SOURCE: “The Concept of the Oral Formula as an Impediment to Our Understanding of Medieval Oral Poetry,” Medievalia et Humanistica, No. 8, 1977, pp. 63-76.

[In the following essay, Curschmann contends that dogmatic advocates of the theory of oral-formulaic composition have rendered a disservice to Nibelungenlied studies by, among other things, relying too much on scientific analysis and failing to take proper notice of the nature of literature in the Middle Ages.]

Over the past quarter-century or so, the Theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition has exerted the most profound influence in several disciplines that have to do with epic literature and related genres—living, ancient, medieval, European, Asian, African.¹ It has set in motion and continues to inform a truly international and interdisciplinary process of re-evaluation of traditional critical norms. In view of this it may seem odd at first that Germanic—more specifically, German—studies have been rather slow to respond. Or, to put it differently and a little more precisely, why is it that, while a fair number of Germanists from this side of the Atlantic have done their best to promote the cause of this theory, there has, until recently, been only the faintest echo from the other side?

Up to a point, American scholars are justified in chastising their German counterparts for a certain lack of past comprehension and present interest. But the situation is not quite as simple as Ruth Hartzell Firestone makes it sound when she says that “German scholarship could neither understand nor accept the implications of [John] Meier's observations [on the nature of oral traditions] at that time [1909]” or that even Theodor Frings and Maximilian Braun, his Slavist colleague, failed “to comprehend fully the nature of oral composition.”² Notions such as Meier's have, at least in some areas (e.g., the ballad, and folksong in general), played an important role in twentieth-century German scholarship; the work of Frings and Braun, practically contemporaneous with Parry's, resulted in a different, not less valid, theory of oral composition;³ at least in one case, which will be discussed later, the concept of multiple authorship of a traditional text was arrived at without recourse to any particular theory; and as a result of all this, German Germanists might, in turn, be justified in regarding as an exercise in single-minded quantification much of what goes on in the relentless pursuit of the Theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition.

Useful as it is, The Haymes Bibliography of the Oral Theory (1973) also raises a clear warning signal. Undertakings of this type are a sure sign that their subject is becoming academic, frozen in its own original premises. The Oral Theory, or, for short, the Theory, deserves a better fate, and it is particularly in this context of critical discussion of some fundamental questions that recent developments in medieval German studies merit attention and comment.

For medieval studies, in general, the most fundamental of these questions has, of course, always been whether it is legitimate at all to apply a theory developed pragmatically in the field of a living tradition to medieval literary production. Before turning to the text that was bound to become the pièce de résistance in any systematic discussion of basic issues, the Nibelungenlied, I should therefore like to illustrate, with three concrete examples, the general spectrum of attitudes that have been taken in this regard. (1) Armin Wishard's call for a “revaluation of the Spielmannsepen” provides an example of unquestioning acceptance, including the acceptance of Milman Parry's original definition of the formula which quite a few recent studies in other fields have found in need of modification.⁴ (2) Ruth Hartzell Firestone has investigated a different corpus, texts from the thirteenth-century Dietrich cycle. Tempered by several reservations regarding the direct applicability of the Theory in such cases, for example, the question of end rhyme versus assonance, her initial research produced statistics which she judged to be inconclusive, although three of the five poems revealed a formula density exceeding the accepted minimum requirement for orally composed texts (p. 3). Submitting to this verdict, she attempts to clarify the picture through an application of Vladimir Propp's descriptive method of folktale analysis, thereby replacing one extraneous theory by another, rather than meeting the texts on their own ground. (3) Lars Lönnroth, on the other hand, to quote an example from Scandinavian studies, has taken full account of the special living conditions of his sources, that is, the specifically North-Germanic combination of poetry and prose in the Sagas. In this context the Eddic lays appear to him as “carefully polished products of poetic craftsmanship, as rhetorical and dramatic showpieces meticulously preserved from one performance to the next, where they would be the especially esteemed highlights of a legendary and, presumably highly variable prose story.” That does not exclude the possibility “that a certain element of oral-formulaic improvisation sometimes entered the performance when the performer's memorization was less than perfect” (Lönnroth's emphasis).⁵ The Theory has provided the incentive to take another close look at specifically medieval conditions of delivery and transmission, and it remains extremely useful in matters of detail as well, precisely because it is being introduced with critical restraint.

