HIST-308 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Matter Of Britain, Chanson De Geste, National Epic
17 Nov 2020
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Document Summary
Poets of the age continued to write in latin, and much of their work is quite good; but the vernacular poetry of the time quickly surpassed the latin in both quantity and quality. Vernacular literature focused on a handful of principal genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry, verse romances, prose fables, and religious drama. Epic poetry perhaps had the longest genealogy; it dated back to the earliest centuries of the medieval period, to the arrival of the germanic tribes in the west. The nowfragmentary song of hildebrand is one of the oldest, and it illustrates the themes of struggle, bravery, and grim fate that were characteristic of the genre. Hildebrand is the earliest written epic; it can be traced to the scriptorium at fulda, in lower saxony, around the year 800, and it is believed by many to have been a personal favorite of charlemagne"s. The oldest surviving anglo-saxon epic is beowulf. happens to survive in its entirety.
