Abstract
In the light of our foregoing study, what answers may we venture to bring forward to the central questions raised in our first chapter? Is the verse epic indeed a thing of the past; how appropriate a form is it in our times; has it in fact proved itself unfit for what modern man has to say? Is there, perhaps, a new epic method in evidence, and if so, what possibilities for the revival of the epic and for the creation of a meaningful epic of our times has our discussion shown? In short: what of the “Aktualität” of the epic in our days? Clearly these questions, which centre around the relationship between the evolution of artistic forms and the changing conditions of human society, constitute a rather complex problem. We cannot hope to give any unequivocal answers.
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References
Novalis, Fragmente, hrsg. von Ernst Kamnitzer, Dresden, Wolfgang Jess Verlag, 1929, 227.
See Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1962. This book, as the author states in the Prologue, is complementary to
Albert B. Lord’s The Singer of Tales, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1960. Lord continued the work of Milman Parry on Yugoslavian epic singers. Like Parry, Lord is concerned with the investigation of the varying functions and patterns of oral and written poetry. Professor Mc Luhan’s work, too, is an inquiry into “the divergent nature of oral and written social organization” (p. I).
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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Schueler, H.J. (1967). Conclusion. In: The German Verse Epic in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0959-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0959-6_6
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