"As well as offering new insights into the way in which Wagner's intellectual debts are reflected in the ethical superstructure of the Ring, the author suggests a provocative connection between the intervention of Siegfried into the action, and a neglected corner of late nineteenth-century post-Kantian romantic-messianic thought."--BOOK JACKET.

This book argues that within Germanic paganism, considered not as mere cult but as a system of beliefs, it is possible to identify a conceptually coherent understanding of fate which detaches that idea from time, and connects it instead with an implicit theses about the nature of truth as written. Germanic cosmogony, as represented in such precise images as a world-tree, provides a context for an analysis of specific metaphors for the workings of fate as woven or spun by such (...) figures as the Nornsthe Norse goddesses of destiny. Employing both philosophical and mythic-linguistic considerations, this book also offers new insights into the persistence of a residual paganism in the understanding of fate following the Christian conversion. (shrink)