The Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen: National Myth in Nineteenth-Century English and German Literature

by Maike Oergel

Overview

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110150841
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	12/17/1997
Series:	European Cultures , #10
Edition description:	Reprint 2010
Pages:	333
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Frontmatter — Introduction: National Myth – Mythic or National — CHAPTER 1: The Investment of Literature with Mythic Significance — CHAPTER 2: The Investment of History with Mythic Significance — CHAPTER 3: The Search for the Legitimising Mythic Matter of the Moderns: From Homer’s Heroes to Gothic Knights and Back — CHAPTER 4: The National Dimension of the New Mythic Materials: “Volkspoesie”, Ballad Revival and the Germanic Nations’ Mission in History — CHAPTER 5: The Representative National Individual: The Emergence of Siegfried and King Arthur — CHAPTER 6: The Results: Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen and Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King as Modern National Myths — CONCLUSION: Arthur, Siegfried and the Germanic – A Qualification of the Difference between the German and the Western Tradition — Bibliography — Index — Backmatter

Editorial Reviews

By placing the two phenomena next to each other and drawing on a variety of disciplines, Oergel (German, U. of Nottingham) demonstrates a parallel rise of interest in and interpretation of national identity in the two Germanic cultures. He looks at both the mythical and the national elements of national myth, and explores the new definitions of both Northern Germanic and the medieval. Focusing on Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen he questions assumptions about German particularity during the Victorian period. He also places the phenomena in a wider European context. Excerpts in German are translated in footnotes. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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