Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Alliterative verse
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Old High German and Old Saxon== ===Available texts=== The [[Old High German]] and [[Old Saxon]] corpus of ''Stabreim'' or alliterative verse is small. Fewer than 200 Old High German lines survive, in four works: the ''[[Hildebrandslied]]'', ''[[Muspilli]]'', the ''[[Merseburg charms]]'' and the ''[[Wessobrunn Prayer]]''. All four are preserved in forms that are clearly to some extent corrupt, suggesting that the scribes may themselves not have been entirely familiar with the poetic tradition. Two Old Saxon alliterative poems survive. One is the reworking of the four gospels into the epic ''[[Heliand]]'' (nearly 6000 lines), where Jesus and his disciples are portrayed in a Saxon warrior culture. The other is the fragmentary ''[[Old Saxon Genesis|Genesis]]'' (337 lines in 3 unconnected fragments), created as a reworking of Biblical content based on Latin sources. In more recent times, [[Richard Wagner]] sought to evoke these old German models and what he considered a more natural and less over-civilised style by writing his ''[[Der Ring des Nibelungen|Ring]]'' poems in ''Stabreim''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Millington |first1=Barry |title=The Sorcerer of Bayreuth: Richard Wagner, his Work and his World |date=2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-998695-8 }}{{page needed|date=December 2023}}</ref> ===Formal features=== Both German traditions show one common feature which is much less common elsewhere: a proliferation of unaccented syllables. Generally these are [[part of speech|parts of speech]] which would naturally be unstressed — [[pronoun]]s, [[preposition]]s, [[Article (grammar)|articles]], [[modal auxiliary|modal auxiliaries]] — but in the Old Saxon works there are also [[adjective]]s and [[lexical verb]]s. The unaccented syllables typically occur before the first stress in the half-line, and most often in the b-verse.{{citation needed|date=December 2023}} The ''Hildebrandslied'', lines 4–5: {{Verse translation|lang=goh| <u>'''G'''</u>arutun se iro <u>'''g'''</u>uðhamun, {{pad|1em}} <u>'''g'''</u>urtun sih iro suert ana, <u>'''h'''</u>elidos, ubar <u>'''h'''</u>ringa, {{pad|1em}} do sie to dero <u>'''h'''</u>iltiu ritun. | They prepared their fighting outfits, {{pad|1em}} girded their swords on, the heroes, over ringmail {{pad|1em}} when they to that fight rode.}} The ''Heliand'', line 3062 (Matthew 16:17): <poem>{{lang|osx|<u>'''S'''</u>âlig bist thu <u>'''S'''</u>îmon, quað he, <u>'''s'''</u>unu Ionases; {{pad|1em}} ni mahtes thu that <u>'''s'''</u>elbo gehuggean}} blessed are you Simon, he said, son of Jonah; {{pad|1em}} for you did not see that yourself </poem> This leads to a less dense style, no doubt closer to everyday language, which has been interpreted both as a sign of decadent technique from ill-tutored poets and as an artistic innovation giving scope for additional poetic effects. Either way, it signifies a break with the strict Sievers typology.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)