Dietrich of Bern is supposed to be Theodoric of Italy, in exile at the
Hunnish court. Etzel is Attila the Hun, and Guenther, Gunducarius, king of
the Burgundians, who was destroyed by the Huns with his followers in the
year 436.
The Nibelungen Lied very much resembles the Iliad, not only in the
uncertainty of its origin and the impersonality of its author, but also in
its objectivity, its realism, the primitive passions of its heroes, and
the wondrous acts of valor performed by them. It contains many passages of
wonderful beauty, and gives a striking picture of the social customs and
the religious belief of the time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE NIBELUNGEN LIED.
Mary Elizabeth Burt's Story of the German Iliad, 1892;
Thomas Carlyle's Nibelungen Lied (see his Miscellaneous Essays, 1869, vol.
iii., pp. 111-162);
Sir G. W. Cox and E. H. Jones's Nibelungen Lied (see their Tales of the
Teutonic Lands, 1872, pp. 79-132);
G. T. Dippold's Nibelungenlied (see his Great Epics of Mediaeval Germany,
1882, pp. 1-117);
William T. Dobson's Nibelungenlied Epitomized (see his Classic Poets,
1878);
Auber Forestier's Echoes from Mistland, or the Nibelungen Lay Revealed,
Tr. by A. A. Woodward, 1877;
Joseph Gostwick's and Robert Harrison's Nibelungenlied (see their Outlines
of German Literature, n.
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