Abstract
The Nibelungenlied is a heroic epic composed around 1200 in Middle High German that offers an account of the downfall of the Burgundians. The poem may be roughly divided into two halves. The first tells the story of a young Siegfried who is drawn to the seat of the Burgundian kings in Worms by their sister Kriemhild ’s legendary beauty. Siegfried soon becomes King Gunther ’s right hand man, taking the field for him in the Saxon wars, and helping him to win Brunhild as his wife. In return for his help, Gunther promises Kriemhild to Siegfried. But, Brunhild, having been misled to believe that Siegfried is Gunther ’s vassal, is perturbed at the match. She refuses to lie with Gunther on the wedding night until he explains why he has married his sister to his vassal. Siegfried helps Gunther again by slipping on a magic cloak, overpowering Brunhild in bed, removing her girdle and her ring, and rendering her powerless.
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Notes
For a discussion of the concept of lordship, see Fredric L. Cheyette, Ennengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 129–48.
On the importance of gesture in public rituals, see, for example, Gert Althoff, “Spielregeln in mittelalterlicherÖffentlichkeit (Gesten, Gebärden, Ritual, Zeremoniell),” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 27 (1993): 27–50, repr. as “Demonstration und Inszenierung. Spielregeln der Kommunikation in mittelalterlicherÖffentlichkeit,” Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter, ed. Gert Althoff (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997), pp. 255–56 [229–57]; Bernd Thum, “Öffentlichkeit und Kommunikation im Mittelalter: Zur Herstellung vonÖffentlichkeit im Bezugsfeld elementarer Kommunikationsfomien im 13. Jahrhundert,” in Höfische Repräsentation: Das Zeremoniell und die Zeichen, eds. Hedda Ragotsky and Horst Wenzel (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990), pp. 65–87. On gestures in general, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, ed., Gestures (London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1984); Jean-Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval, Bibliothèquè des histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 1990). A recent excellent study on gesture and facial expression in literary texts is John A. Burrow, Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
William Ian Miller, Humiliation: and Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), esp. p. 96.
C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Cheyette, Emiengard, esp. chapter 13.
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© 2007 Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman
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Starkey, K. (2007). Performative Emotion and the Politics of Gender in the Nibelungenlied . 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_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06637-4_12
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