The hinge between the two parts is really interesting I think because this is the sort of adventure in which Queen had just persuaded to remarry after Zeke feeds death and I think it's really interesting. It shows how it takes a really strong kind of addiction to your emotions or affects like you know strong emotions like love hate grief which so consumed the characters that it destroys them and the society round about them. That really drives the plot and you get to see it really clearly at this hinge point where in fact the plot's in the doldrums.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Song of the Nibelungs, a twelfth century German epic, full of blood, violence, fantasy and bleakness. It is a foundational work of medieval literature, drawing on the myths of Scandinavia and central Europe. The poem tells of two couples, Siegfried and Kriemhild and Gunther and Brunhilda, whose lives are destroyed by lies and revenge. It was extremely popular in its time, sometimes rewritten with happier endings, and was rediscovered by German Romantics and has since been drawn from selectively by Wagner, Fritz Lang and, infamously, the Nazis looking to support ideas on German heritage.
The image above is of Siegfried seeing Kriemhild for the first time, a miniature from the Hundeshagenschen Code manuscript dating from 15th Century.
With
Sarah Bowden
Reader in German and Medieval Studies at King’s College London
Mark Chinca
Professor of Medieval German and Comparative Literature at the University of Cambridge
And
Bettina Bildhauer
Professor of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews
Producer: Simon Tillotson