For anyone who is at all inclined to consider certain medieval texts in terms of oral traditions that produce them, the Nibelungenlied is probably the most interesting (and challenging) German text, and, conversely, it is also the text which stands to gain most from such attention. The main point at issue is, naturally, the mode of composition of that work which has been preserved in over thirty manuscripts and manuscript fragments representing, basically, three versions, which are, in turn, represented by three thirteenth-century manuscripts, A, B, and C. However, this question is inextricably bound up with two other considerations: How and in what form did the material develop from the late Migration Period to the time around 1200, and how do we explain the considerable textual diversity which exists between A, B, and C, as well as within each of these groups? Several recent studies have attempted to clarify this picture in one way or another and from different points of view.⁶

The first of these, by Helmut Brackert, looks primarily at the history of the text after its codification, without advancing any firm conclusions as to what exactly accounts for this diversity. Brackert's meticulous investigation of manuscript readings directly challenges the basic assumption underlying the classical stemma established by Wilhelm Braune: that the three main branches of the tradition can be subsumed under one archetype and, beyond that, one original. One must assume some form of oral interference throughout the thirteenth century, second injections of “genuine” Nibelungen material, and at the beginning of the written tradition known to us stand several oral versions. The existence of one poet who “was greater than all the others” (Brackert, p. 170) and to whom the text owes its high degree of internal cohesiveness can be acknowledged, but his version has no higher claim to authenticity than any of the other oral productions that were in use concurrently during, as well as after, the period of incipient codification of the material.

Based as it is on simple, if highly imaginative and trenchant, textual criticism, and not on any particular theory of poetic diction, Brackert's analysis has indeed yielded the most persuasive evidence so far of the presence of a strong oral element in the Nibelungenlied tradition well into the thirteenth century. It is in the area of manuscript diffusion and all its aspects, the specifically medieval condition of distribution, that any further explication of the Nibelungenlied in terms of its oral past and present should have begun or, at the very least, looked for support or corrective evidence.

But that would have meant giving up the criterion of formulaic usage as the chief, if not sole, determinant and characteristic of oral tradition, and in this respect advocates of the Theory in the context of medieval literature are entirely dogmatic. It never even occurred to Edward Haymes, who of course knew Brackert's study, to weave this notion of multiple authorship at least into his overall conclusion, which consistently speaks of “the” Nibelungenlied (p. 107). Haymes's own approach is essentially synchronic, and he simply gives statistics based on the vulgate—statistics for two formulaic systems, with a view not only to demonstrating formulaic content but also to relating formulaic usage to metrical structure.⁷ Comparing these to similar statistics obtained from a contemporary example of highly literate narrative, Gotfrid's Tristan, he concludes that the Nibelungenlied is an orally composed work.

Franz Baeuml's approach is more explicitly past-oriented, at least in his first paper, written in collaboration with Donald Ward. He has analysed some fifty stanzas from various segments of the poem, which show a particularly high degree of formulaic density, and which he uses to counter the methodological premises underlying Andreas Heusler's classical reconstruction of the poem's genesis. This verse material is, Baeuml and Ward say, obviously of an oral tradition, and this, in turn, means that a) many details that Heusler attributed to the last master are, in fact, much older and b) no precise description of earlier stages in the development of the material can be given, since oral traditions do not produce fixed texts.

In general terms, at least, Haymes and Baeuml are in agreement by viewing the Nibelungenlied as a poem with an exclusively oral past. This may be conceded as a matter of heuristic principle, despite the fact that, as I shall discuss later, the formulaic diction of the extant text is no doubt multiple in origin.

Regarding the manner in which the extant text was composed, Baeuml and Haymes are in agreement only insofar as they, unlike Brackert, recognize only one text, which must, by definition, have been written. Beyond that, their views differ substantially. For Haymes, the Nibelungenlied, as we have it, is a dictated (or self-dictated) oral composition (p. 104), in line with his dictum that “as long as a text displays all the characteristics of traditional language, it is, if only in the technical sense, an ‘oral’ text” (p. 37). For Baeuml, the transposition of the narrative from oral into written form was “not the work of an oral but that of an educated, courtly poet” (p. 362).

