With the
7th pick in the
17th round,
Team BobbyLayne™ takes -
The Nibelungenlied, author unknown - Poem.
This medieval epic is
the German National Epic. As such, its influence is enormous. Teddy Roosevelt cited it as his favorite poem. One of its heroes, "Siegfried" was recently named the 7th most influential fictional person in history (by the
USA Today). Numerous adaptations have been made (listed below), chief among them being works by Wagner.
It has been called the German
Illiad for a number of reasons, chief among them is that, like other National Epics, it takes pains to reach back to quasi-mythical times in order to establish the origins for a national character, much like the Illiad, the Aeneid, and the various Arthurian tales.
It's an incredible story for a number of reasons, but on a pure narrative level, it remains remarkable because its hero dies halfway through the story. Think about that. How many epic "YO HO!" stories do you know where the main hero gets whacked halfway through the story? Some get it in the end and it's incredibly tragic. Achilles gets his comeupins, sure, but not until the end. However, Siegfried is whacked in the middle of the story after
The Nibelungenlied goes to great pains to show how much of a total badass he is. Then his murderer, Hagan, essentially takes over the narrative! It becomes his story for a lengthy amount of time - as if by assassinating the hero, he also hijacked the story itself and the poet is forced to show how amazing Hagan is. As a reader, you tend to forget about Siegfried and his poor widow until much later in the poem, when Siegfried's widow shows back up to get her revenge by setting a trap for Hagan (she marries a fictional stand-in for Attila the Hun, who promptly helps her whack Hagan and all his men).
According the wikipedia, modern adaptations include –
The Nibelungenlied, Thidreks saga and the Völsunga saga served as source materials for Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (English: The Ring of the Nibelung), a series of four music dramas popularly known as the "Ring Cycle".
In 1924, Austrian-American director Fritz Lang made a duology of silent fantasy films of the epic: Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache. Lang and Thea von Harbou wrote the screenplay for the first film; von Harbou has the sole screenwriting credit on the second. Remakes were made in 1966.
The premise of the Nibelungenlied was made into a miniseries called Ring of the Nibelungs (also called Sword of Xanten) in 2004. It uses the title of the series by Wagner and, like the Ring Cycle, is in many ways closer to the Norse legends of Siegfried and Brunhild than to the Nibelungenlied itself. Like many adaptations, it only deals with the first half of the epic, ignoring Kriemhild's revenge. On the SciFi Channel, it is broadcast with title Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King (2006).
The anime series of Saint Seiya uses some elements from Nibelungenlied in its Asgard story-arc.
Chuck Jones's 1957 cartoon What's Opera, Doc?, while not specifically based on the Nibelungenlied, casts Elmer Fudd as Siegfried and has Bugs Bunny dress as Brünhild (or Brunhilde) during one sequence, all the while using music from Wagner's operas.
I believe the last adaptation pushes this poem into the category’s Top 3, minimum. *ahem* Feel free to sing along with me -
“KILL THE WABBIT!@#”
“KILL THE WABBIT!@#”
“KILL THE WABBIT!@#”