ABSTRACT
A survey of medieval German literature poses more problems than that of later ages. This is not least because of the time-span involved-several centuries from the earliest documents, dating from the middle of the eighth century, to the final echoes of the age in the fifteenth century-a span comparable with the period from early humanist literature until the advent of the modern age. The legacy of extant medieval literary material is particularly scant and random in character, precluding any accurate assessment of the scope and nature of what is now lost to historians forever. The scope and nature of German and other national literatures dating from the fifteenth century onwards is wellknown to us by virtue of the greater number of copies and the chances of literature being preserved that accompanied the invention of printing. The drawback with literature of the early period (Frühzeit) is that it was an exclusively oral tradition. With the appearance of written records it was then used to serve the romantic propensities of subsequent generations: the deliberate compilation and authentic archiving of oral traditions was not the rule. Much more than with other periods, therefore, scholars of medieval literature are far more dependent on the resourceful reconstruction of presumed literary circumstances. A description of this literature, which took shape over several centuries, might give the impression that it stirred slowly and unfolded only gradually. This impression arises out of the assumptions of our own literate culture, which equates literature directly with written records. General statements about the form and function in pre-and early history of tribal and communal literature that was passed on and received orally can at best be only tenuous.