In the context of his first article this statement came as an abrupt aside open to misunderstanding, but Baeuml has since clarified his position in a paper written in collaboration with Agnes Bruno. In the earlier instance stanzas were selected for their value in the argument against Heusler. Taken as a whole, the poem is actually very uneven in formulaic density per stanza (from 85 to 25 percent), and this means that we have here a learned, literate poet who, in turn, worked from a dictated text.⁸ Of the latter, Baeuml and Bruno say that, as long as we have the technique (means) of composition in mind and the text is predominantly formulaic, “it belongs to the oral tradition, even if it was composed on the typewriter” (p. 485).

Two comments are in order at this point. It is remarkable—and revealing—that two studies for which formulaic usage is the common critical denominator can come to such different conclusions regarding the status of the work under examination. Moreover, the formulations used by both scholars to characterize as oral the dictated text assumed by both in effect dispose of the Theory as a meaningful tool of literary criticism, for they actually blur the theoretical distinction between written and oral without realizing its critical potential.

While Baeuml and Bruno concede, in fact, that the formulation quoted above might be taken as an exaggeration “of the concepts of ‘oral’ and ‘written’ to the point of meaninglessness” (p. 485, n. 17), they already construct a new dichotomy. The new argument in this second paper fulfills a dual function. It is meant to support the application of the Theory on socio-anthropological grounds and to illuminate further the categorical difference between written and oral in the light of yet another parallel between twentieth-century Yugoslavia and late twelfth-century Germany. According to Baeuml and Bruno, the parallel consists in the fact that an analphabetic, and therefore oral, culture exists within (or below) a dominant literate, written culture. What once was the prevalent mode of literary communication also among the members of the upper class has now become the hallmark of the literature of the disadvantaged, and the step from oral to written therefore entails a drastic “change of perception” of the same narrative material (p. 481). The man who re-worked the dictated text of the Nibelungenlied worked for a literate society with a new “perceptual orientation,” as Baeuml and his collaborator Edda Spielmann say in the latest published continuation of the argument. It is beginning to look as though the chief purpose of these investigations into the oral character of the Nibelungenlied has been, after all, to stress the literary character of the extant text, where this literate perception permits oral formulas to be used (and appreciated) as “ironic” statements reflecting conscious distance from the tradition (see especially p. 254 ff.). All this seems to be based on the unevenness in formula density discovered by the computer.

Few would deny that the Nibelungenlied frequently reflects upon itself, that is, its traditional subject matter—the same could be said of Beowulf. But does this presuppose an absolute juxtaposition of analphabetic and literate cultures? Brackert's findings completely undermine this view as far as the Nibelungenlied is concerned, and Hans Fromm calls it anachronistic on general grounds. The analphabetic lay culture of the late twelfth century, he says, occupied a position that was, if anything, above that of the school-educated clergy and its (few) lay pupils: Literacy did not confer social status (Fromm, p. 58ff.). Although this broadside misses a couple of fine points in Baeuml's argument and could not take into account the elaborations advanced in his latest paper, it is essentially on target. One might, in fact, add that for centuries the literate culture of the monasteries and, later, the episcopal courts seems to have been quite happily—if mischievously and, for the most part, unproductively—wedded to the “subculture” of indigenous oral tradition. Indirect testimony abounds: from the Fulda monks who slipped the text of the Hildebrandslied into a Latin theological codex to one of the most conspicuous church dignitaries of his time, Bishop Gunther of Bamberg, who preferred listening to stories about Attila and Theodoric to reading Augustin and Gregory. Fabulas curiales his irate friend Meinhard calls them!⁹ And let us not forget the British scribe Lucas who, in 1170, revived the spirits of a defeated Danish army with recitals of memoratis ueterum uirtutibus, a semi-learned man who behaves in a way highly reminiscent of the earliest accounts of how (oral) heroic lays were used (and composed).¹⁰ As opposed to the recording of a text that would never have been written down, had not the modern scholar been on the spot and brought about an abrupt media transfer, medieval written traditions of originally oral material are the eventual outcome of a process of gradual cultural amalgamation.

Fromm himself has described the situation of around 1200 in terms of a symbiotic relationship between written and oral and attempted, on this basis, to reconcile Brackert's findings with the positive results of the debate on the oral composition of the Nibelungenlied. A “symbiotic culture” in which the institution of public oral recitation before aristocratic lay audiences constantly mediates between oral and written (p. 60) creates “intermediate types” of epic composition (not to be confused with “transitional texts”!) (p. 60). Even the courtly romance becomes part of this concept: In subject matter it looks towards the aristocratic, illiterate lay culture, but it has no oral past and depends on literacy for its existence.

