Engaging Moments: The Origins of Medieval Bridal-Quest Narrative (Ergnzungsbnde zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 46)

In diesem Buch werden erstmals die frühesten westgermanischen Brautwerbungserzählungen gesammelt und vergleichend untersucht. Abweichend von früheren Studien lokalisiert die Autorin den Ursprung dieser Erzähltradition in der mündlichen und schriftlichen germanischen Dichtungstradition; ein Resultat, das zu einer Neubewertung der Genese der volksprachigen deutschen und skandinavischen Dichtung führt. Die Kapitel widmen sich in chronologischer Reihenfolge den lateinischen Chroniken der germanischen Völker sowie der frühen lateinischen und volkssprachigen Literatur Deutschlands und Skandinaviens.

This book presents the first collection of the earliest West Germanic bridal-quest narratives together with a comparative study of them. In contrast to earlier studies, the author locates the origin of this narrative tradition in the oral and written Germanic literary tradition, a result that leads to a re-assessment of the genesis of vernacular German and Scandinavian literature. The chapters deal in chronological order with the Latin chronicles of the Germanic peoples and with the early Latin and vernacular literature in Germany and Scandinavia.

Review text: "Through her sound scholarship, dept interpretion, and cogent argumentation, she has contributed significantly to medieval narratology."Rosemarie Thee Morewedge in: Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1/2008 "The author is to be congratulated on revisiting older theories on the development and origin of bridal quest narratives with a keen eye for nuance in a wide array of medieval texts and for ideological tendencies and lacunae in scholary interpretations of the late nineteenth and twentieth century."Ulrike Wiethaus in: Colloquia Germanica 1/2007 There are four early medieval chronicles that became most influential on contemporary as well as subsequent historical and fictional writing in the Germanic world, the so-called histories of the gentes: Jordanes' De origine actibusque Getarum (or: Getica), (completed 551), Gregory of Tours' His-toriamm libri decem (or: Historia Francorum), (ca. 575-590), Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (completed 731-32), and Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum (completed 796-99).