When Johann Jakob Bodmer rediscovered the Middle High German epic poem Nibelungenlied in the middle of the eighteenth century, neither scholarship nor the public immediately realized that he had stumbled upon a monumental heroic poem, which soon after the Enlightenment period gained the same recognition as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, among other world classics. The Nibelungenlied was written around 1200 and was subsequently copied many times far into the sixteenth century, eventually experiencing a considerable transformation process of trivialization represented by the chapbook version, Hürnen Seyfried (ca. 1530 seqq). Although the Prussian king Frederick II (the Great), to whom Christoph Heinrich Mül…
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Citation: Classen, Albrecht. "Nibelungenlied". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 April 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11785, accessed 25 April 2024.]
