. With a view to the media presentation, the prologue, which is unique to German medieval literature, was also discussed. Here, the recipients have the unsettling experience of being addressed by the book itself; in the media presentation on the manuscript page, this is reinforced by the fact that the codex also ‘looks back’.

The lecture was rounded off with a media-philological search for clues: reference was made to another manuscript of the “Wigalois”, which is kept in the SuUB Bremen and which has remained largely unnoticed in research. As Ms. Becker was able to show, it contains a treasure hidden in the manuscript's coloured inscriptions and underlinings. These refer to the intensive use of the manuscript by one of the ‘forefathers’ of Germanic medieval studies, the humanist Melchior Goldast von Haiminsfeld, whose book collection forms a core collection of the SuUB Bremen. Researchers can thus enter into a discussion with each other across the centuries on the basis of this codex.

The inaugural lecture was rounded off with a champagne reception in a convivial atmosphere.