The Meters of Old Norse Eddic Poetry: Common Germanic Inheritance and North Germanic Innovation | National Humanities Center

Work of the Fellows: Monographs

The Meters of Old Norse Eddic Poetry: Common Germanic Inheritance and North Germanic Innovation

By Seiichi Suzuki (NHC Fellow, 2012–13)

Poetics; Poetic Meter; Philology; Linguistics; Poetry; Middle Ages; Edda

Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014

From the publisher’s description:

This book is a formal and functional study of the three distinct meters of Old Norse eddic poetry, fornyrðislagmálaháttr, and ljóðaháttr. It provides a systematic account of these archaic meters, both synchronic and diachronic, and from a comparative Germanic perspective; particularly concerned with Norse innovations in metrical practice, Suzuki explores how and why the three meters were shaped in West Scandinavia through divergent reorganization of the Common Germanic metrical system. The book constitutes the first comprehensive work on the meters of Old Norse eddic poetry in a single coherent framework; with thorough data presentation, detailed philological analysis, and sophisticated linguistic explanation, the book will be of enormous interest to Old Germanic philologists/linguists, medievalists, as well as metrists of all persuasions. A strong methodological advantage of this work is the extensive use of inferential statistical techniques for giving empirical support to specific analyses and claims being adduced. Another strength is a cognitive dimension, a (re)construction of a prototype-based model of the metrical system and its overall characterization as an integral part of the poetic knowledge that governed eddic poets' verse-making technique in general.

Subjects
Fiction and Poetry / Literature / Poetics / Poetic Meter / Philology / Linguistics / Poetry / Middle Ages / Edda /

Suzuki, Seiichi (NHC Fellow, 2012–13). The Meters of Old Norse Eddic Poetry: Common Germanic Inheritance and North Germanic Innovation. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.