Vox viva: Die 'wahre AufklŠrung' des DŠnen Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig. Von Inge Meincke. Skandinavistische Arbeiten, Band 17. Heidelberg: UniversitŠtsverlag C. Winter, 2000. Pp. 371. DM 98.

In her brief "Danksagung" Inga Meincke reveals that she submitted this study of N. F. S. Grundtvig as a dissertation to the Johann Wolfgang UniversitŠt Frankfurt in 1998, noting further that the dissertation had been "fŸr den Druck Ÿberarbeitet und stark gekŸrzt" (p. 5). Even more such reworking and shortening might, however, have been profitably undertaken before publication, for Vox viva still retains many of the markings of the dissertation. Its 1670 footnotes (several easily exceeding more than half the printed page), for example, informative as many of them are, are certainly not all equally necessary. Then too, the author would have done her readers (especially those whose native language is not German) a true service by simplifying her densely convoluted writing style.

Frank Hugus
University of Massachusetts at Amherst