Germanic Philology

In un’epoca che non riconosce più la centralità della storia della letteratura, dilaniata dal dibattito tra estetica e storicismo e polverizzata in una miriade di generi, sistemi e correnti, il volume fa luce in modo approfondito su un patrimonio letterario poco noto, discontinuo ed eterogeneo, risalente alle culture germaniche dell’Alto Medioevo.
Al netto degli stereotipi barbarici, queste rappresentavano il risultato di un lungo processo di integrazione tra la miriade di società segmentarie del Ferro, dalle Alpi alla Scandinavia, e le varie forme in cui si declinò l’esperienza culturale romana, diffusa ben oltre i limiti cronologici dell’Impero.
Lungamente dominate dall’oralità o da fenomeni scritturali epigrafici – o spesso di natura pragmatica e talora troppo intermittenti per essere definiti “letteratura” –, queste culture seppero dar vita, con il contributo essenziale del Cristianesimo e delle sue prerogative di trasmissione scritta, a una densa tradizione letteraria dalle caratteristiche disomogenee.

Concise dictionary of Old Frisian (1200-1550) for which for the first time all extant Old Frisian sources have been processed. It offers definitions as well as phraseological, grammatical and dialectological information. Includes a list of sigla and a bibliography of Old Frisian text editions.

Frisian is the closest linguistic relative to English.

On the basis of an analysis of early spellings of the Old Norse men’s names Erlingr and Erlendr, this article rejects the widespread etymology that relates these names to the common noun jarl m. ‘earl’. An alternative etymology of Erlendr as an original byname *ørlendr ‘out-landish’, ‘foreign’ is reassessed and further substantiated, while a new etymology for Erlingr is proposed, deriving it from Old Norse ǫrn/ari m. ‘eagle’, with the diminutive suffix -linga-. According to this hypothesis, the name is an original byname with the literal meaning ‘little eagle’, but most likely an honorific title denoting ‘the one who acts like an eagle’.

The final chapter of Philology of the Flesh investigates the work of the German poet Paul Celan. A consideration of his "Meridian" speech is shown to rehearse most of the themes discussed to this point. This thematic overview is then interrogated and complicated by a reading of Celan's poem "Tenebrae." To conclude, the chapter examines Celan's provocative translations of Emily Dickinson.

Die ich mit gesange hie prîse und kroene, / an die hât got sînen wunsch wol geleit (MF 141,(7)(8). Wer wird hier besungen? Die Minnedame, würde man meinen. Der Eindruck ist trügerisch, denn das Zitat entstammt dem Lied eines Dichters (Heinrichs von Morungen), in dessen Oeuvre es sich oft beobachten lässt, dass scheinbar eindeutige Referenzen auf die Minnedame, auf ihre äußerlichen und inneren Qualitäten (Schönheit und Tugend), durch Bilder und Begriffe ‚gestört' werden, die in mariologischen Begründungszusammenhängen (in der kirchlichen Lehre, Exegese, Liturgie) und speziell in der Marienlyrik Verwendung finden und die Jungfrau Maria adressieren. Solche Übertragungen, die auch in entgegengesetzter Richtung (vom Profanen hin zum Geistlichen) stattfinden können, führen zu Interferenzen zwischen profaner Liebeslyrik und religiöser (Marien)Lyrik. Mit welchen literarischen Verfahren ein solches ‚Dazwischenfunken' realisiert wird und was dieses ‚Dazwischenfunken' im konkreten Fall (auch und vor allem unter Berücksichtigung der Produktions-und Rezeptionsbedingungen des jeweiligen Liedes) leistet, gilt es im Rahmen der geplanten Lehrveranstaltung zu thematisieren. Doch bevor solche und ähnliche Fragen an die Texte gerichtet werden können, um an ihnen etwa Autonomiebestrebungen in der Kunst oder Aspekte einer literarischen Säkularisierung aufzuzeigen, bedürfen die beschriebenen Interferenzen der Wahrnehmung, des qualifizierten Blicks. Daher ist das Ziel des Seminars, den Blick für das skizzierte Phänomen zu schärfen und es anhand ausgewählter Beispiele aus drei Jahrhunderten exemplarisch zu diskutieren.

