This article is about the Germanic narrative verse genre. For the French verse form, see
Lai (poetic form).
The heroic lay (German Heldenlied) is a genre of
Germanicepic poetry characteristic of the
Migration Period and the
Early Middle Ages. A lay is a short narrative poem of between 80 and 200 lines concerning a single heroic episode in the life of a warrior from
Germanic legend. [1][2] It is distinct from the heroic epic (
Beowulf,
Nibelungenlied) which combines a sequence of episodes into a longer narrative.[3]
^Hatto 1980, p. 165. "A terse, self-contained, objective, memorized poem of epic-dramatic style imbued with an heroic ethos conveyed with art in a single-stranded plot"
^Gloning & Young 2004, p. 42. "a short poem extolling the valour and nobility of character of a great hero of the past."
Gloning, Thomas; Young, Christopher (2004). A History of the German Language Through Texts. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
ISBN0415183316.
Hatto, A.T. (1980).
"Medieval German". In
Hatto, A.T. (ed.). Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Vol. 1: The Traditions. London: Modern Humanities Research Association. pp. 165–195.
ISBN0-900547-72-3. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
Fulk, R.D.; Cain, Christopher (2013). "Germanic Legend and Heroic Lay". A History of Old English Literature (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
ISBN978-1-118-45323-0.
Murdoch, Brian (1980). "Heroic Verse". In Murdoch, Brian (ed.). German Literature of the Early Middle Ages. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Camden House. pp. 121–138.
ISBN1-57113-240-6.