Heliand

Text and Commentary

Edited by James E. Cathey

Publication Year: 2002

James E. Cathey's Hêliand: Text and Commentary is a simply unique, wonderfully encompassing, and helpful text, and nothing quite like it exists anywhere in the world. The commentary portion of the book consists of an interweaving of interpretation and philological consideration. This work presents the reader with explanatory commentary that encompasses both the scientific and the poetic and treats them both with equal felicity. The volume also contains something that is exceptionally valuable and cannot be found in English: a compact and serviceable grammar of Old Saxon and an appended glossary that defines all of the vocabulary found in this edited version of the Hêliand.

Published by: West Virginia University Press

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The present work was written partly in order to present the H�liand to English speakers who may lack knowledge of German, a language in which the overwhelming body of scholarship on Old Saxon is written, and partly to provide a version of the H�liand in ...

Introduction

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pp. 1-2

The Old Saxon life of Christ, which was composed in about the year 830 and given its name by the scholar Johann Andreas Schmeller in the first edition titled H�liand oder die alts�chsische Evangelien-Harmonie (1830), belongs to the 'best' literature written ...

The Historical Setting of the H�liand

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pp. 3-15

The Old Saxon telling of the gospel, titled H�liand (Savior) by J. A. Schmeller in his edition of 1830, was not written in a vacuum but was, as is everything, a product of its place and time. The H�liand was composed in what is now part of northern Germany in the ...

The Work

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pp. 16-25

The Old Saxon H�liand is preserved in 5,983 lines of verse edited from the M and C manuscripts (cf. THE MANUSCRIPTS below). The work was composed during the long period of decline of Germanic culture and slow encroachment of European culture during

A Comparison of the 'M' vs. 'C' Manuscripts

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pp. 26-28

See THE WORK for a description of the two principal manuscripts of the H�liand. Here we present a side-by-side comparison of the same excerpt - lines 2906b to 2919a - in order to illustrate particularly the kinds of orthographic distinctions that obtain between ...

Excerpts from the H�liand

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pp. 29-132

Commentary to the Readings

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pp. 133-251

Comments on individual sections of readings from the H�liand are marked with �. The intention of the comments is not to be exhaustive but rather to indicate points of cultural and historical interest.¹ Translations of German citations have been provided ...

References

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pp. 253-262

A Brief Outline of Old Saxon Grammar

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pp. 263-292

Glossary

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pp. 293-360

E-ISBN-13: 9781933202822
E-ISBN-10: 1933202823
Print-ISBN-13: 9780937058640
Print-ISBN-10: 0937058645

Page Count: 360
Publication Year: 2002

Series Title: Medieval European Studies
Series Editor Byline: Patrick Conner