Ancient Germanic Poetry. Canons and Interpretations

The canons of the ancient German poetic art are discussed in this book as a tool for the formation of poetic language, and as a source of new cultural information. The starting point for the analysis is laudatory poetry skaldic with its strictly regulated rules and lexical metric models. Metric skaldic seen in the book as a result of systemic transformation Edda metrics and a kind of linguistic experiment, the principle of conditionality absolutizes linguistic sign. "The loss of sons," Egil Skallagrimsona (X c.), And "List Ynglings" Todolva Hvinskogo (IX c.) Appear in this perspective as a genre divergent branches from the main trunk skaldic poetry of interest for understanding the possibilities inherent in it and requiring new methods of textual analysis. Central to the book is a comment to the "loss of sons" - one of the most famous and difficult to interpret skaldic works.