Title: The Connotations of Eagle and Falcon in the Medieval European Court Culture in Das Nibelungenlied

Abstract: The Falcon and Eagle are important animal images in the medieval German epic Das Nibelungenlied. These two animals not only differ in taxonomy, but more importantly, in the context of medieval European court culture, the cultural connotations behind them are quite different. The use of different animal images in literary works involves the literary traditions of the time, and its essence is the problem of understanding the cultural meaning behind the image. In the context of this medieval German heroic epic, to differentiate falke from adler, reflects the different projections of the medieval European court culture on these two animal images.

Keywords: eagle, falcon, Das Nibelungenlied, medieval European court culture, cultural meaning

Author: Minyue Shi, Ph. D candidate, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, Beijing, China.