THE DOCTRINE OF ORAL TRADITION IN THE CHANSON DE GESTE AND SAGA
Theodore Andersson
T)AUL RUBOW, one of the hardy but incautious leaders in effort Jto place Old Icelandic literature its European context, once suggested that thirteenth-century saga derived from blossoming epic twelfth-century France.1 This suggestion has found no adherents, and we continue to regard French verse epics Norse prose narratives as independent flowerings. But independence rightly claimed for original literatures cannot be scholarly which grown up about them. Wittingly unwittingly students have drawn on another's considerations during past ISO years critical currents moved freely between Continent Scandinavia, almost always direction south north. Rubow attributed rise an impulse Arthurian tales first vulgarized north by Brother Robert 1226, it is Carolingian chanson de geste more frequently been ranged with secondary literature. Common latter genres not only heroic ethos also a great uncertainty origin narrative stuff. Both are literary expressions largely illiterate age; yet they reflect historical events very remote at time writing. Between campaign Charlemagne Spain composition Chanson Roland or burning Njall Njdls there elapsed some three hundred years. To account survival semi-historical material these