In that great study of early narrative, Epic and Romance, W.P. Ker suggested that there were two kinds of story going in the Dark Ages, roughly defined in the terms of his title. In a European and, more specifically, a British context, he was inclined to think that Celtic stories dealt in magic and 'wondrous matters', while Anglo-Saxon poems and Norse sagas preferred the facts. There might be dragons and monsters on both sides, but a Nordic monster, like Grendel in Beowulf, was an altogether more convincing affair than his Celtic counterpart. Ker conceded that the two traditions often came together and got mixed up: but in keeping with the racial ideas of his time he argued for two distinct types of creative imagination.

LRB 19 March 1987 | PDF Download