Contributions to the Knowledge of Old German Language and Literature. First Volume.

Benecke, Georg Friedrich, 1762-1844Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6

Word count: 240K words
Chapters: 24

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Beyträge zur Kenntniss der altdeutschen Sprache und Litteratur. Erster Band.Author: Benecke, Georg Friedrich, 1762-1844,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Jan 11, 2015

Editor's review

This book is the first volume of an important collection of essays on Old German language and literature by the German philologist Benecke, a representative scholarly document from the founding period of nineteenth-century Germanic studies. Its value lies not in popular reading but in providing first-hand material for the collation of Old German texts, lexical research, and literary-historical verification. The philological method it embodies—careful comparison of original texts, generalization of linguistic phenomena, tracing of documentary sources—remains a fundamental skill in the study of medieval German literature to this day. As a public-domain electronic text from Project Gutenberg, it is convenient for searching and citation and is suitable as research material rather than a book to read from cover to cover. Reading it requires German ability and basic knowledge of Old German; otherwise one easily remains at the literal level and cannot grasp the thread of the argument. The book is best placed on the resource list for academic writing, textual/edition research, or courses on the history of the German language, as a model of method and a source of documentary leads.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Researchers in the history of the German language and Old German texts
Scholars and graduate students engaged in Germanic philology and textual collation
Thesis writers who need to cite original nineteenth-century German scholarly sources
Advanced readers with German reading ability and basic knowledge of medieval German literature

Not a good fit for

Ordinary readers who do not know German and hope to read a Chinese translation
Beginners encountering Old German for the first time and lacking grammatical and lexical foundations
Casual readers expecting popular introductions or narrative content
Introductory students who need modern scholarly overviews rather than primary sources

Reading tips

First read through the table of contents and preface to clarify the topics and documentary scope of each essay, then select readings according to research needs.
While reading, use an Old German dictionary and relevant text editions to check the original examples cited by the author one by one.
Compare the book's argumentative methods with modern works on textual criticism, noting methodological differences and points worth adopting.
Organize the documentary leads mentioned in the book by way of excerpts and notes to build your own reference index.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for people without any German foundation?

No. The entire book is written in German, and its subject is Old German language and literature, involving examples from Middle High German texts. Without German reading ability, especially without a foundation in Old German grammar and vocabulary, it is very difficult to understand the arguments. It is advisable first to acquire modern German reading ability, then supplement it with introductory Old German knowledge.

Is this a complete work or a single volume?

This is the first volume of Benecke's collection on Old German language and literature, not the whole work. The material shows that the title explicitly marks "Erster Band," i.e., Volume One. If complete material is needed for research, one should continue to look for subsequent volumes or other related works.

Is the e-book edition suitable for academic citation?

It can serve as a source for reading and searching public-domain texts, but formal academic citation should verify the original book's publication information, including place of publication, publisher, and year. The Project Gutenberg edition is convenient to obtain and search; when citing, it is advisable to note the electronic edition relied upon and access information.

Should one read it through or selectively?

Selective reading is recommended. This is a nineteenth-century collection of scholarly essays; the essays are relatively independent, with meticulous argumentation and numerous examples. Reading it through is tiring and inefficient. A better approach is to first look at the table of contents to identify chapters relevant to one's own research, then read them closely one by one alongside the original texts.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Benecke, Georg Friedrich, 1762-1844 Author · German · 1762–1844

Georg Friedrich Benecke (1762–1844) was a German philologist and librarian who taught at the University of Göttingen and devoted himself over many years to editing medieval German texts. His research centered on the history of the German language and on the compilation of early German sources. His representative work is Beyträge zur Kenntniss der altdeutschen Sprache und Litteratur. Erster Band. (Contributions to the Knowledge of Old German Language and Literature, Volume One), which gathers his critical examinations and interpretations of medieval German linguistic and literary materials. Public information about him is limited, and the details of his life cannot be fully described; his surviving writings nonetheless show close collation of original sources and careful description of linguistic phenomena, with a style that favors scholarly notes and compiled materials. These works provided later scholarship on medieval German with a body of foundational texts and reflect an early Germanic philology that combined textual editing with careful source criticism.