Interrogating the ‘Germanic’: A Category and its Use in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Published by De Gruyter 2021

Interrogating the ‘Germanic’

A Category and its Use in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Edited by: Matthias Friedrich and James M. Harland

Volume 123 in the series Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110701623

Overview
Contents

About this book

Any reader of scholarship on the ancient and early medieval world will be familiar with the term 'Germanic', which is frequently used as a linguistic category, ethnonym, or descriptive identifier for a range of forms of cultural and literary material. But is the term meaningful, useful, or legitimate? The term, frequently applied to peoples, languages, and material culture found in non-Roman north-western and central Europe in classical antiquity, and to these phenomena in the western Roman Empire’s successor states, is often treated as a legitimate, all-encompassing name for the culture of these regions. Its usage is sometimes intended to suggest a shared social identity or ethnic affinity among those who produce these phenomena. Yet, despite decades of critical commentary that have highlighted substantial problems, its dominance of scholarship appears not to have been challenged. This edited volume, which offers contributions ranging from literary and linguistic studies to archaeology, and which span from the first to the sixteenth centuries AD, examines why the term remains so pervasive despite its problems, offering a range of alternative interpretative perspectives on the late and post-Roman worlds.

Author / Editor information

Matthias Friedrich, University of Vienna, Austria; James Harland, University of Tübingen, Germany.

Reviews

„Interrogating the ‘Germanic’ provides a starting point. It is not comprehensive, and does not offer a definitive answer as to what we should do with the term ‘Germanic’. It is, however, one of the most important volumes published in the twenty-first century and should be read by all scholars working on the European early Middle Ages. It will, hopefully, lead to more careful enquiries into the past.“
Richard Broome, in: sehepunkte. Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, http://www.sehepunkte.de/2021/05/35088.html.

„Rather than attempting to create a one-size-fits-all rule going forward, the collective contributions acknowledge the problem’s complexity and provide the reader with a variety of tools to find their own way through a thorny, and ever-relevant, question. This will be a useful volume for both specialists and those outside the field, and for those wanting a better understanding of interdisciplinary approaches.“
Erica Buchberger, in: The English Historical Review, 2022

„Readers with a linguistic background can use these contributions to get a good sense of recent developments in adjacent fields—useful since the go-to linguistic textbooks on early Germanic languages frequently present a somewhat outdated picture of the state of the art in these disciplines.“
George Walkden, in: Journal of Germanic Linguistics 34.4 (2022), p. 420–427

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
List of Contributors Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Introduction: The ‘Germanic’ and its Discontents James M. Harland and Matthias Friedrich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
The Marriage of Philology and Race: Constructing the ‘Germanic’ Michael Kulikowski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Rome and Its Created Northerners Roland Steinacher Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
Re-inventing the ‘Germanic’ in the Early Modern Era: Omnes Germani sunt, contra fabulas quorundam Stefan Donecker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
The Balloon that Wouldn’t Burst: A Genealogy of ‘Germanic’ Cătălin Ţăranu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
What Can Cultural Anthropology Do for Medievalists? A Methodological Discussion of Ethnicity Applied to Late Antique and Early Medieval History Otávio Luiz Vieira Pinto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
From Rhetoric to Dialectic: The Becoming ‘Germanic’ of Visigothic (Legal-)Literature, and (Postulating) the End of a ‘Truth’ Michael J. Kelly Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
Sidonius Apollinaris’s Use of the Term Barbarus: An Introduction Veronika Egetenmeyr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
A Habitus Barbarus in Sub-Roman Britain? James M. Harland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
A Farewell to Arms: Germanic Identity in Fifth-Century Britain Steve Walker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Germanic or Slavic? Reconstructing the Transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages in East Central Europe Sebastian Brather Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Linguistic Labels and Ethnic Identity Ludwig Rübekeil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
(Proto-)Germanic Alliterative Verse: Linguistic Limits on a Cultural Phenomenon Nelson Goering Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
The Limits of Obligation and Friendship: Hrothgar, Beowulf, and the ‘Germanic’ Ideal Erin Sebo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Researchers (Late Antique/Early Medieval History and Archaeology, Philology/Historical Linguistics, Medieval Literature)
Pages
- Front matter: 6
- Main content: 270
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 55
- Coloured Illustrations: 12
- Tables: 12
Keywords: Historiography; late antique ethnicity; nationalism; race studies

eBook

Published: November 23, 2020
ISBN: 9783110701623

Hardcover

Published: November 23, 2020
ISBN: 9783110699760