IV
[The Style of the Poems]
| Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse | [133] |
| English and Norse | [134] |
| Different besetting temptations in England and the North | [136] |
| English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry) | [137] |
| Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the lyrical forms | [137] |
| Lyrical element in Norse narrative | [138] |
| Volospá, the greatest of all the Northern poems | [139] |
| False heroics; Krákumál (Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok) | [140] |
| A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances | [141] |
V
[The Progress of Epic]
| Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter | [144] |
| The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni compared—Atlakviða, Atlamál, Oddrúnargrátr | [147] |
| Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory of Kriemhild's revenge | [149] |
| The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in Atlakviða, apparently confused and ill recollected in the other two poems | [150] |
| But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which made it impossible to use the original story | [152] |
| Atlamál, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents from heroic tradition the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school | [153] [155] |
| The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry and not of casual popular variants | [156] |
VI
[Beowulf]
| Beowulf claims to be a single complete work | [158] |
| Want of unity: a story and a sequel | [159] |
| More unity in Beowulf than in some Greek epics. The first 2200 lines form a complete story, not ill composed | [160] |
| Homeric method of episodes and allusions in Beowulf and Waldere | [162] [163] |
| Triviality of the main plot in both parts of Beowulf—tragic significance in some of the allusions | [165] |
| The characters in Beowulf abstract types | [165] |
| The adventures and sentiments commonplace, especially in the fight with the dragon | [168] |
| Adventure of Grendel not pure fantasy | [169] |
| Grendel's mother more romantic | [172] |
| Beowulf is able to give epic dignity to a commonplace set of romantic adventures | [173] |