age

57 The Icelandic paradox—old-fashioned politics together with clear understanding 58 Icelandic prose literature—its subject, the anarchy of the heroic age; its methods, clear and positive 59 The Icelandic histories, in prose, complete the development of the early Teutonic Epic poetry 60

 

CHAPTER II

THE TEUTONIC EPIC

I

The Tragic Conception

Early German poetry	65
One of the first things certain about it is that it knew the meaning of tragic situations	66
The Death of Ermanaric in Jordanes	66
The story of Alboin in Paulus Diaconus	66
Tragic plots in the extant poems	69
The Death of Ermanaric in the "Poetic Edda" (Hamðismál)	70
Some of the Northern poems show the tragic conception modified by romantic motives, yet without loss of the tragic purport—Helgi and Sigrun	72
Similar harmony of motives in the Waking of Angantyr	73
Whatever may be wanting, the heroic poetry had no want of tragic plots—the "fables" are sound	74
Value of the abstract plot (Aristotle)	74

II

Scale of the Poems

List of extant poems and fragments in one or other of the older Teutonic languages (German, English, and Northern) in unrhymed alliterative verse	76
Small amount of the extant poetry	78
Supplemented in various ways	79
1. The Western Group (German and English)	79
Amount of story contained in the several poems, and scale of treatment	79
Hildebrand, a short story	80
Finnesburh, (1) the Lambeth fragment (Hickes); and (2) the abstract of the story in Beowulf	81
Finnesburh, a story of (1) wrong and (2) vengeance, like the story of the death of Attila, or of the betrayal of Roland	82
Uncertainty as to the compass of the Finnesburh poem (Lambeth) in its original complete form	84
Waldere, two fragments: the story of Walter of Aquitaine preserved in the Latin Waltharius	84
Plot of Waltharius	84
Place of the Waldere fragments in the story, and probable compass of the whole poem	86
Scale of Maldon and of Beowulf	public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@20406@[email protected]#Page_88" class="pginternal"