Epic and Romance. W. P. Ker

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

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Epic and Ballad Poetry

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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) and of Sivard (Sigurd and Brynhild)	126 127
The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of progress	129

IV

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The Style of the Poems

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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

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The Progress of Epic

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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 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

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Beowulf

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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