The Heroic Age

Description

In this book, first published in 1912 as part of the "Cambridge Archaeological and Ethnological Series", Chadwick compares Teutonic and Greek heroic literature, to shed light on both. This was the first discussion of his theory of a Heroic Age, which he was to expand in a three-volume work written with his wife, Nora Kershaw Chadwick, "The Growth of Literature". Chadwick examines topics such as supernatural, religious, and mythic elements in Germanic, Scandinavian, and Homeric literature deriving from an older oral tradition, and also what they can tell us about the societies from which they derive. He uses philology and archaeological evidence as well as historical and literary sources, and shows how many common themes emerge in the different traditions. He argues that a heroic literature is something that appears in many cultures at different periods in history and which therefore requires a knowledge of anthropology for full understanding. Preface; 1. The early narrative poetry of the Teutonic peoples; 2. The Heroic Age of the Teutonic peoples; 3. Scene and nationality in the heroic stories; 4. The origin and history of the heroic poems; 5. The poetry and minstrelsy of early times; 6. Supernatural elements in the heroic stories; 7. Mythical elements in the heroic poems; 8. The use of fiction in the heroic poems; 9. The Heroic Age of Greece; 10. The Homeric poems; 11. Early Greek poetry and minstrelsy; 12. Supernatural elements in the Homeric poems; 13. Myth in the Homeric poems; 14. Fiction in the Homeric poems; 15. The common characteristics of Teutonic and Greek heroic poems; 16. Society in the Heroic Age; 17. Government in the Heroic Age; 18. Religion in the Heroic Age; 19. The causes and antecedent condition of the Heroic Age; Notes; Addenda et corrigenda; Index.