Heliand in the context of "Epic (genre)"

In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the Germanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The Old English epic Beowulf, as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German Muspilli, the Old Saxon Heliand, the Old Norse Poetic Edda, and many Middle English poems such as Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Layamon's Brut and the Alliterative Morte Arthur all use alliterative verse.

While alliteration is common in many poetic traditions, it is 'relatively infrequent' as a structured characteristic of poetic form. However, structural alliteration appears in a variety of poetic traditions, including Old Irish, Welsh, Somali and Mongol poetry. The extensive use of alliteration in the so-called Kalevala meter, or runic song, of the Finnic languages provides a close comparison, and may derive directly from Germanic-language alliterative verse.

German literature (German: Deutschsprachige Literatur) comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects (e.g. Alemannic).

Medieval German literature is literature written in Germany, stretching from the Carolingian dynasty; various dates have been given for the end of the German literary Middle Ages, the Reformation (1517) being the last possible cut-off point. The Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century; the most famous works are the Hildebrandslied and a heroic epic known as the Heliand. Middle High German starts in the 12th century; the key works include The Ring (c. 1410) and the poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein and Johannes von Tepl. The Baroque period (1600 to 1720) was one of the most fertile times in German literature. Modern literature in German begins with the authors of the Enlightenment (such as Herder). The Sensibility movement of the 1750s–1770s ended with Goethe's best-selling The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The Sturm und Drang and Weimar Classicism movements were led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Symbel (OE) and sumbl (ON) are Germanic terms for "feast, banquet".

Accounts of the symbel are preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf (lines 489–675 and 1491–1500), Dream of the Rood (line 141) and Judith (line 15), Old Saxon Heliand (line 3339), and the Old Norse Lokasenna (stanza 8) as well as other Eddic and Saga texts, such as in the Heimskringla account of the funeral ale held by King Sweyn, or in the Fagrskinna.

Saxon paganism, sometimes known as Continental Saxon paganism or Saxon heathenism, refers to the religion of the Saxons before their Christianization in the wake of the Saxon Wars (772–804) of Charlemagne. Distinct from its closely related Anglo-Saxon counterpart, Saxon paganism was a polytheistic belief system and part of the larger Continental Germanic mythology, with a focus on the sacredness of pillar-like objects (such as Irminsul) and sacred groves, many of which were destroyed.

After Christianization, monasteries repurposed Saxon beliefs and values in new Christian literature, such as the Old Saxon epic poem Heliand, and used the region as a barrier between Christendom and the Slavic and Norse pagans to the north and east. Reportedly, paganism continued among the Saxons until the 12th century.