It portrays the existential struggles and downfall of an entire people, the Burgundians, in a military conflict with the Huns and their king."--Jacket.

The Nibelungenlied, has been regarded as significant work throughout human history, and in order to ensure that this work is never lost, we have taken steps to ensure its preservation by republishing this book in a contemporary format for both current and future generations. This entire book has been retyped, redesigned, and reformatted. Since these books are not made from scanned copies, the text is readable and clear.

Written by an unknown author in the twelfth century, this powerful tale of murder and revenge reaches back to the earliest epochs of German antiquity, transforming centuries-old legend into a masterpiece of chivalric drama. Siegfried, a great prince of the Netherlands, wins the hand of the beautiful princess Kriemhild of Burgundy, by aiding her brother Gunther in his struggle to seduce a powerful Icelandic Queen. But the two women quarrel, and Siegfried is ultimately destroyed by those he trusts the most. Comparable in scope to the Iliad, this skilfully crafted work combines the fragments of half-forgotten myths to create one of the greatest epic poems - the principal version of the heroic legends used by Richard Wagner, in The Ring.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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.

The first translation into English of this monumental epic in over forty years. Written around the year 1200 by an unknown Middle High German poet, probably an Austrian knight-cleric, The Song of the Nibelungs is composed of thirty-nine adventures and is divided into two major parts. Two great complexes of epic action are joined together: the life and death of Sigfrid, his glory, fault, and betrayal, and the massive destruction of those who betrayed him, engineered by Kriemhild, Sigfrid's wife. The translator has reproduced the principal characteristics of style and language, in a verse form approximating that of the original. This modern translation, with its naturalness of language, will appeal to the general reader and scholar alike.

Drawing upon the most current methodologies, the essays in this book pursue the multifarious functions of end-times in medieval German texts.