Histoire poétique des Mérovingiens by Godefroid Kurth
"Histoire poétique des Mérovingiens" by Godefroid Kurth is a historiographical study written in the late 19th century. It argues that early Frankish history was filtered through epic song and oral tradition, then woven into written chronicles, and sets out to distinguish legendary motifs from reliable facts. The focus is on how Germanic epic forms shaped narratives about the first Merovingian kings and how to read classic sources with that lens. The opening
of this study explains how the project arose from noticing the patchwork quality of Gregory of Tours’ account of Clovis, leading to research that uncovered a strong oral-traditional layer in Merovingian historiography. The introduction defines epic as the primitive form of history, shows how it long coexisted with written annals, and surveys the modern debate—from early insights (Wolff, the Grimm brothers, Fauriel, Ampère, Schlegel) through missteps and resistance (notably Douhet, Ranke, and Fustel) to firmer philological demonstrations (Gaston Paris, Darmesteter, and especially Rajna). Kurth then states his aim: to apply these results systematically to Merovingian beginnings, sorting legend from fact and tracing how stories evolved. At the start of Book I, he sketches the sources by showing that Germanic peoples preserved their past in songs (citing Tacitus, Ammianus, Jordanes), and he illustrates with compact case studies from Gothic and Lombard tradition—figures like Hermanaric, Attila, Theodoric, Alboin, and Authari—to demonstrate how epic patterns saturate the earliest historical narratives. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Kurth, Godefroid, 1847-1916 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 24023867 |
| Title | Histoire poétique des Mérovingiens |
| Original Publication | Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1893. |
| Credits | Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) |
| Language | French |
| LoC Class | DC: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: France, Andorra, Monaco |
| Subject | France -- History -- To 987 |
| Subject | Merovingians |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78135 |
| Release Date | Mar 7, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 229 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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