Prünhild, Brunhild, Brünnhilde: fremdheit und androgynie im lichte der metamorphosen der figur brunhildes in literatur und kunst des 19. jahrhunderts

• Main Authors: Tsonaka, Konstantina, Τσονάκα, Κωνσταντίνα
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: German
• Published: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens 2018
• Subjects: Βαλκυρία; To Τραγούδι των Νιμπελούνγκεν; Valkyria; The Song of the Nibelungs; Walküre; Das Nibelungenlied; Ανθρωπιστικές Επιστήμες και Τέχνες; Γλώσσα και Λογοτεχνία; Humanities and the Arts; Languages and Literature; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/48042; https://doi.org/10.12681/eadd/48042

The dissertation depicts the figure of the mythical queen of Iceland and the Valkyria Brunhild and presents her reception as well as her various metamorphoses in literature and art during the 19th century as metamorphoses of the Feminine in the patriarchy. The dissertation focuses on two specific concepts: the concept of strangeness - Brunhild is the foreign woman arriving from the High North in the royal court of Worms by the river Rhine, an element that provokes concurrently feelings between fascinosum and tremendum - and the concept of androgyny, as Brunhild is under the patriarchal point of view a heroine with male characteristics such as determination, energy and braveness, qualities that gave her the name “the most male woman”. The research examines the origins of Brunhild elaborating on the “Historia Frankorum” of Gregor von Tours and the “Fredegar-Chronik” and illustrates the fact if the Merovingian queen Brunichilide is the literary sister of Brunhild. This section is completed by two hardly known examples, a) of Giovanni Boccaccio “Über einige Armselige und über Brunichildis, Königin der Franken” and b) of Ferdinand Freiligrath “Anno Domini”. The study clears subsequently the strands between the legend of winning Brunhild - referring to the Icelandic powerful queen - and the legend of waking her up - referring to the Valkyria, the daughter of God Odin in the Icelandic “Edda” -, and answers to the dilemma of the writers which Brunhild is to be chosen in literature and why. The theoretical section concerning the concept of strangeness is based on the studies of the philosophers Georg Simmel and Bernhard Waldenfels, whereas the studies of Αchim Aurnhammer and Carl-Gustav-Jung support the theoretical section of androgyny accompanied by works of Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf and Judith Butler under the aspect of the Gender Studies. Starting point in all examined literary works is Brunhild’s homeland in the light of the local strangeness which determines the main axis in the texts as it combines the ...