Abstract
The case of the “monstrous mates ” of the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga (Brunhild, Brynhild, Kriemhild, and Gudrun) promises to shed light on some fundamental problems in the Nibelungen/Niflungen tradition of scholarship. Though each work represents the culmination of an epic tradition, one continental and one Nordic, the mountain of Nibelungen research casts an enormous shadow over the tiny molehill of scholarship on V ölsunga saga. This disproportionate interest in only one of these two thirteenth – century epics is part of a larger problem, namely a continuing obsession with origins, which gives V ölsunga saga, a work roughly contemporaneous with the Nibelungenlied, little role to play in the grand design of antecedent texts that make up the Nibelungen lineage. By what magic have medievalists been able to make the Nordic epic V ölsunga saga invisible? John Dagenais, in his recent book The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture, formulates our predicament with unerring precision: “Medievalism, as it has been practiced over the past two centuries, is the only discipline I can think ofthat takes as its first move the suppression of its evidence. “1 Joachim Bumke ’s work in the 1950s and 1960s continued the tradition of source studies; however, Bumke ’s more recent work (e.g., “Der unfeste Text ”)2 echoes Dagenais ’ charge to the profession in that he encourages a reexamination of our methodological fundamentals, especially in his call to bring together the scholarly streams of text interpretation and text editing which have journeyed separate paths for far too long.
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Notes
John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Liber de buen amor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. xiii.
Helmut Brackert, Beiträge zur Handschriftenkritik des Nibelungenliedes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963).
Karl Lachmann, Über die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der Nibelungen Noth (Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1816).
Theodore M. Andersson, A Preface to the Nibelungenlied (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987).
Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in Germanic Literature (Middlesex, uk: Hisarlik, 1998), p. 69.
Ray M. Wakefield, “The Middle Dutch Nibelungen Fragments,” The Canadian Journal for Netherlands Studies 4.5 (1983): 36 [33–36].
See Francis G. Gentry, “Major Trends in Nibelungenlied Scholarship,” in The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia, ed. Francis G. Gentry et al. (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 206–9.
Joachim Bumke, “Die Eberjagd im Daurel und in der Nibelungendichtung,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatshefte 41 (1960): 105–11; Joachim Bumke, “Die Quellen der Brünhildfabel im Nibelungenlied,” Euphorion 54 (1960): 1–38; Joachim Bumke, “Sigfrids Fahrt ins Nibelungenland. Zur achten Aventiure des Nibelungenliedes,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (West) 80 (1958): 253–68.
Jerold C. Frakes, Brides and Doom: Gender, Property, and Power in Medieval German Women’s Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), p. 20.
Klaus von See, “Die Werbung um Brünhild,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 88 (1957/1958): 1–20.
William G. Durden, “The Death of Siegfried and the Disappearance of Brünhild,” Germanic Review 51 (1976): 85–92.
Gail Newman, “The Two Brünhilds?” Amsterdamer Beiträge zurälteren Germanistik 17 (1981): 69–78.
See Jan-Dirk Müller, Spielregeln für den Untergang: Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998), pp. 309–14.
Edward R. Haymes, The Nibelungenlied: History and Interpretation (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 83.
J. K. Bostock, “The Message of the Nibelungenlied” Modern Language Review 55 (1960): 200–212; Hans Kuhn, “Der Teufel im Nibelungenlied. Zu Günthers und Kriemhilds Tod,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 94 (1963): 280–306; Werner Schröder, “Die Tragödie Rriemhilts im Nibelungenlied,” Zeitschriftfür deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 90 (1960/61): 123–60.
Lore Toman, “Der Aufstand der Frauen,” Literatur und Kritik 131 (1979): 25–32.
Manuel Aguirre, “Narrative Composition in The Saga of the Volsungs,” Saga-Book 26 (2002): 19 [5–37].
Elisabeth Vestergaard, “Continuity and Change in Medieval Epic and Society,” in Continuity and Change: Political Institutions and Literary Monuments in the Middle Ages: A Symposium, ed. Elisabeth Vestergaard (Odense: Odense University Press, 1986), p. 122 [119–31].
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© 2007 Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman
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Grimstad, K., Wakefield, R.M. (2007). Monstrous Mates: The Leading Ladies of the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga . In: Poor, S.S., Schulman, J.K. (eds) Women and Medieval Epic. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06637-4_11
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