Another of these intermediate types is represented by the Nibelungenlied and its branches. Here, Fromm, in addition to recalling Parry's and Lord's experiences, draw on his own extensive experience with the Finnokarelian material and his field work in the Faroes. His conclusion is that the textual congruity among the Nibelungenlied manuscripts is much too extensive not to reflect a written original. This written version existed side by side with oral ones but was separated from them by the “higher degree of linguistic and compositional consciousness” of one particularly gifted individual. At the same time, this individual was prevented from excessive innovation by his audience's knowledge of these concurrent oral versions. In the process of further transmission of his text this “symbiotic competition” makes itself felt in two ways: the continuing influence of the oral tradition and the demands of modern taste that bring about amelioration and refinement (pp. 61-63).

One need not agree with every detail of this analysis to accept the principle that, rather than exclude each other—be it as a matter of technical procedure in composition or of a radical perceptual change—the oral and the literary are closely intertwined in a case such as this. Beyond that, and along with the discussion that preceded it, the idea of a symbiotic culture leads to several general conclusions regarding the applicability of the Theory to medieval situations.

The first is elementary but bears re-stating: Any such attempt must be preceded by careful study of the living conditions and cultural ambience of the document in question. Only in this way can we learn whether, where, and how to apply.

Second, the chief obstacle in the path of this seemingly self-evident approach is the concept of the poetic formula itself and the way in which it is linked to the concept of “oral.” That is to say, whether we are “for” or “against” application, we have become obsessed with a definition of formulaic usage that is bound to be at variance with what is formulaic in medieval poetic usage. This conclusion is re-enforced by the work of Hans Dieter Lutz, who has addressed himself to this problem with a brief (and rather abstract) critique of the Theory and its application by Baeuml and his collaborators and with a book which seeks to develop a method of describing (medieval) formulaic usage in precise quantitative terms.¹¹

In spite of the counterarguments advanced by Haymes in the new foreword to his dissertation (p. VII ff.), Lutz seems to me to be essentially correct in stating that the Theory provides a descriptive, not an explanatory or analytical model: It “knows” that what it describes is oral narrative, and hence it cannot be used, except with a great deal of reservation and caution, to answer such questions as “Why is a medieval text formulaic or non-formulaic?” Nevertheless, Lutz's proposals for a future “Ersatztheorie” seem to me more to the point. Among the things that this new theory would have to take into account, according to Lutz, is the fact that in German epic verse the relation between metre and formula is not as one-sided as it is in Serbocroatian verse, according to Lord. In view of Haymes's remark that the example from Dukus Horant used by Lutz (“Zur Formelhaftigkeit,” p. 444) is an isolated aberration on the part of the author or the scribe (p. IX), I should like to state quite emphatically what everyone with some experience in the thirteenth-century heroic epic and similar epic forms knows only too well: Formulas, formula systems, and stereotyped diction can at any time supersede metrical regularity as the ordering principle of the text.¹² At least as high on my own list of major factors to be considered is the use of end rhyme, or, more specifically, the conventional use of a small number of trivial rhymes which creates its own “system” of formulaic response, producing equivalences that are indistinguishable from what the Theory would designate as correspondences resulting from the process of oral composition.

Of course, beneath all this still lurk two questions which have bothered critics, as well as thoughtful adherents, of the Theory almost from the beginning: Given the assumption that a certain formula density denotes an orally composed text, how can this density be established in exact statistical terms; and how can formulaic usage be defined in a way which makes it susceptible to such scientific analysis? The methods and procedures which Lutz has used to provide at least a preliminary answer derive from information and communication theory, and for this first test of their applicability he has confined himself to one, the most simple, type of formula, the noun-adjective combination. The analysis is based on four carefully chosen epic texts representing different literary backgrounds and trends between 1150 and 1250.

To describe Lutz's computer-aided operation in sufficient detail to do justice to its complexity would fill several pages. I shall confine myself to a few general observations. In line with Lutz's overall position, his “operational definition” of the formula seeks to ascertain the presence or absence of formulaic diction, not to interpret the results. The immediate goal is to identify formulas, irrespective of their provenance and function, and the resulting concept of the formula is bound to be at variance with all definitions advanced within the general framework of the Theory. It allows not only for varying relative position of article, adjective, and noun in what amounts to six phenotypes of the basic model but also for the injection of various kinds of lexical qualifiers into this basic model. Thus der haiden werc vil spaehe can, if other conditions are met, be considered a formulaic variant of daz spaehe werc.

