Publisher's Synopsis
The volume is intended primarily as an updating of William Grimm's Deutsche Heldensage [The German Heroic Legend] (4th ed. 1957, first published 1829) relating to the tradition of Dietrich von Bern. It documents testimonies to Dietrich von Bern (and his historical predecessor, the Ostrogothic King Theoderic the Great) in literature, historiography and visual art from the 6th to the 16th centuries, and in so doing provides important material for studies into the history of legend, which in their turn form an indispensable source for the analysis of the texts and their intertextuality and in the context of enquiries into historicity and literarisation, tradition and innovation, and into conceptions of heroes.
