Published 17 january 2008 by Boydell
From the introduction:
Quote:
| Saxo's intentions are made very clear in the first sentence: the purpose of his book is to 'glorify the fatherland'. Many other medieval historians had produced Latin histories of their peoples, and in Book I Saxo mentions two of them, Bede and Dudo, by name. Others who may have been known to him are Jordanes on the Goths, Gregory of Tours on the Franks, Paul the Deacon on the Lombards, Widukind on the Saxons, Helmold on the Slavs, Giraldus Cambrensis on the Welsh and Irish, and Geoffrey of Monmouth on the British. As the various nations of Western Europe established themselves, there was an increasing desire to look back into their heroic past, before conversion to Christianity, and to celebrate both ancient history and recent triumphs in the Romanmanner. Saxo, like other scholars of his time, was very conscious of the great achievements of Virgil and his glorification of Rome, and wanted his own people to possess a literary monument on the model of the Aeneid. The late twelfth century, when the Danes could look back on aseries of victories under Valdemar I and Absalon, and might hope for future conquests, was an auspicious time for such a project. Significant also are Saxo's comments on the slowness of the Danes to accept the new learning and the Latin tongue; as well as glorifying his country, he hoped to civilise it, and to produce proof of its culture before the eyes of the learned world |
Product desc
Quote:
| In the early years of the thirteenth century the Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus provided his people with a History of the Danes, an account of their glorious past from the legendary kings and heroes of Denmark to the historical present. It is one of the major sources for the heroic and mythological traditions of northern Europe, though the complex Latin st |
QO0tcg