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

Author(s): Seiichi Suzuki

Series: Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 86

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter, Year: 2014

This book is a formal and functional study of the three distinct meters of Old Norse eddic poetry, fornyrðislag, málaháttr, and ljóðaháttr. Itprovides 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.