class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg xviii]"/>of Kriemhild's revenge

149 The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in Atlakviða, apparently confused and ill recollected in the other two poems 150 But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which made it impossible to use the original story 152 Atlamál, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents from heroic tradition
the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school 153
155 The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry and not of casual popular variants 156

VI

Beowulf

Beowulf claims to be a single complete work	158
Want of unity: a story and a sequel	159
More unity in Beowulf than in some Greek epics. The first 2200 lines form a complete story, not ill composed	160
Homeric method of episodes and allusions in Beowulf and Waldere	162 163
Triviality of the main plot in both parts of Beowulf—tragic significance in some of the allusions	165
The characters in Beowulf abstract types	165
The adventures and sentiments commonplace, especially in the fight with the dragon	168
Adventure of Grendel not pure fantasy	169
Grendel's mother more romantic	172
Beowulf is able to give epic dignity to a commonplace set of romantic adventures	173

 

CHAPTER III

THE ICELANDIC SAGAS

I

Iceland and the Heroic Age

The close of Teutonic Epic—in Germany the old forms were lost, but not the old stories, in the later Middle Ages	179
England kept the alliterative verse through the Middle Ages	180
Heroic themes in Danish ballads, and elsewhere	181
Place of Iceland in the heroic tradition—a new heroic literature in prose	182

II

Matter and Form

The Sagas are not pure fiction	184
Difficulty of giving form to genealogical details	185
Miscellaneous incidents	186
Literary value of the historical basis—the characters well known and recognisable	187
The coherent Sagas—the tragic motive	189