Language and History in the Early Germanic World
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Revised ed., 6/13/2014
EAN 9780521794237, ISBN10: 0521794234
Paperback, 100 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This book offers a distinctive and accessible approach to the earliest encounters of the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe with classical antiquity and with early Christianity. It brings together linguistic evidence from across Europe and dating from before Caesar to about 900 AD, to shed light on important aspects of Germanic culture. It shows how semantics and loanword studies, often avoided by non-specialists, can provide important clues for historians and archaeologists of the period. Likewise, it demonstrates that philologists and linguists ignore historical evidence at their peril.
Introduction
Part I. The Germanic World
1. Religion
2. Law
3. Kinship
4. Warfare
5. People and army
6. Lordship
7. Kingship
Part II. Contact with the Non-Germanic World
8. Contact with the Celts
9. The migration of the Goths
10. Germanic loanwords in Latin
11. Latin loanwords in Germanic
12. Trade and warfare with the Romans
13. Names of the days of the week
14. The vocabulary of writing
Part III. Contact with Christianity
15. Problems of Christianisation
16. The influence of provincial Roman Christianity
17. The influence of Gothic
18. The influence of the Merovingian Franks
19. The influence of the Anglo-Saxons
20. Contrasts in Christian vocabulary
21. The vocabulary of ethics and fate
Bibliography
Index of words.