02971cam a22003253u 450000100060000000300070000600500170001300600020003000700050003200800410003701000130007804000110009104100170010205000070011910000330012624500430015926400510020230000470025333600260030033700260032633800360035250000310038850801890041952018310060853400640243965300320250365300170253585600500255285600430260278135UtSlPG20260610134818.0mcr n260607r20261893utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d  a24023867  aUtSlPG 7afr2iso639-1 4aDC1 aKurth, Godefroid,d1847-191610aHistoire poétique des Mérovingiens 1aSalt Lake City, UT :bProject Gutenberg,c2026  a1 online resource :bmultiple file formats  atextbtxt2rdacontent  acomputerbc2rdamedia  aonline resourcebcr2rdacarrier  aRelease date is 2026-03-07  aLaurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)  a"Histoire poétique des Mérovingiens" by Godefroid Kurth is a historical and philological study written in the late 19th century. The work investigates how epic oral traditions and popular legend shaped the earliest narratives of the Merovingian kings, especially in sources like Gregory of Tours, Fredegar, and the Gesta Regum Francorum, and seeks to distinguish poetic invention from recoverable history. It sets the Frankish beginnings within the wider Germanic epic milieu and proposes a disciplined method to sort legend from fact in early Frankish annals.

The opening of the study traces its origin to classroom readings of Gregory of Tours, where Kurth noticed uneven tones and a mosaic of disparate pieces—prompting research that revealed a strong oral-traditional element in Merovingian historiography. The introduction defines epic as the primitive form of history, explains how legend and song precede and long coexist with written annals, criticizes historians for discarding legendary matter wholesale, and credits philology with identifying epic markers in putatively historical tales. It then surveys scholarship from Wolff and the Grimm brothers through Fauriel, Ampère, Schlegel, Junghans, Lecoy de la Marche, and others, culminating in Rajna’s argument for a Merovingian epic cycle, while faulting notable historians for ignoring these insights; the author announces his aim to apply this lens and apportion legend and history systematically. At the start of Book I, the sources are framed by evidence that Germanic peoples preserved history in song (citing Tacitus) and by examples from Goths and Lombards (via Jordanes, Cassiodorus, Ammianus, and Paul the Deacon), including legendary cycles around Hermanaric, Attila, Theodoric, Alboin, and Authari. (This is an automatically generated summary.)  pOriginally published:cParis: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1893  aFrance -- History -- To 987  aMerovingians4 uhttps://books.google.fr/books?id=MrhcAAAAcAAJ40uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78135