"Less Epic Than It Seems"Deor's Historical Approach as a Narrative Device for Psychological Expression

Abstract

Historical references work in a very peculiar way in Deor. This poem presents historical facts from the Germanic tradition in such a way that they are turned into a narrative tool whose function is to highlight the psychological component. This psychological element is the real thematic core of the poem, and a feature that ascribes Deor to the elegiac poetic discourse, rather than to the epic genre. In this article we’ll try to justify these assertions, describing how the poet decided to adopt a historical approach to express the psychological component by depicting history as a background subject to a higher thematic aim: i.e., to introduce the reference to individual misfortune through an exemplary depiction of historical suffering