 Title page of the first edition, 1876, printed as MDCCCLXXVII (1877) | |
| Author | William Morris "Author of 'The Earthly Paradise'" |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Edward Burne-Jones |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Epic poem |
| Publisher | Ellis and White |
Publication date | 1876 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 392 pp |
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (1876) is an epic poem of over 10,000 lines by William Morris that tells the tragic story, drawn from the Volsunga Saga and the Elder Edda, of the Norse hero Sigmund, his son Sigurd (the equivalent of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied and Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung[1][2]) and Sigurd's wife Gudrun. It sprang from a fascination with the Volsung legend that extended back twenty years to the author's youth, and had already resulted in several other literary and scholarly treatments of the story. It was Morris's own favorite of his poems, and was enthusiastically praised both by contemporary critics and by such figures as T. E. Lawrence and George Bernard Shaw.[3][4][5] In recent years it has been rated very highly by many William Morris scholars, but has never succeeded in finding a wide readership on account of its great length and archaic diction.[6] It has been seen as an influence on such fantasy writers as Andrew Lang.[7] The Story of Sigurd is available in modern reprints, both in its original form and in a cut-down version, but there is no critical edition.
- ^ "Siegfried". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. 2003.
- ^ Ennis, Jane Susanna (1993). "A Comparison of Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen and William Morris's Sigurd the Volsung" (PDF). University of Leeds. Retrieved 3 February 2013.
- ^ Henderson, Philip (1967). William Morris: His Life, Work and Friends. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 170.
- ^ Allen, M. D. (1991). The Medievalism of Lawrence of Arabia. Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 46. ISBN 0-271-02612-X.
- ^ REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, vol 5. De Gruyter, Walter, Inc. 1988. p. 161. ISBN 978-3-11-011498-0.
- ^ Gentry, Francis G. (2002). The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia. London: Routledge. p. 273. ISBN 0-8153-1785-9.
- ^ Byock, Jesse L. (trans) (1990). The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 31. ISBN 0-520-27299-4.