Overview

Muspilli has long been fascinating – and frustrating – scholars. Fragmentary, enigmatic, and haunting in its vision of the End of the world, it has even been described as the most problematic work in Old High German Literature. Yet for all the attention devoted to its theological, literary, and historical relevance, comparatively little attention has been paid to its lexicon. The volume offers the first comprehensive lexical analysis of the Old High German Muspilli. Rather than approaching the text through what is missing or hopelessly lost, the author turns the focus to what is still available to our scrutiny: the words themselves, carefully chosen and deliberately preserved by a ninth-century scribe. By treating the text as an intentional whole – despite its uncertainties and lacunae – this study attempts to open new paths into its meaning, structure, and interpretative cruxes. Organized around the central semantic domains of the text – humanity, justice, and divinity – the book examines each lemma in Muspilli. All entries contextualize the word within the Old High German tradition and the broader Germanic one, combining etymology, comparative data, and text analysis. Emendations, alternative readings, and disputed lines are incorporated into the analysis, trying to give the reader an informed way through one of the most complex texts of medieval German literature.  

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9783119141925

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Author Information

Lidia Francesca Oliva, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Salerno, Italy.

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