This article describes my Ph.D. project. In particular, it is aimed at giving an overview of the phenomenon under discussion, namely the coexistence and competition between loanwords and endogenous words in Old Icelandic. Examples are given from three different textual typologies, as they are taken from a religious text (The Icelandic Homily Book), a law-book (The Grágás), and one of the Icelandic family sagas (Egils saga). The article is in Icelandic. However, the main content of this article is also available in English in two of my conference papers (see  "Talks" here on Academia).

This article deals with the history and word formation of the Icelandic word for ‘police’, i.e. lögregla. The word constitutes an interesting case of word formation in that said lexeme is a dvandva compound whose creation is related to the expression að halda uppi lögum og reglu ‘to maintain law and order’. Moreover, it is argued that the word has arisen in the wake of the Icelandic purist movement in the first half of the 19th century, and that its creator is Konráð Gíslason, who was at the time a
member of the Icelandic Literary Society (Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag) and editor of the journal Fjölnir. According to the sources, the word, lögregla, cannot have been formed as an independent lexical item. In fact, the word appears first in a compound with maður ‘man’, meaning ‘policeman’ or, more precisely, ‘a man who is in charge of maintaining
law and order’. It is argued that lögregla has in fact been created in order to gradually substitute the Danish loanword pólití, first in compounds such as pólitímaður and pólitíþjónn ‘policeman’, and then as a single lexeme. The Danish loanword pólití had a twofold meaning: ‘policeman’ and ‘police’. Moreover, it is argued that lögregla, as an unbound lexeme, was initially a shortened form for lögreglumaður, and later assumed
the general meaning ‘police force’ by means of synecdoche (pars pro toto).

This paper examines the obscure concluding sequence in the Old Norse eddic poem Baldrs draumar. In the poem, the god Odin travels in disguise to the realm of the dead in order to raise a dead sorceress; he interrogates her about the bad dreams of his son Baldr; the sorceress prophesies Baldr's death and the revenge sequence that Odin will orchestrate to follow it.  In the final sequence of the poem, Odin asks a peculiar question identifiable as a riddle for 'waves'; rather than answering the question, the sorceress reveals the identity of Odin as the figure interrogating her, and in response, Odin appears to reveal the identity of the sorceress, who then takes the last word with reference to Ragnarök - the end of the world at which Odin will die.

Building on the premises that the final sequence of stanzas would have reasonable sense to a vernacular audience and engage concepts conventional to the mythology (rather than simply being accepted as obscure or disconnected from broader discourses), this paper proposes the following interpretation: Odin's final question is relevant and engages a mythic image as a means of asking whether Ragnarök will follow from the revenge-cycle of the previous questions; this question enables the other figure to identify him unambiguously as Odin; this identification allows Odin to identify the other figure as someone other than expected, in which case the most probable recognizable figure would probably be Loki; the final response of this figure then both responds to Odin's question as a threat with direct reference to the release of Loki, relevant to the situation.

This paper engages possibilities of variation in the underlying ideas of the mythology found in different sources.  It introduces the observation that the cycle of material associated with the revenge prophesies in this and other sources seems to be rooted in different basic concepts than narrative material associated with Baldr's mother and her attempts to prevent Baldr's death (developed further in _Baldr and Lemminkäinen_).  If the interpretation is correct that the sorceress addressed by Odin is Loki in disguise, the circumstances present the possibility that this poem is engaging models of the mythology somewhat different from what is found in Snorri Sturluson's Edda.

Si studiano quelle che vengono denominate 'glosse secondarie'. Glosse cioè il cui interpretamentum non è presente nel testo da cui sono riprese le voci di un 'batch', di una serie di glossae collectae o di un glossario.
Le glosse ‘secondarie’ sono una formazione caratteristica del modo di procedere del glossatore medievale e traggono origine dal suo sforzo di chiarificare il lemma latino, mediante una resa in latino o in volgare.
Nel caso di interpretamentum composto da una frase o in ogni caso di una certa lunghezza, questo poteva  suddividersi in due (o più) lemmi di cui soltanto uno, il superordinato o arcilessema, è riconducibile al testo glossato, mentre l’altro, in genere in relazione di iponimia, costituisce, almeno in origine, una variazione secondaria, nata dalle esigenze didattiche del glossatore o da uno sfoggio erudito delle sue conoscenze.
Fin quando i lemmi, di cui si è vista la filiazione, vengono copiati a distanza ravvicinata nel corpo di un glossario non alfabetizzato è possibile individuare la loro dipendenza e ricondurre la glossa o le glosse ‘secondarie’ al medesimo contesto del lemma principale.

