Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature
Chapter 2
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_ 88 and of _Beowulf_ 89
General resemblance in the themes of these poems--unity of action 89
Development of style, and not neglect of unity nor multiplication of contents, accounts for the difference of length between earlier and later poems 91
Progress of Epic in England--unlike the history of Icelandic poetry 92
2. THE NORTHERN GROUP 93
The contents of the so-called "Elder Edda" (_i.e._ _Codex Regius_ 2365, 4to _Havn_.) 93 to what extent _Epic_ 93
Notes on the contents of the poems, to show their scale; the _Lay of Weland_ 94
Different plan in the _Lays of Thor_, _Þrymskviða_ and _Hymiskviða_ 95
The _Helgi_ Poems--complications of the text 95
Three separate stories--_Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun_ 95
_Helgi Hiorvardsson and Swava_ 98
_Helgi and Kara_ (lost) 99
The story of the Volsungs--the long _Lay of Brynhild_ 100 contains the whole story in abstract 100 giving the chief place to the character of _Brynhild_ 101
The _Hell-ride of Brynhild_ 102
The fragmentary _Lay of Brynhild_ (_Brot af Sigurðarkviðu_) 103
Poems on the death of Attila--the _Lay of Attila_ (_Atlakviða_), and the Greenland _Poem of Attila_ (_Atlamál_) 105
Proportions of the story 105
A third version of the story in the _Lament of Oddrun_ (_Oddrúnargrátr_) 107
The _Death of Ermanaric_ (_Hamðismál_) 109
The Northern idylls of the heroines (Oddrun, Gudrun)--the _Old Lay of Gudrun_, or Gudrun's story to Theodoric 109
The _Lay of Gudrun_ (_Guðrúnarkviða_)--Gudrun's sorrow for Sigurd 111
The refrain 111
Gudrun's _Chain of Woe_ (_Tregrof Guðrúnar_) 111
The _Ordeal of Gudrun_, an episodic lay 111
Poems in dialogue, without narrative-- (1) Dialogues in the common epic measure--_Balder's Doom_, Dialogues of _Sigurd_, _Angantyr_--explanations in prose, between the dialogues 112 (2) Dialogues in the gnomic or elegiac measure: (_a_) vituperative debates--_Lokasenna_, _Harbarzlióð_ (in irregular verse), _Atli and Rimgerd_ 112 (_b_) Dialogues implying action--_The Wooing of Frey_ (_Skírnismál_) 114
_Svipdag and Menglad_ (_Grógaldr_, _Fiölsvinnsmál_) 114
The _Volsung_ dialogues 115
The Western and Northern poems compared, with respect to their scale 116
The old English poems (_Beowulf_, _Waldere_), in scale, midway between the Northern poems and Homer 117
Many of the Teutonic epic remains may look like the "short lays" of the agglutinative epic theory; but this is illusion 117
Two kinds of story in Teutonic Epic--(1) episodic, _i.e._ representing a single action (_Hildebrand_, etc.); (2) summary, _i.e._ giving the whole of a long story in abstract, with details of one part of it (_Weland_, etc.) 118
The second class is unfit for agglutination 119
Also the first, when it is looked into 121
The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently fused into larger masses of narrative 122
III
EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY
Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads 123
Their style is different 124
As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic subjects 125
The Danish ballads of _Ungen Sveidal_ (_Svipdag and Menglad_) 126 and of _Sivard_ (_Sigurd and Brynhild_) 127
The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of progress 129
IV
THE STYLE OF THE POEMS
Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse 133
English and Norse 134
Different besetting temptations in England and the North 136
English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry) 137
Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the lyrical forms 137
Lyrical element in Norse narrative 138
_Volospá_, the greatest of all the Northern poems 139
False heroics; _Krákumál_ (_Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok_) 140
A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances 141
V
THE PROGRESS OF EPIC
Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter 144
The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni compared--_Atlakviða_, _Atlamál_, _Oddrúnargrátr_ 147
Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory 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 153 the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school 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_ 162 and _Waldere_ 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