Vernacular Verse Histories in Early Medieval England and Francia

In a provocative take on Germanic heroic poetry, Taranu reads texts like Beowulf , Maldon , and the Waltharius as participating in alternative modes of history-writing that functioned in a larger ecology of narrative forms, including Latinate Christian history and the biblical epic. These modes employed the conceit of their participating in a tradition of oral verse for a variety of purposes: from political propaganda to constructing origin myths for early medieval nationhood or heroic masculini