Biography of England and Nottinghamshire cricketer Joe Hardstaff.

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

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.

This Companion to the Nibelungenlied draws on the expertise of scholars from Germany, Britain, and the United States to offer the reader fresh perspectives on a wide variety of topics regarding the epic: the latest theories regarding manuscript tradition, authorship, conflict, combat, and politics, the Otherworld and its inhabitants, eroticism (in both the Nibelungenlied and Wagner's Ring), the twentieth-century reception both of the Nibelungenlied and of its most intriguing protagonist, Kriemhild, key concepts used by the poet, the heroic, feudal, and courtly elements in the work, and an analysis of archetypal elements from the perspective of Jungian psychology.

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.

This highly original book draws on narrative and film theory, psychoanalysis, and musicology to explore the relationship between aesthetics and anti-Semitism in two controversial landmarks in German culture. David Levin argues that Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Fritz Lang's 1920s film Die Nibelungen creatively exploit contrasts between good and bad aesthetics to address the question of what is German and what is not. He shows that each work associates a villainous character, portrayed as non-Germanic and Jewish, with the sometimes dramatically awkward act of narration. For both Wagner and Lang, narration--or, in cinematic terms, visual presentation--possesses a typically Jewish potential for manipulation and control. Consistent with this view, Levin shows, the Germanic hero Siegfried is killed in each work by virtue of his unwitting adoption of a narrative role. Levin begins with an explanation of the book's theoretical foundations and then applies these theories to close readings of, in turn, Wagner's cycle and Lang's film. He concludes by tracing how Germans have dealt with the Nibelungen myths in the wake of the Second World War, paying special attention to Michael Verhoeven's 1989 film The Nasty Girl. His fresh and interdisciplinary approach sheds new light not only on Wagner's Ring and Lang's Die Nibelungen, but also on the ways in which aesthetics can be put to the service of aggression and hatred. The book is an important contribution to scholarship in film and music and also to the broader study of German culture and national identity.

Filled with portrayals of deception, love, murder, and revenge—yet defying traditional medieval epic conventions for representing character—the Nibelungenlied is the greatest and most unique epic in Middle High German. The Klage, its consistent companion text in the manuscript tradition, continues the story, detailing the devastating aftermath of the Burgundians' bloody slaughter. William Whobrey's new volume offers both—together for the first time in English—in a prose version informed by recent scholarship that brilliantly conveys to modern readers not only the sense but also the tenor of the originals.