Hans Sachs's reception of the medieval heroic tradition: Social criticism in the cloak of Nibelungenlied source material

Research on modern medievalism has recognized that nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors and artists often resorted to medieval themes and topics for political purposes concerning their own times. Analysis of Hans Sachs's play Der huernen Sewfrid ( 1557) demonstrates how much this Nuremberg poet also relied on a medieval work for contemporary social criticisms, cloaking them in a tragedy predicated on the famous medieval heroic epic Nibelungenlied to subvert public censorship. This makes Sachs an early forerunner of modern medievalism, insofar as his tragedy indicates the extent to which medieval literary Stoffe were readily available for him to address political and social issues of his own times.