The operation itself is relational and seems to work—at least in the sense that the statistical results take into account every factor that could conceivably be of significance, for example, the total numbers of adjectives, nouns, and noun-adjective combinations in the text under investigation, the length of that text, and the relation between the absolute frequency of a given noun-adjective combination and the average frequency of the respective adjective in combination with other nouns. This system also permits comparison between different texts and distinguishes between word sequence whose formulaic character is evident from the text which is the primary target of the investigation (“Formel qua Text”) and phrases which turn out to be formulaic only after consideration of other texts, as well (“Formel qua Tradition”). Finally, it opens up the prospect of a general typology of formulaic language in quantitative, functional, sociogeographic, as well as socio-literary terms (diagram on p. 131), recognizing that a theory which seeks to explain the phenomenon of formulaic usage for this period cannot possibly exclude the notion of multiple origin and purpose.

It remains to be seen whether Lutz or anyone else will ever find the time and muster the energy required to expand this model and advance the investigation to a point where the results become sufficiently clear to warrant a systematic re-appraisal of the relationship between formulaic diction and orality in Middle High German or other medieval texts.

This brings me to my third conclusion. We have become so mesmerized by the specificity of the claim made by the Theory—absolute distinction between written and oral creation—that we have forgotten all the other aspects of oral culture which pertain to the production and dissemination of vernacular literature in the Middle Ages—aspects that in many cases are just as or more important than that of how, exactly, the text was composed. We have forgotten, in other words, that in a culture which is still predominantly oral, in the general sense, there is no room for an absolute juxtaposition of oral and written, in a specific sense, and that when we use the term “oral” in speaking about the Middle Ages we are of necessity speaking of a cultural phenomenon that is infinitely more varied and complex than that from which the Theory derives.

How does the institution of oral performance influence the external proportions (and internal cohesion) of written texts? Examples and questions range from the major works of Wolfram and their subdivision into “books” to a fifteenth-century redaction of the thirteenth-century Wolfdietrich which concludes with the statement that the narrative has been condensed from 700 to 333 stanzas so that it can be presented in one session (auf einem sitzen). Oral proportions are not the concern of oral singers alone. What are the sources and what is the ultimate purpose behind the directness of address and repartee with which a poet like Wolfram communicates with his audience? He is the only one among the German writers of courtly romance working around 1200 who makes direct reference to the traditional heroic poetry current at the same time and in the same circles. It is quite possible that his own stance of public oral communication has something to do with his predilection for or, at least, close acquaintance with this genre. However this may be, his style reflects the same symbiotic culture in which the Nibelungenlied surfaced as a written document, only this time we are looking at it from the viewpoint of a literate poet who reacts to an oral environment.

But I want to return to the Nibelungenlied for a concrete example that may show in which direction the more relaxed attitude advocated by Fromm and implicit in Brackert's analysis may develop new perspectives (although it may at the same time revive old issues). Chapters six through eleven, some four hundred stanzas in the vulgate version, relate Gunther's courtship of Brünhild, an episode which is firmly intertwined with Sigfrid's courtship of Krimhild: Krimhild's hand is the price for Sigfrid's assistance in the matter; the whole affair culminates in a double wedding; and the manner in which Sigfrid assists Gunther becomes the root cause of the following quarrel of the queens and Sigfrid's death. Hence, when modern scholars speak of a hypothetical Lay of Brünhild as one, if not the chief, source of the first part of the poem, they usually mean a poem which went considerably beyond the limited narrative framework of Gunther's courtship. If one looks at the manuscript tradition with heightened awareness of the potential presence of oral “interference,” one detects something else as well: the existence and continuous influence of a (probably oral) lay of Brünhild which told the story of Gunther's courtship more or less on its own and which I shall call The Short Lay of Brünhild.

Branches A, B, and C disagree as to where exactly chapter six begins, and they do so in a way which rather isolates the stanza which appears as no. 325 in the Bartsch-de Boor edition. Here are the three versions of this text (from Batt's synoptic, diplomatic reprint):

Iteniwiv maere                    sich hůben vber Rin.
man seite daz da were                    manich magedin.
der dahte imeine werben                    des kunich Gvnthers mvt
daz dvhte sine rechen                    vn die heeren alle gůt.

