Totlachen

›Nibelungenlied‹ and ›Kudrun‹ display deliberate use of comic elements and of heroic irony. In a first step, my paper retraces the role that comedy and irony play in the teleological development toward the downfall in the ›Nibelungenlied‹. In a second step, I argue that ›Kudrun‹ deconstructs the ›Nibelungen‹ poetics of comedy and specifically includes them in its new, hybrid concept of storytelling. The hitherto neglected aspect of a structured use of comedy and irony in the epics allows for a new perspective not only on ›Nibelungenlied‹ and ›Kudrun‹, but also on the availability of comedy in medieval vernacular poetics in general.