Archetypal Shame Society Essay examples -- German Literature Heroic Ep

Archetypal Shame familyCertainly one of the greatest works of Ger valet literature to date, pika Nibelungenlied is arguably the finest example of the heroic epic in all of westbound literature. Ostensibly, cony Nibelungenlied is a story of deception, betrayal, and vengeance interwoven with themes of fate and the affinity between love and despair. The poet reproaches the main character, the queen Kriemhild, for her selfishness in sacrificing the lives of thousands of loyal knights to look at her r evege on those who betrayed and murdered her husband. However, underlying the story of Das Nibelungenlied is a tacit critique of its hypothetical rescript, which itself closely resembles the community of the poets audience. Hence, the poet intends to movework forcet discourse amongst his audience regarding the political state of its ordination, and indeed this theme is even recapitulated in the very act of the epics reception.The premise for the poets political theory of the Nibelu ngenlied society is the same as that of English philosopher doubting Thomas Hobbes in his essays on the state of nature and the social contract. Hobbes believed that man, in his inborn state, was driven by the primitive impulses of desire, onset, fear, and most of all, survival. For the most part, the lives of uncivilized men were short and brutish. Thus, to protect themselves from each other and external threats, men entered into a social contract, in which they created an entity with authority to rule and power to defend. Nevertheless, this agreement is hardly a solution to the problem of mans natural aggression towards his fellow man it merely glosses over it. Perfect evidence of the Nibelungenlied society glossing over natural aggression are the knightly exhibi... ...ext has to be such that the audience member learns nothing new about himself or herself in his or her self-conscious reflection of that text. In this way, the audience member realizes the society of the epic is analogous to his or her own. There are natural urges that man has, such as aggression, for which the state will provide suitable outlets. However, one must be wary that during the sublimation of these natural urges, one does not flush it to recognize the implications of these urges, because it is these impulses that drive and form our societies yet at the same period threaten their existence. To be sure, an audience listening to a reading of Das Nibelungenlied might well be a sublimation of adventure-seeking or intellectual stimulation, except whatever it is, if it sustains the society, it should never be glossed over, for it may also destroy the society it serves.