Epic and Romance | Page 4

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, Harbarzlióe (in irregular verse), Atli and Rimgerd 112 (b) Dialogues implying action--The Wooing of Frey (Skírnismál) 114
Svipdag and Menglad (Grógaldr, Fi?lsvinnsmál) 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--Atlakviea, 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 Atlakviea, 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
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
Plan of Njála 190 of Laxd?la 191 of Egils Saga 192
Vápnfireinga Saga, a story of two generations 193
Víga-Glúms Saga, a biography without tragedy 193
Reykd?la Saga 194
Grettis Saga and Gísla Saga clearly worked out 195
Passages of romance in these histories 196
Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoea, a tragic idyll, well proportioned 198
Great differences of scale among the Sagas--analogies with the heroic poems 198
III
THE HEROIC IDEAL
Unheroic matters of fact in the Sagas 200
Heroic characters 201
Heroic rhetoric 203
Danger of exaggeration--Kjartan in Laxd?la 204
The heroic ideal not made too explicit or formal 206
IV
TRAGIC IMAGINATION
Tragic contradictions in the Sagas--Gisli, Njal 207
Fantasy 208
Laxd?la, a reduction of the story of Sigurd and Brynhild to the terms of common life 209
Compare Ibsen's Warriors in Helgeland 209
The Sagas are a late stage in the progress of heroic literature 210
The Northern rationalism 212
Self-restraint and irony 213
The elegiac mood infrequent 215
The story of Howard of Icefirth--ironical pathos 216
The conventional Viking 218
The harmonies of Njála 219 and of Laxd?la 222
The two speeches of Gudrun