Review by Choice Review
Gentry (Pennsylvania State Univ.), Winder McConnell (Univ. of California, Davis), Muller (Univ. Salzburg), and Werner Wunderlich (Univ. St. Gallen), all noted medievalists, have published extensively on the Nibelungen. They join forces to produce a fairly comprehensive guide to the Nibelungen and its influence on Western culture from its origins to the present. Entries are written and signed by an international team of graduate students, librarians, and faculty and organized alphabetically within ten chapters. They vary in length and quality and are generally followed by highly selective bibliographies that regrettably provide only the most rudimentary information, yet topics covered are diverse and extend from primary works and manuscript collections through music, art, and film inspired by the Nibelungen, to the literary reception in German-speaking countries and elsewhere. Many entries lack the necessary depth to appeal to advanced scholars, but this rich and useful ready reference guide complements existing resources--e.g., Companion to the Nibelungenlied (CH, Jun'99) and The Nibelungenlied (1984), both ed. by McConnell; John Evert Hard's Das Nibelungenepos (1996); and Edward Haymes and Susann T. Samples's Heroic Legends of the North (CH, Nov'96). Large academic collections. E. S. Hierl University of Chicago
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
