The heroic lay (German Heldenlied) is a genre of Germanic epic poetry characteristic of the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages. A lay is a short narrative poem of between 80 and 200 lines concerning a single heroic episode in the life of a warrior from Germanic legend. It is distinct from the heroic epic (Beowulf, Nibelungenlied) which combines a sequence of episodes into a longer narrative.
Examples
Notes
- Hatto 1980, p. 165. "A terse, self-contained, objective, memorized poem of epic-dramatic style imbued with an heroic ethos conveyed with art in a single-stranded plot"
- Gloning & Young 2004, p. 42. "a short poem extolling the valour and nobility of character of a great hero of the past."
- Heusler 1905.
References
- Gloning, Thomas; Young, Christopher (2004). A History of the German Language Through Texts. Abingdon, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415183316.
- Hatto, A.T. (1980). "Medieval German". In Hatto, A.T. (ed.). Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Vol. 1: The Traditions. London: Modern Humanities Research Association. pp. 165–195. ISBN 0-900547-72-3. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
- Heusler, Andreas (1905). Lied und Epos in germanischer Sagendichtung. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
Further reading
- Fulk, R.D.; Cain, Christopher (2013). "Germanic Legend and Heroic Lay". A History of Old English Literature (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-118-45323-0.
- Murdoch, Brian (1980). "Heroic Verse". In Murdoch, Brian (ed.). German Literature of the Early Middle Ages. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Camden House. pp. 121–138. ISBN 1-57113-240-6.
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