Créée sous le Second Empire par un décret de Victor Duruy
(1868), l’EPHE incarnait à l’époque une tentative de moderniser l’enseignement supérieur et la formation à la recherche en France en s’inspirant tout particulièrement de l’Allemagne. Cet ouvrage étudie la transposition du modèle allemand dans le contexte français et ses effets jusque vers 1945, spécialement à l’exemple de la IVe section dédiée aux sciences philologiques et historiques, à travers les questions suivantes : à quoi correspondait concrètement le modèle allemand ? Comment entendait-on l’implanter en France ? Quelles transformations le contexte français lui fit-il subir ? Quelle
signification, enfin, cette entreprise particulière eut-elle pour l’histoire des sciences humaines en France et pour l’histoire des sciences humaines tout court ?

(Updated Feb. 14, 2021) The first in-depth survey of English language translations of the Prose Edda, intended for seasoned researchers, future translators, and enthusiasts searching for an 'ideal' translation to consult. This PDF edition is based on an ongoing web-based resource, a part of the Mimisbrunnr.info project and is updated alongside the site. Readers can find it at the following URL: https://www.mimisbrunnr.info/edda-to-english

I'll follow you; I'll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier; Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. Puck, Midsummer Night's Dream, I.iii The origins of the OE puca 'goblin' and its diminutive pucel are obscure and yet they have received comparatively little attention. The word has not been of much interest to Germanic linguists because there has been a suspicion that it may have a Celtic root, while it has equally failed to hold the interest of Celtic linguists because they have believed it to have Germanic origins. Yet the word is, potentially, of considerable interest. It appears in both English and Irish and it is possible that the transmission-either from English to Irish, or from Irish to English-may have taken place in the early middle ages. If this is the case, then the word poses a range of questions about the nature of cultural and linguistic contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish or perhaps British populations. These questions are particularly intriguing because puca is not simply a practical word. It is a word which might be used in trade or in describing unfamiliar geographic or topographical features, but rather a cultural word, a word which, potentially, carries with it cultural metadata; legends and 2 beliefs. Indeed, because neither Celtic nor Germanic languages have /p/ in the early period but increasingly accommodate it because of its presence in Latin and the cultural importance of that language to Christianity, it is possible that transmission took place after the Christianisation of England. If this is the case, the transmission of a 'pagan' word would be all the more illuminating. Yet, these connections cannot be understood without establishing the nature, period, and direction of transmission. Despite Cooper's 2005 study which attempted a more in-depth linguistic investigation than had previously been attempted, a secure etymology is yet to be established. The purpose of this paper, then, is to explore the prospect that an interdisciplinary approach could advance the understanding of the word and, in particular, that considering the linguistic evidence in the light of archaeological and onomastic evidence might suggest new avenues of study.

La nascita di uno statuto letterario germanico, durante l'Alto Medioevo, rappresentò una conquista culturale mediata, come altrove, dalla cristianizzazione e dalle relative necessità liturgiche, dottrinarie ed esegetiche. Poiché la conversione al Cristianesimo delle numerose etnie germaniche richiese quasi un millennio, non stupisce che il diverso grado di integrazione delle élites barbariche nell'universo dottrinario e culturale della Chiesa cristiana -erede di molti valori della cultura greco-romana -si tradusse in una altrettanto lenta percezione della dignità dei propri volgari in funzione di lingua scritta, la cui forma richiedeva l'acquisizione di una coscienza 'alfabetica' e di forme 'scrittorie' locali ancora inedite. Una simile frammentazione culturale e la prolungata assenza di un canone alfabetico coerente per le singole lingue -unitamente all'egemonia esercitata ancora per secoli dal latino -si tradusse in risultati letterari altrettanto disomogenei in ciascuna area linguistica. Il monopolio degli studi e della cultura scritta esercitato per secoli, in Occidente, dall'autorità ecclesiastica ebbe conseguenze dirette sul piano del contenuto e della relativa trasmissione; come si può bene immaginare, all'interno dei codici manoscritti realizzati per lo più tra le mura di scriptoria monastici riuscì a filtrare soltanto una minima parte, opportunamente emendata, del patrimonio tradizionale delle culture volgari, patrimonio che continuò viceversa a essere tramandato attraverso i canali impalpabili dell'oralità. La nascita di fenomeni letterari con un livello minimo di frequenza restò dunque a lungo confinata ad ambiti istituzionali -giuridici, notarili e religiosi -, nei quali i volgari riuscirono inizialmente a far breccia sotto forma di strumenti interpretativi d'immediata utilità, come le glosse esplicative di concetti e lessemi non immediatamente comprensibili. Questo saggio cerca di raccogliere e introdurre i principali documenti e i relativi generi letterari delle singole tradizioni linguistiche del Medioevo germanico, a partire dalla più antica traduzione biblica fino agli esempi più raffinati del patrimonio letterario poetico e prosastico.

