Epic and Romance. W. P. Ker

46 Depreciation of native work in comparison with ancient literature and with theology 47 An Icelandic gentleman's library 47 The whalebone casket 48 Epic not wholly stifled by "useful knowledge" 49

IV

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The Three Schools—Teutonic Epic—French Epic—The Icelandic Histories

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Early failure of Epic among the Continental Germans	50
Old English Epic invaded by Romance (Lives of Saints, etc.)	50
Old Northern (Icelandic) poetry full of romantic mythology	51
French Epic and Romance contrasted	51
Feudalism in the old French Epic (Chansons de Geste) not unlike the prefeudal "heroic age"	52
But the Chansons de Geste are in many ways "romantic"	53
Comparison of the English Song of Byrhtnoth (Maldon, a.d. 991) with the Chanson de Roland	54
Severity and restraint of Byrhtnoth	55
Mystery and pathos of Roland	56
Iceland and the German heroic 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

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I

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The Tragic Conception

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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

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