A Companion to the Nibelungenlied by Winder McConnell (review)

Abstract

MLR, 96. I, 200I MLR, 96. I, 200I and Old Saxon d6pian could have arisenfrom Latin baptizare, so that observationof baptismal practice (immersion, not sprinkling) cannot be ruled out for West Germanic. At the least, what was called for was a discussion of this term, a recognition that the range of linguistic evidence and the variety of baptismal practices over time and space suggest both possibilities, immersion alongside sprinkling. Udolph's concluding suggestion that the term Ostrogothi designates baptized Christian Goths as opposed to those who clung to the old pagan religion (the Visigothi) is equally unconvincing, quite apart from the interpretation of the first element as designating baptism. This theory, reached by a linguistic argument, demands (and would find difficult) a reconciliation with the history of the Christianization of the Goths, especially since it was precisely the Visigoths who were first converted and then in turn, amongst others, converted the Ostrogoths. Historypresentsus with the opposite of what Udolph would have us believe. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE D. H. GREEN A Companion to theNJibelungenlied. Ed. by WINDERMCCONNELL.(Studies in German Literature, Linguistics and Culture) Columbia, SC: Camden House. 1998. xiii + 293 PP. ?50. The attempt to write a companion volume to a classic of world literature is an ambitious project which must inevitably raise difficult questions of purpose and level, for the readership of the primary text is so diverse that the needs of all can hardly be met. Whose companion should this be? Is it to provide the studentwith an introduction to basic knowledge on the work or should it ratherpush back the frontiers of scholarship with new and exciting research?In their Companion to the Nibelungenlied, WinderMcConnell and his team have attemptedto do both, arguably have fallen a little short of achieving either, but have produced a very readable compromise which will allow those generally familiar with the Vibelungenlied to deepen their awareness of the many controversial issues, with complex scholarly debates frequently summed up in a sensible and comprehensible way. The twelve articles (plus a lengthy introduction), some of them by very familiar names in Nibelungenlied scholarship, and a number translated from German by McConnell himself, cover a wide arrayof topics and theoreticalapproaches.Forthe lay reader it is perhapsthe ideal preparationfor a second readingof the text. McConnell's introduction provides a very useful short survey of the history of researchon theNibelungenlied, helpfullybrokendown into three distinctphases, with an account of those all-but-forgottennineteenth-century debates which influence our contemporarycontroversiesin wayswe are often unawareof. He focuseson the undiminishedinterestthe Nibelungenlied has held for successivegenerations,a theme later taken up by WernerHoffmann in his trulyinterestingsurveyof the reception of the poem in the twentieth century:one may smile at the eternal existentialangst of the medievalistthat shimmersthrough in the introduction(does the subjecthave a future?),but mustbe impressedby some of the anecdotal evidence of the presence of Nibelungen motifsat alllevels of German life. Almost programmatic is a healthy scepticism of 'post-modernistfads', a theme which McConnell addresses in the introduction and takes up again in his own article on the psychological approach, which begins with a strident critique of dilettante attempts at interdisciplinarystudy. When Otfrid Ehrismann writes 24 pages on Kriemhild, takinga line which on balance is favourableto the revenging warrior-queen (and thus to the women's lobby), yet quietly ignores the recent and Old Saxon d6pian could have arisenfrom Latin baptizare, so that observationof baptismal practice (immersion, not sprinkling) cannot be ruled out for West Germanic. At the least, what was called for was a discussion of this term, a recognition that the range of linguistic evidence and the variety of baptismal practices over time and space suggest both possibilities, immersion alongside sprinkling. Udolph's concluding suggestion that the term Ostrogothi designates baptized Christian Goths as opposed to those who clung to the old pagan religion (the Visigothi) is equally unconvincing, quite apart from the interpretation of the first element as designating baptism. This theory, reached by a linguistic argument, demands (and would find difficult) a reconciliation with the history of the Christianization of the Goths, especially since it was precisely the Visigoths who were first converted and then in turn, amongst others, converted the Ostrogoths. Historypresentsus with the opposite of...