Kleine Formen – großes Werk. Die Arbeitsmaterialien im wissenschaftlichen Nachlass der Brüder Grimm

Das Forschungsprojekt nimmt den umfangreichsten, bislang aber am wenigsten erforschten Teil des Nachlasses der Brüder Grimm in den Blick: ihre wissenschaftlichen Arbeitsmaterialien – Notizen auf Zetteln und in Heften, Exzerptsammlungen, Werkmanuskripte und Arbeitsspuren in Büchern. Eng am Material dieser kleinen philologischen Gebrauchsformen lassen sich Methodik, Wissenstopik und Arbeitspraktiken der frühen Germanistik exemplarisch bis ins Detail rekonstruieren.

The etymologies of English blood and bone are obscure. Although their cognates are well represented in the Germanic family, both lack clear cognates in other Indo-European languages. Various explanations of their origins have been proposed, including that they may be non-Indo-European (e.g. Hawkins 1987). Blood and bone, and their cognates, share an initial /b/ with numerous body-related words (e.g. beard, breast, bosom) throughout Germanic. This initial /b/ constitutes a phonestheme. Phonesthemes-'recurring sound-meaning pairings that are not clearly contrastive morphemes' (Bergen 2004: 290)-are present in many Germanic languages, but their role in lexicogenesis is little understood. I suggest that blood and bone were formed by blending the initial /b/ phonestheme with two preexisting lexemes: Proto-Germanic*flōda-'something that flows' and *staina-'stone.' Phonesthetic blending may be a fruitful avenue for future etymological research.

Although it is commonplace in scholarship today to talk about a ‘system’ of kennings or ‘kenning system’, critical discussion has tended to take the qualification ‘system’ for granted and left this topic unexplored. The present paper presents a study of extended kennings which reveals that the systemic network of kennings have different referents. It shows that kennings for MAN/WARRIOR are at the center of this network.

Der als Fundbericht konzipierte Beitrag berichtet über die Wiederentdeckung einer seit mehr als 160 Jahren als verschollen geltenden besonders frühen Eckhart-Handschrift mit Übersetzungen vorwiegend aus dem "Opus expositionum", rekonstruiert die eruierbaren Zwischenstationen ihrer Tradierung in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und skizziert ihre Funktionalisierung auf der Wartburg in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. und der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stichwort: Immersion), die mitverantwortlich dafür ist, dass die Handschrift dem Blick der Forschung entzogen blieb.

A print-friendly PDF version of Mimisbrunnr.info's unofficial index for Rudolf Simek's "Dictionary of Northern Mythology" (2007 [1993], Boydell & Brewer). Readers can also find the original, web-based version of the Simdex at the following URL: https://www.mimisbrunnr.info/dnm-index

The history of the English language is still fascinating scholars because of its absolute uniqueness: even though it belongs to the Germanic languages, its distinguishing feature is the important influence of several languages including also non-Germanic languages such as Latin or French. However a fundamental role was played by Old Norse, the language of the Scandinavian tribes which settled in England between the eighth and the eleventh century.

'Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. is then set the task of introducing "Old English heroic literature," which he achieves through some helpful musing upon the nature of heroes in their Germanic context, moving via an examination of poetry with a Migration-age backdrop to a subtle discussion of the "heroic ethic" in Old English verse with a more contemporary setting.'
Richard W. Dance, Medieval Review, 06.09.23

The diagnosis of the psychological type of the Redeemer, classified through the terminus "idiot", become more clear when view as a counterpoint of the concepts "hero" and "genius" used by Renan in his historic explanation of the Jesus figure, as well as been directly influenced by the reading of the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.