Hunting Birds in German Epic and Courtly Romance

The article examines the functions of birds of prey in medieval German epic poems and chivalric romance. Despite a number of common European meanings assigned to falcons and hawks in medieval bestiaries and hunting treatises, the semantics of hunting birds may have differed significantly in works of different national and genre traditions. The Nibelungenlied and Kudrun were epic in origin and content, but created in the era of the courtesan. The poets’ desire to “modernize” the sound of ancient tales manifested itself at different levels of the text, including hunting birds’ scenes. These scenes also demonstrate the strength of the genre nature of these poems, when elements “borrowed” from the courtly culture are transformed to fit adequately into the epic text. The article analyses scenes involving hunting birds in the most important 13th-century chivalric romances by Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg and Chrétien de Troyes.