A (324)

Itniwe maere                    sich hvben vber Rin.
man sagte daz da waere                    manech scone magedin.
der gedaht im eine erwerben                    Gvnther der kvnech gvt.
da von begvnde dem rechen                    vil sere hohen der mvt.

B (323)

Iteniwe maere                    sich hvben vmben vmben Rin.
ez sprachen zv dem kunige                    die hosten mage sin,
warvmbe er niht ennaeme                    ein wip zv siner ê.
da sprach der chunic riche:                    “ine wil niht langer
biten me.”

C (327)

In A this stanza opens the sixth chapter, in B it concludes the fifth, and in C it forms a different kind of conclusion to chapter five, with the help of an additional stanza, C 328. The editors of the standard text have in this case followed A, instead of B, and stanza 324 of the Bartsch-de Boor edition does indeed provide the most logical conclusion for chapter five, at least as far as A and B are concerned: It foreshadows things to come, as do many stanzas in this position, and, along with 323, it responds quite pointedly to the end of chapter three (137; 138). On the other hand, stanza 326, rather than 325, is the logical opening for chapter six in all three versions: The phrase ez was ein küneginne gesezzen über se (326,1) marks the beginning of a new story or major episode in highly typical, stereotyped fashion (echoing, by the way, the introductions of Krimhild and Sigfrid in chapters one and two, respectively), and what follows immediately—description of Brünhild's activities and re-introduction of Gunther as ein riter wolgetan and vogt von Rine, her potential suitor (326-329)—is completely in keeping with this style.

With its announcement of “tidings never heard before” that prompt Gunther to think of winning one of the many lovely maidens across the Rhine—the reading of AB—stanza 325 is not only redundant but completely undermines the effect of the following introduction. Indeed, all three branches of the manuscript tradition seem to treat it as a kind of foreign body that has to be neutralized somehow. Does it represent an attempt, made at the stage of a common archetype, and not very successfully as it turns out, to provide a smoother transition after the “master” had opened chapter six rather abruptly by adhering closely to another, independent version of the episode? Or is it this stanza 325 which records or paraphrases the beginning of another popular version? The redactor may have wanted to provide the reciter with an alternative introduction closer to the way in which the audience was accustomed to hearing the story told, and it may even have been a marginal entry at first.

Version C gives a substantially different context, including a substantially different wording of stanza 325 which is elaborated in C 328 and, early in chapter six, C 332. This arrangement in C leads into chapter six in a way which parallels most closely the standard introduction to such courtship tales: The “tidings never heard before” are that Gunther's relatives urge him to take a wife, he agrees to take counsel in the matter, and his choice of Brünhild is indeed made during such a meeting. This different narrative patterning is not entirely confined to C, though. In essential agreement with the spirit of C and in contrast to B, which at this point comments on Gunther's elation at the thought of marriage, version A says in 325,4 (A 324,4) that his intentions were welcomed by his men.¹³ It seems highly likely, then, that A and C reflect, in different degrees and independently, the motivation for Gunther's courtship as The Short Lay of Brünhild conceived it, in line with one of the standard variants of the popular courtship pattern.

Unlike C, which is not only longer but also gives a fairly consistent alternative interpretation of the material, A as a whole is quite close to B. However, there is one important exception which, when seen in conjunction with what has just been discussed, provides the most telling clue to The Short Lay of Brünhild: It is 61 stanzas shorter. In this connection it has often been noted, but I know of no attempt to interpret the fact, that no less than 55 of these stanzas concern the Brünhild episode, from chapter six to the end of chapter eleven.¹⁴ Moreover, this tendency toward a more concise rendering is most evident, by far, in chapters six and seven, the core of the Brünhild story, if it is viewed mainly as a story of (successful) courtship. It is hard to believe that this two-fold concentration is pure coincidence: A is, in this case, closer than B or C, at least in format, to a type of narrative which told the story in sketchier fashion, with primary emphasis on the theme of courtship, as such, and less (probably much less) attention to the wider context.

