Disciplined Dissent in Western Europe, 1200–1600: Political Action between Submission and Defiance ed. by Fabrizio Titone (review)

Abstract

references to clothes worn for appearances at court, and extensive preparations of wardrobes for travel. But make no mistake, this is a poem about bodily fluids and violence as much as sartorial power. The battle scenes are horrific: wounds gush, tears course, and blood runs in rivulets. The violence is delivered in gory detail, when ‘Siegfried’s hands caused rivers of blood to flow from bright helmets’ (p. 19), or ‘faces were stained with blood, and pale hands beat at breasts’ (p. 215), and the ‘three highborn kings, covered in blood, grime and rust’ (p. 168). At the end of particularly lengthy battle, there is a hint of resignation: ‘What more can I say? At least twelve hundred men fought each other, surging back and forth. The foreigners cooled their inner fire with the wounds they slashed. No one could separate the two sides. Blood could be seen flowing from deadly wounds inflicted left and right’ (p. 171). It is with some sense of relief that the action concludes, with the Klage as a lament for the dead. This vivid new translation is highly recommended to those already familiar with the poem, or those encountering it for the first time. Andrea Bubenik, The University of Queensland