The Ambiguity of otherness in adaptations of the Nibelungen myth: "Das Nibelungenlied" and Fritz Lang's "Die Nibelungen".

Over eight hundred years ago anonymous poets set the orally transmitted Nibelungen myth to parchment. This action started a trend of adapting the myth for contemporary audiences, a trend that has lasted since the High Middle Ages. Since then, the Nibelungen myth has become a sustaining element of the self-mythologization of German national identity. The problem, however, with adapting the Nibelungen myth for the purpose of creating a German identity, be it in the medieval epic, the Nibelungenlied, or Fritz Lang's 1924 film, Die Nibelungen, is that this model of identification is flawed – flawed because it consists of systematic binary divisions positing self-other dichotomies. What becomes evident is that in the adaptations of Nibelungen myth, the representations of alterity are contradictory and ambiguous, provoking the question: why is the Nibelungen myth an effective source from which one can project a national identity?

Author dc:creator

• Bickert, Neale G.

Advisor dc:contributor.supervisor

• Pnevmonidou, Elena

• Nibelungenlied
• Fritz Lang
• Orientalism
• Gender
• Otherness
• Alterity
• Middle Ages
• Nationalism
• Nibelungen
• Weimar
• höfisch
• myth
• national identity
• ambiguity

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1828/3970

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3970