Introduction: National Myth - Mythic or National -- CHAPTER 1 The Investment of Literature with Mythic Significance -- The Modern Interpretation of Myth, the Bible and the Idea of Original Literature: Heyne, Eichhorn, Herder, Lowth -- Ancient Popular Poetry - The Secular Source of Original Literature: Percy, Herder, Scott -- The Mythopoeic Concept of Literature - Poetry as the Modern Sacred Text: Friedrich Schlegel and Wordsworth -- CHAPTER 2 The Investment of History with Mythic Significance -- The Discovery of the Human Telos through Historical Study: Herder's Ideen -- History as Secular Revelation in German Idealist Thinking: Schelling, Fichte, Hegel -- The Poetic Approach to History in Britain: Carlyle and Macaulay -- CHAPTER 3 The Search for the Legitimising Mythic Matter of the Moderns: From Homer's Heroes to Gothic Knights and Back -- The Path towards Equality between the Ancient and the Modern Cultural Achievement: Blackwell, Bodmer, Hurd, August Wilhelm Schlegel -- The Identification of the New Mythic Matter - "Rittermythologie": The Schlegels and Kenelm Digby -- Finding a Suitable Form for the Mythic Matters - Clues from Ancient and Modern "Original Literature": Wolf, Niebuhr, Macaulay -- CHAPTER 4 The National Dimension of the New Mythic Materials: "Volkspoesie", Ballad Revival and the Germanic Nations' Mission in History -- "Volkspoesie" and the Nibelungen: Görres, Wilhelm Grimm, Uhland -- The Revival of the Ballad and the Return of the Arthur-Matter: Scott, Wordsworth, Kingsley -- The Role of the "Volksgeist" and the Definition of the Germanic Spirit: Fichte, Hegel, Arndt -- The Teutonic Spirit of the English and the Anglo-Saxon Success: Kemble, Freeman, Kingsley, Macaulay -- CHAPTER 5 The Representative National Individual: The Emergence of Siegfried and King Arthur.

The Germanic and the Medieval in the Nibelungen-Material and the Arthur-Matter: Some Cultural and Racial Assimilations and Oppositions -- The Function of the Great Human Being in History: Hero-Worship by Fichte, Hegel, Carlyle and Kingsley -- The Representative Suitability of the Figures of Siegfried and Arthur as National Heroes -- CHAPTER 6 The Results: Richard Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen and Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King as Modern National Myths -- Wagner and Tennyson: The Conditions of a "Remarkable Case of Cultural Convergence" -- The Hero of the Ring: Does Wotan overthrow the German(ic) Siegfried? -- The Arthur of the Idylls: An English Version of the Duality of the Ideal and the Real? -- CONCLUSION Arthur, Siegfried and the Germanic - A Qualification of the Difference between the German and the Western Tradition -- Bibliography -- A. Primary Sources -- B. Secondary Sources -- Index.