The Nibelungenlied: A Literary Analysis
- ISBN-10
- 1442633484
- ISBN-13
- 9781442633483
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 196
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1971-12-15
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Author
- Hugo Bekker
Description
In the last fifty or so years there has been a gradual shift of attention in scholarship on the Nibelungenlied from reconstruction of the texts, and tracings of the poem’s multiple and complex antecedents, to interpretation. In spite of this trend, there is still a pressing need for a critical analysis of the Nibelungenlied as a whole that draws together its various literary qualities and examines in detail the epic’s unity, depth, and meaning. Professor Bekker’s study provides this kind of analysis. It takes a fresh approach, viewing the poem as a work of literary merit worthy to be read for its own sake. It traces the new designs which the poet brings to the Nibelungen tradition and provides detailed examinations of the main aspects of technique and structure in the epic. The approach is based on close consultation of the text, with little digression, in an attempt to guide the reader to an understanding and appreciation of the poem as the author intended it to be read. Professor Bekker points out that the poet of the Nibelungenlied does not aim at psychological character delineation and deliberately refrains from seeking to establish the various prominent figures in the epic as individuals in the modern sense of the term. Instead, they emerge as representative figures whose interrelationships, though interesting, are less important for the unity and meaning of the epic than are their common relationships to the world in which they exist. The question of personal guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant, and Professor Bekker sees the work ultimately as poetic pageant of a noble way of life and its destruction. Symbolism, imagery, parallelism, symmetry, and other structural devices all contribute to the design which expresses the nature of this noble life, and Professor Bekker’s book is a valuable guide to the complex architecture of this thirteenth-century masterpiece.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Virginia Woolf and the Great War
By Karen L. LevenbackI owe special thanks to Bruce Martin and Evelyn Timberlake ( at the Library of Congress ) ; Philip Milato and Steve Crook ( at the Berg Collection ) ...
-
In Search of Elena Ferrante: The Novels and the Question of Authorship
By Karen Bojar... Alice: “In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens” 157 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 38 Wertenbaker, Timberlake 21 Wilson, Emily (trans.
-
Native American Verbal Art: Texts and Contexts
By William M. ClementsHENRY TIMBERLAKE'S CHEROKEE WAR SONG 1. That Timberlake's memoir contains the first English translation of the words of a Native American song seems to have ...
-
Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature
By William H Bridges“Justin Timberlake, 'The 20/20 Experience': Is There a Visual Preference for Whiteness?” Interview with Marc Lamont Hill. HuffPost Live, 27 March 2013.
-
Shakespeare's Edward III
By William ShakespeareThompson , E . in Pollard 1923 . Thompson , J . Shakespeare and the Classics , 1952 . Tillyard , E . Shakespeare ' s History Plays , 1944 . Timberlake , P ...
-
The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents
By Laura FrostIn The Problem with Pleasure, Frost draws upon a wide variety of materials, linking interwar amusements, such as the talkies, romance novels, the Parisian fragrance Chanel no. 5, and the exotic confection Turkish Delight, to the artistic ...
-
The Alice Books and the Contested Ground of the Natural World
By Laura WhiteSimilarly, he deplored the picturestories of A. B. Frost in his Stuff and Nonsense ... When he'd eaten eighteen, He turned perfectly green, Upon which he ...
-
Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century
By Laura BrownRenew'd by ordure's sympathetic force, As oil'd with magic juices for the course, ... William Frost (1953; reprint, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ...
-
Questions of Authority: Italian and Australian Travel Narratives of the Long Nineteenth Century
By Laura OlcelliD'Albertis, Luigi. New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw. 2 vols. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1881. First published 1880.
-
A Concordance to Conrad's The Arrow of Gold
By Paul L. Gaston, Todd K. Bender... i ge 3 let S deal ing ge a lings ge at t Joe a f J & at n ce at h-ced ge at hly ue to 3 sec ge is a te debit de cap it a t e u ge c e it ful ge c e i ve ...