This hypothetical Short Lay of Brünhild probably fit the description of a poem which Wolfgang Mohr, as early as 1942, postulated as one of the sources of the Nibelungenlied on purely stylistic grounds, that is, the close stylistic affinity between the Brünhild episode and the so-called “Spielmannsepen.” He called it a poem which had taken as its subject “one sector of the well-known Sigfrid legend and given it colour and a life of its own in an independent poetic production.¹⁵ Beyond that, we can now say that the relationship between this lay and the Nibelungenlied was not confined to one moment of contact. The Short Lay of Brünhild and the evolving written versions of the great epic are very likely to have crossed paths more than once. We may never understand the details fully, but in general the picture is reasonably clear: What we observe here is part of a constant debate between competing versions and even types of narrative dealing with the same material in either written or oral form. I have little doubt that the Nibelungenklage, the poem which, purporting to be the authentic conclusion of the story of the Nibelungen, follows the Lied from the beginning of the known manuscript tradition but is now generally regarded as a secondary commentary on one or the other of the written versions, is, in fact, the record of the situation in which a written tradition begins serious competition with oral ones.¹⁶ The Klage “quotes” from a tradition that is still very much in flux: This is apparent in its rendering of individual incidents, such as the murder of young Ortlieb, as well as in the way in which its anonymous author toys continuously (and inconsistently) with questions of source, transmission, and previous knowledge on the part of the audience. A closer re-examination may well show that this poem, which accommodates much of the substance of the story in indirect presentation, as it were, is an early literary experiment that actually paves the way for the process of poeticization and codification that produces the Lied as a text through which poet and audience finally face the old tales on their own generic terms. At any rate, it is this phenomenon of active interdependence of the two cultures that we must make part of the critical apparatus we use to interpret the Nibelungenlied as a work of art.

Notes

1. For a recent survey see A. B. Lord, “Perspectives on Recent Work on Oral Literature,” FMLS, 10 (1974), 187-210. A first version of my article served, along with others, as the basis for discussion at a seminar on oral poetry at the eighty-ninth Annual Meeting of the MLA in 1974 in New York; it has been thoroughly revised and updated.

2. Ruth R. Hartzell Firestone, Elements of Traditional Structure in the Couplet Epics of the Late MHG Dietrich Cycle, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, No. 170 (Göppingen: A. Kümmerle, 1975), p. 26, and ibid., note 9. Cf. John Meier, Werden und Wesen des Volksepos, 1909; rpt. in Das deutsche Versepos, ed. Walter J. Schröder (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), pp. 143-181.

3. See my article, “Oral Poetry in Medieval English, French, and German Literature: Some Notes on Recent Research,” Speculum, 42 (1967), pp. 36-52. An important study of traditional composition following in Th. Frings's footsteps is by Hinrich Siefken, Überindividuelle Formen und der Aufbau des Kudrunepos, Medium Aevum, No. 11 (München: Fink, 1967). Manfred Caliebe has made an attempt to combine the two approaches in his study, Dukus Horant: Studien zu seiner literarischen Tradition, Philologische Studien und Quellen, No. 70 (Berlin: Schmidt, 1973), esp. p. 87ff. (cf. my review, Speculum, 51 [1976], pp. 715-717).

4. A. Wishard, “Formulaic Composition in the Spielmannsepik,” PLL, 8 (1972), 243-251, esp. 251: The article is based on the author's unpublished dissertation, “Composition by Formula and Theme in the Middle High German Spielmannsepik,” University of Oregon 1970.

5. Lars Lönnroth, “Hjalmar's Death-Song and the Delivery of Eddic Poetry,” Speculum, 46 (1971), 1-20, pp. 10 and 18, respectively. Regarding the compositional technique behind the sagas as such, Carol J. Clover has written an astute analysis of narration in “tripartite scenes arranged paratactically in sequence” as “a fundamental point of contact with oral tale-telling.” “Scene in Saga Composition,” ANF, 89 (1974), 57-83, esp. p. 82.

