Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen: Medieval, Pagan, Modern

Authors

  • Carole M. Cusack University of Sydney

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11157/rsrr3-2-584

Keywords:

Reception History, Religion, Culture, History

Abstract

Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is a Romantic work that draws on medieval narrative and thematic elements (e.g., the Poetic Edda, the Völsunga Saga, and the Nibelungenlied). Wagner’s cycle is a polyvalent work of art and can be interpreted as exemplifying both secularisation, as the gods of Valhalla give way to humanity, and reenchantment, in that its performance allows the gods of Germanic myth to “live” on stage. This article addresses the issue of reception by looking at Wagner’s medievalism, the modern Heathenry movement and its use of the Pagan past as a source of legitimation, and finally by examining attendance of performances of the Ring as a significant secular ritual activity that engages with Pagan gods and brings them to modern audiences, Heathen and otherwise. 

Author Biography

Carole M. Cusack, University of Sydney

Carole M. Cusack is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, a Personal Chair to which she was appointed in 2013. Her doctorate was completed at Sydney in 1996 and published as Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell, 1998). She has been employed in the department of Studies in Religion at Sydney since 1989, and has received a Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award (2004), a College of Humanities and Social Sciences Excellence in Research Supervision Award (2006), and a Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research Higher Degree Supervision (2010).
In 2013-2014 she holds the role of Pro-Dean (Teaching and Learning) in the Facult of Arts and Social Sciences.

She is Editor (with Dr Christopher Hartney, University of Sydney) of Journal of Religious History (Wiley) and Editor (with Professor Liselotte Frisk, Dalarna University, Sweden) of the International Journal for the Study of New Religions (Equinox). She serves on the Editorial Boards of the journals Aesthetics (the journal of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics) and Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review.




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Published

2013-08-27

How to Cite

Cusack, C. M. (2013). Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen: Medieval, Pagan, Modern. Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception, 3(2), 329–52. https://doi.org/10.11157/rsrr3-2-584

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 2 (2013): Special Issue: New Age and Neopagan Medievalisms

Section

Articles

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