Both the Old Saxon Heliand and Otfrid’s Liber evangeliorum recount the
story of the Gospels. But the primary instance of narration is realized in opposite
ways in these two Biblical epics. Whereas the alliterative Heliand uses the narrator’s
ik only in formulaic collocations stemming from Germanic oral poetry, the speaker’s
ih/ego in the Liber evangeliorum and its paratexts appears often and in multiple
forms. Alongside a poet’s I we find the diction of the preacher and of the praying
man. These speech forms correspond to the social roles of the author, the priest,
and the monk. The different staging of the narrator in Heliand and Otfrid’s Liber

EB00000002897K

Available

• Erzähler und Autorinstanz im Heliand und in Otfrids von Weißenburg Liber evangeliorum