The Romance of Kudrum

Abstract

The long narrative poem Kudrun, poorly preserved in single, sixteenthcentury manuscript, enjoys reputation as the most notable German retelling of heroic legends after the Nibelungenlied. Though it cannot be dated precisely, the transmitted text of Kudrun was apparently composed about the middle of the thirteenth century, several decades later than the Nibelungenlied. The author used stanza which is variation on that of the Nibelungenlied, and wove into his tale episodes from old stories which may be connected to German poems of the twelfth century, to Snorri Sturluson and Saxo Grammaticus, and even to the Old English Deor and Widsip. Thus one readily understands the inclination of scholars to treat Kudrun hand in hand with the great which preceded it and which also offers us evidence for the reconstruction of certain stories from Germanic antiquity. Karl Stackmann, who in 1965 revised Karl Bartsch's edition of Kudrun, devoted some forty-five pages of his introduction to the legendary backgrounds, sources, and earlier versions of the poem, and only twelve pages to interpretive questions. Other scholars have paid increasing attention to Kudrun as poem with its own meaning, but the results have so far been rather varied. Diversity of opinion is inevitable and proper, yet interpretation of Kudrun has proven to be especially difficult because of uncertainty regarding the narrative genre to which the poem belongs if it belongs to one at all. The influence of generic practice on individual works of art in the Middle Ages is well known; if one could situate Kudrun within well-defined tradition of medieval narrative, one would gain an important perspective on structural features, and thus on questions of theme. For obvious reasons the poem is most often thought of as heroic epic, but few critics are comfortable with this designation, and wide range of qualifications has been offered: for example, Das seltsamste aller Heldenepen (Hermann Schneider), Heldenroman ohne eigentliches Heldentum (Friedrich Ranke), Eine Art Heldenroman, ... Werk eines gemischten Stils (Friedrich Neumann), a modern psychological novel . . . disguised as heroic epic (M. O'C. Walshe), a unique blend of genres and attitudes (Paul Salmon).' The obvious affinities of Kudrun with the Nibelunigenlied