The Cambridge Songs: A Goliard's Songbook of the Eleventh Century

by Karl Breul

Overview

The Cambridge Songs are preserved - many of them uniquely - in a famous eleventh-century manuscript held in Cambridge University Library. Composed in Germany, mostly in Latin but with some vernacular sections, these lyrics are most notable for the variety they display in both genre and form. As one of the earliest examples of medieval secular song-writing they are a key part of the canon of European literature. This 1915 edition was the first to reproduce the complete text with facing-page transcriptions. Karl Breul, originally from Berlin, became the first university lecturer in German in 1884, and remained the most eminent Germanist at Cambridge until his death in 1932. His edition continues to be of value to medievalists today both as a source for the study of these remarkable poems and as a record of Breul's achievement in scholarship and palaeography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108003483
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/20/2009
Series:	Cambridge Library Collection - History of Printing, Publishing and Libraries
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	8.27(w) x 11.69(h) x 0.35(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Manuscript and transliteration; 2. Description of the Cambridge manuscript, with special reference to the 'Songs'; The work hitherto done on the 'Cambridge Songs'; 4. Medieval Latin lyrics in Germany and the 'Cambridge Songs'; 5. The Goliard's song book; Notes; 7. A contested passage in 'De Heinrico'; Indexes.