German Literature of the Early Middle Ages (Camden House History of German Literature)

299 Pages·2004·3.84 MB·English

by  Brian Murdoch

The Camden House History of German Literature
Volume 2
German Literature of the Early Middle Ages
The Camden House History of German Literature
Volume 2

The Camden House History of German Literature

Edited by James Hardin
Vol. 1: Early Germanic Literature and Culture
Edited by Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read,
University of Stirling, UK
Vol. 2: German Literature of the Early Middle Ages
Edited by Brian Murdoch, University of Stirling, UK
Vol. 3: German Literature of the High Middle Ages
Edited by Will Hasty, University of Florida
Vol. 4: Early Modern German Literature
Edited by Max Reinhart, University of Georgia
Vol. 5: Literature of the German Enlightenment
and Sentimentality
Edited by Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Ohio State University
Vol. 6: Literature of the Sturm und Drang
Edited by David Hill, University of Birmingham, UK
Vol. 7: The Literature of Weimar Classicism
Edited by Simon Richter, University of Pennsylvania
Vol. 8: The Literature of German Romanticism
Edited by Dennis Mahoney, University of Vermont
Vol. 9: German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1830–1899
Edited by Clayton Koelb and Eric Downing,
University of North Carolina
Vol. 10: German Literature of the Twentieth Century:
From Aestheticism to Postmodernism
Ingo R. Stoehr, Kilgore College, Texas
German Literature of the
Early Middle Ages

Edited by
Brian Murdoch

CAMDEN HOUSE
Copyright © 2004 by the Editor and Contributors
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2004
by Camden House
Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt. Hope Ave., Rochester, NY 14620 USA
www.camden-house.com
and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydell.co.uk
ISBN: 1–57113–240–6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
German literature of the Early Middle Ages / edited by Brian Murdoch.
p. cm. — (Camden House history of German literature; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–57113–240–6 (alk. paper)
1. German literature — Old High German, 750–1050 — History and
crticism. 2. German literature — Middle High German, 1050–1500 —
History and criticism. I. Murdoch, Brian, 1944– II. Title. III. Series:
Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture (Unnumbered)
PT175.G45 2004
830.9'001—dc22
2003017148
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Brian Murdoch
Into German:
The Language of the Earliest German Literature 35
Jonathan West
Charms, Recipes, and Prayers 57
Brian Murdoch
Latin Prose:
Latin Writing in the Frankish World, 700–1100 73
Linda Archibald
Latin Verse 87
Stephen Penn
Heroic Verse 121
Brian Murdoch
Otfrid of Weissenburg 139
Linda Archibald
The Shorter German Verse Texts 157
Christopher Wells
vi (cid:117) CONTENTS
Historical Writing in and after the
Old High German Period 201
R. Graeme Dunphy
Late Old High German Prose 227
Jonathan West
Bibliography 247
Primary Literature 247
Secondary Literature 255
Notes on the Contributors 273
Index 275
Illustrations
Charlemagne’s palace chapel, Aachen Cathedral xiv
A coin of Charlemagne in the style of Roman
imperial coinage 8
Latin manuscript with Old High German glosses — 27
a ninth-century interlinear Benedictine Rule
from St. Gallen
The abbey church at Corvey in Westphalia 34
The Hildebrandlied 120
Otfrid’s Gospel book
(the Freising text, beginning of book II) 150
The Strasbourg manuscript version of Ezzo’s Gesang 191

Preface
TO HAVE A VOLUME that is concerned primarily with Old High Ger-
man as the second, rather than the first volume in a literary history of
German may at first glance seem surprising. The first volume of this liter-
ary history, however, is intended to give an overview of the pre-literary
situation and of the movement toward literacy in the context of the
Germanic peoples. It also considers Germanic literature on a broader
scale, looking at Old English, Old Norse and Gothic, as well as giving a
brief sketch of Old High German, a sketch which is developed and given
flesh in the present volume. The first volume also contains a detailed dis-
cussion of the important early work in Old Low German, the Old Saxon
Heliand, which might equally well have been included in this volume.
Although this volume contains discussions of the literature of Germany
(which includes literature in Latin) during what is known generally as the
Old High German period, from the beginnings of writing in German in
the eighth century down to the middle of the eleventh, of course some
of the chapters look forward to the Middle High German period. Breaks
determined by language change do not usually coincide neatly with liter-
ary developments. The point of the present volume is to give an idea of
the first stage of literature in German, and this requires examination also
of literature as such written in the dominant language of the period,
namely Latin, as the background against which those first beginnings of
German emerged; there is so much material there that contributors have
had to be especially selective, particularly as it is not always easy to deter-
mine which Latin writings “belong” in a German literary history. Alcuin
was an Englishman who wrote much of his verse in what is now France,
but was a major figure at Charlemagne’s court; Gottschalk and Walahfrid
Strabo were both German. Sometimes we can only guess that the author
of a work was German (the Latin writer of Waltharius, whoever he was,
uses a pun on a name which only works in German, for example). On the
other hand, when we turn to writings in High German, one must con-
sider material not usually considered literary in the modern sense at all,
but which does show the emergence of German as a literary language in
its earliest stage. With regard to what is considered “high” literature,
there is precious little; but there is a variety, and all beginnings are im-