Old Icelandic Literature and Society

ISBN-13: 9780521631129 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 352 str.

Opis

This book provides a comprehensive account of Old Icelandic literature within its social context. An international team of specialists examines the ways in which the unique medieval social experiment in Iceland, a kingless society without an established authority structure, inspired a wealth of innovative writing composed in the Icelandic vernacular. The book shows how Icelanders explored their uniqueness through poetry, mythologies, metrical treatises, religious writing, and through saga, a new genre that textualized their history and incorporated oral traditions in a written form.

Recenzje

' … the book provides a well-grounded and interesting introduction to Old Icelandic literature, with the bonus of multiple signposts towards new directions in Old Norse scholarship.' Modern Language Review

Spis treści

Introduction Margaret Clunies Ross; 1. Social institutions and belief systems of medieval Iceland (ca. 870–1400) and their relation to literary production Preben Meulengracht Sørensen; 2. From orality to literacy in medieval Iceland Judy Quinn; 3. Poetry and its changing importance in medieval Icelandic culture Kari Ellen Gade; 4. Øláfr Pø∂arson hvítaskáld and oral poetry in the west of Iceland ca. 1250 Gísli Sigur∂sson; 5. The conservation and reinterpretation of myth in medieval Icelandic writings Margaret Clunies Ross; 6. Medieval Iceland artes poeticae Stephen Tranter; 7. A useful past: historical writing in medieval Iceland Diana Whaley; 8. Sagas of Icelanders as the literary representation of a new social space Jürg Glauser; 9. The contemporary sagas and their social context Gu∂rún Nordal; 10. The matter of the north: fiction and uncertain identities in thirteenth-century Iceland Torfi H. Tulinius; 11. Romance in Iceland Geraldine Barnes; 12. The Bible and biblical interpretation in medieval Iceland Ian Kirby; 13. Sagas of saints Margaret Cormack.