CELTIC AND GERMANIC THEMES IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE

These essays cover a broad historical sweep from Indo-European origins to the present. Essays include: Weaving-Related Symbolism in Early European Literature; Heinrich von Morungen and the Fairy-Mistress Theme; Second Sight in the Poetry of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff; Cernunnos Arisen: The Celtic Element in Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns (with special reference to the way Hill and other English poets such as Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney have looked back to Celtic mythology as a belief system which gives more scope to natural forces than the Judaeo-Christian tradition); 'Mader er Mannz Gaman': The Theme of Friendship in Old Norse and Old English Wisdom Verse; Cultural Origin and the Presentation of an English Past: How Celtic a Figure is King Arthur in 19th Century English Literature?; The Southey Circle and Scandinavian Mythology and Literature; German Influences in The Mill on the Floss; and The Nibelungenlied and the Third Reich (on the ideological appropriations of the ancient Germanic legacy by the National Socialists). At all times the communal goal has been to view modern problems in an historical perspective which includes a consideration of that racial stereotyping which has sometimes marred our European civilization.