Taking reflections on historic semantics and the history of discourse as starting point, this article describes fascination in the context of the courtly romance as a very powerful emotion: whoever is fascinated is overcome by his or her perception, can be trapped in a paralyzing state, seems blocked and no longer able to act. Taking Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and Heinrich’s von dem Türlin Diu Krône as examples, this arcticle examines the status and function of fascination in relation to the ‚aesthetics of effect’ of the courtly texts. In these texts, numerous episodes can be found, on the level of the plot and of the characters, where models of the experiences of fascination are depicted. The article show how, on the one hand, these effects form the basis for reception and how they are, on the other hand, nonetheless embedded in the structure of the texts, serving the aesthetics of production.