Myth and literary history : Two germanic examples

The annual Lord and Parry Lecture Series is one aspect of that widening outreach, and I feel very honored to be able to follow distinguished and provocative humanists in the series and to follow, though more distantly, Lord and Parry themselves. The topic agreed on for my contribution was the slippery subject of myth, my current preoccupation, not only because of some detailed research projects in hand, but more urgently as a new undergraduate seminar on the general topic looms on my immediate horizon. There's nothing like that kind of undergraduate teaching to force one to return to basic ideas. Bless them, undergraduates won't let a body hide behind philology! I realize that myth fits only problematically into the format of the Lord and Parry lectures and into the mandate of the journal Oral Tradition; in fact as far as my skimming eye could discover, no article in Oral Tradition's eighteen luminous years has confessed in its title to a principle concern with myth--admittedly this impression was not the product of meticulous research.Issue title "Slavica." Note: The Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture for 2003