Publisher's Synopsis
This text develops an hypothesis about the interaction of lordship and tradition, and about how such tradition was generated and propagated among the peoples of barbarian Europe. It shows how orally transmitted tribal and dynastic tradition was crucial to the legitimization of political authority. It contributes to literary historical scholarship by showing how pre-Christian oral tradition was politically significant to early medieval aristocracies, thereby elucidating the social context in which texts like "Beowulf" originated and within which they must be interpreted. This study of the subject draws on an extensive range of evidence relating to a variety of early Germanic and Celtic peoples.