6. Helmut Brackert, Beiträge zur Handschriftenkritik des Nibelungenliedes, Quellen und Forschungen, N.S. No. 11 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963). Franz H. Baeuml and Donald J. Ward, “Zur mündlichen Überlieferung des Nibelungenliedes,” DVLG, 41 (1967), 351-390. Edward Haymes, Mündliches Epos in mittelhochdeustcher Zeit, Dissertation, Erlangen, 1969; re-issued, with a new foreword, as Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, No 164 (Göppingen: A. Kümmerle, 1975). Franz H. Baeuml and Agnes M. Bruno, “Weiteres zur mündlichen Überlieferung des Nibelungenliedes,” DVLG, 46 (1972), 479-493. Hans Fromm, Der oder die Dichter des Nibelungenliedes? in Acta: IV. Congresso Latino-Americano de Estudos Germanisticos (São Paulo, 1974), 51-66. Franz H. Baeuml and Edda Spielmann, “From Illiteracy to Literacy: Prolegomena to a Study of the Nibelungenlied,” FMLS, 10 (1974), 248-259. See also my comments in “Spielmannsepik,” Wege und Ergebnisse der Forschung von 1907-1965. Mit Ergänzungen und Nachträgen bis 1967 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968), esp. pp. 102-108. A voluminous study of Germanic formulicity, which devotes some 250 of its over 600 pages specifically to the Nibelungenlied, unfortunately appeared too late to be incorporated into the following discussion: Teresa Pàroli, Sull' elemento formulare nella poesia Germanica antica, Biblioteca di ricerche linguistiche e filologiche, No. 4 (Rome: Istituto di Glottologia, 1975). Unless otherwise stated, Nibelungenlied references are to the critical edition of B, closest to the so-called vulgate text: Das Nibelungenlied, ed. Karl Bartsch-Helmut de Boor (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1972). A synoptic view of all three versions is provided by Michael S. Batts (ed.), Das Nibelungenlied (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1971).

7. From a purely methodological point of view this approach seems superior to that followed by Franz Baeuml, although it did apparently prevent Haymes from spotting substantial variations in formulaic density.

8. Baeuml-Bruno, p. 487, n. 20, and Baeuml-Spielmann, p. 249. It is in this methodological context, although not with the aim of proving this particular theory, that Agnes M. Bruno has carried out her computer analysis of the style of the Nibelungenlied (Toward a Quantitative Methodology for Stylistic Analyses, University of California Publications in Modern Philology, No. 109 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974]), and the great concordance published more recently by Baeuml in association with Eva-Maria Fallone (Compendia, No. 7. Leeds: W. S. Maney and Son, 1976) also contains indices designed especially “to serve research in the area of formulaic composition” (p. IX). For a voice against these kinds of quantification cf. Otto Holzapfel, “Homer—Nibelungenlied—Novalis: zur Diskussion um die Formelhaftigkeit epischer Dichtung,” Fabula, 15 (1974), 34-46; a more positive survey is by N. T. J. Voorwinden, “De dichter van het Nibelungenlied: zanger of schrijver?” in Literatuur en samenleving in de middeleeuwen (1976) 63-81.

9. On the overall significance of Meinhard's remarks, see Carl Erdmann, “Fabulae Curiales,” ZfdA, 73 (1936), 87-98.

10. Saxonis Grammatici “Gesta Danorum,” ed. Alfred Holder (Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1886), p. 583.

11. H. D. Lutz, “Zur Formelhaftigkeit mittelhochdeutscher Texte und zur ‘theory of oral-formulaic composition,’” DVLG, 48 (1974), 432-447; Zur Formelhaftigkeit der Adjektiv-Substantiv-Verbindung im Mittelhochdeutschen: Struktur-Statistik-Semantik Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, No. 52 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1975).

12. Lutz's example is, in turn, taken from the article by Werner Schwarz, which constitutes the first full-scale attempt at applying the Theory to a German (in this case Judeo-German) text: “Die weltliche Volksliteratur der Juden im Mittelalter,” in Judentum im Mittelalter, ed. P. Wilpert (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), pp. 72-91.

13. On the difference between the readings of A and B, with regard to the relative courtliness of the response, see Brackert.

14. For a general discussion of this material, see Brackert, p. 55ff. and 155ff.

15. W. Mohr, Review of Dietrich von Kralik, Die Sigfridtrilogie im Nibelungenlied und in der Thidrekssaga, in Dichtung und Volkstum, 42 (1942), 83-123, esp. p. 122.

16. See Karl Bertau, Deutsche Literatur im europäischen Mittelater, I: 800-1197 (München: C. H. Beck, 1972), esp. p. 744ff. Bertau's aphoristic comments on the problem point in the right direction, but a good deal of further investigation is needed, which I hope to carry out in the not-too-distant future.