Author: Brian McMahon Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000573362 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
This book presents a range of approaches to the study of Old Norse poetry in performance. The contributors examine both eddic and skaldic poems and consider the surviving evidence for how they were originally recited or otherwise performed in medieval Scandinavia, Iceland and at royal courts across Europe. This study also engages with the challenge of reconstructing medieval performance styles and examines ways of applying the modern discipline of Performance Studies to the fragmentary corpus of Old Norse verse. The performance of verse by characters who appear in the Old Icelandic saga tradition is also considered, as is the cultural value associated not only with the poems themselves but with their various means of transmission and reception. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the fields of Old Norse studies, Performance and Theatre History.
Author: Carolyne Larrington Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1316720853 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 675
Book Description
This is the first comprehensive and accessible survey in English of Old Norse eddic poetry: a remarkable body of literature rooted in the Viking Age, which is a critical source for the study of early Scandinavian myths, poetics, culture and society. Dramatically recreating the voices of the legendary past, eddic poems distil moments of high emotion as human heroes and supernatural beings alike grapple with betrayal, loyalty, mortality and love. These poems relate the most famous deeds of gods such as Óðinn and Þórr with their adversaries the giants; they bring to life the often fraught interactions between kings, queens and heroes as well as their encounters with valkyries, elves, dragons and dwarfs. Written by leading international scholars, the chapters in this volume showcase the poetic riches of the eddic corpus, and reveal its relevance to the history of poetics, gender studies, pre-Christian religions, art history and archaeology.
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501773488 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
The medieval northern world consisted of a vast and culturally diverse region both geographically, from roughly Greenland to Novgorod and culturally, as one of the last areas of Europe to be converted to Christianity. Old Norse Folklore explores the complexities of thisfascinating world in case studies and theoretical essays that connect orality and performance theory to memory studies, and myths relating to pre-Christian Nordic religion to innovations within late medieval pilgrimage song culture. Old Norse Folklore provides critical new perspectives on the Old Norse world, some of which appear in this volume for the first time in English. Stephen A. Mitchell presents emerging methodologies by analyzing Old Norse materials to offer a better understandings ofunderstanding of Old Norse materials. He examines, interprets, and re-interprets the medieval data bequeathed to us by posterity—myths, legends, riddles, charms, court culture, conversion narratives, landscapes, and mindscapes—targeting largely overlooked, yet important sources of cultural insights.
Author: Sandra Ballif Straubhaar Publisher: DS Brewer ISBN: 1843842718 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 160
Book Description
Text, with English translation in two formats, of all the Old Norse poetry attributed to women - skáldkonur. The rich and compelling corpus of Old Norse poetry is one of the most important and influential areas of medieval European literature. What is less well known, however, is the quantity of the material which can be attributed to women skalds. This book, intended for a broad audience, presents a bilingual edition (Old Norse and English) of this material, from the ninth to the thirteenth century and beyond, with commentary and notes. The poems here reflect the dramatic and often violent nature of the sagas: their subject matter features Viking Age shipboard adventures and shipwrecks; prophecies; curses; declarations of love and of revenge; duels, feuds and battles; encounters with ghosts; marital and family discord; and religious insults, among many other topics. Their authors fall into four main categories: pre-Christian Norwegian and Icelandic skáldkonur of the Viking Age; Icelandic skáldkonur of the Sturlung Age (thirteenth century); additional early skáldkonur from the Islendingasögur and related material, not as historically verifiable as the first group; and mythical figures cited as reciting verse in the legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur). Sandra Ballif Straubhaar is Senior Lecturer in Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Author: Carol J. Clover Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501741659 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
The current revival of interest in the rich and varied literature of early Scandinavia has prompted a corresponding interest in its background: its origins, social and historical context, and relationship to other medieval literatures. Even readers with a knowledge of Old Norse and Icelandic have found these subjects difficult to pursue, however, for up-to-date reference works in any language are few and none exist in English. To fill the gap, six distinguished scholars have contributed ambitious new essays to this volume. The contributors summarize and comment on scholarly work in the major branches of the field: Eddie and skaldic poetry, family and kings' sagas, courtly writing, and mythology. Taken together, their judicious and attractively written essays-each with a full bibliography-make up the first book-length survey of Old Norse literature in English and a basic reference work that will stimulate research in these areas and help to open up the field to a wider academic readership.
Author: Paul Acker Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 113660135X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 318
Book Description
This unique collection of essays applies significant critical approaches to the mythological poetry of the Poetic Edda, a principal source for Old Norse cosmography and the legends of Odin, Loki, and Thor. The volume also provides very useful introductions that sketch the critical history of the Eddas. By applying new theoretical approaches (feminist, structuralist, post-structuralist) to each of the major poems, this book yields a variety of powerful and convincing readings. Contributors to the collection are both young scholars and senior figures in the discipline, and are of varying nationalities (American, British, Australian, Scandinavian, and Icelandic), thus ensuring a range of interpretations from different corners of the scholarly community. The new translations included here make available for the first time to English speaking students the intriguing methodologies that are currently developing in Scandinavia. An essential collection of scholarship for any Old Norse course, The Poetic Edda will also be of interest to scholars of Indo-European myth, as well as those who study the theory of myth.
Author: Derek Attridge Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192569589 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 432
Book Description
Was the experience of poetry—or a cultural practice we now call poetry—continuously available across the two-and-a-half millennia from the composition of the Homeric epics to the publication of Ben Jonson's Works and the death of Shakespeare in 1616? How did the pleasure afforded by the crafting of language into memorable and moving rhythmic forms play a part in the lives of hearers and readers in Ancient Greece and Rome, Europe during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and Britain during the Renaissance? In tackling these questions, this book first examines the evidence for the performance of the Iliad and the Odyssey and of Ancient Greek lyric poetry, the impact of the invention of writing on Alexandrian verse, the performances of poetry that characterized Ancient Rome, and the private and public venues for poetic experience in Late Antiquity. It moves on to deal with medieval verse, exploring the oral traditions that spread across Europe in the vernacular languages, the place of manuscript transmission, the shift from roll to codex and from papyrus to parchment, and the changing audiences for poetry. A final part investigates the experience of poetry in the English Renaissance, from the manuscript verse of Henry VIII's court to the anthologies and collections of the late Elizabethan era. Among the topics considered in this part are the importance of the printed page, the continuing significance of manuscript circulation, the performance of poetry in pageants and progresses, and the appearance of poets on the Elizabethan stage. In tracking both continuity and change across these many centuries, the book throws fresh light on the role and importance of poetry in western culture.
Author: Medieval Academy of America Publisher: University of Toronto Press ISBN: 9780802038234 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 410
Book Description
"In the past few decades, interest in the rich and varied literature of early Scandinavia has prompted a corresponding interest in its background: its origins, social and historical context, and relationship to other medieval literatures. Until the 1980s, however, there was a distinct lack of scholarship in English that synthesized the critical trends and thinking in the field, so in 1985 Carol J. Clover and John Lindow brought together several of the most distinguished Old Norse scholars to contribute essays for a collection that would finally provide a comprehensive guide to the major genres of Old Norse-Icelandic literature." "The contributors summarize and comment on scholarly work in the major branches of the field: eddic and skaldic poetry, family and kings' sagas, courtly writing, and mythology. Their essays, each with a full bibliography, make up this vital survey of Old Norse literature in English - a basic reference work that has stimulated much research and helped to open up the field to a wider academic readership." "This volume has become an essential text for instructors, and now, twenty years after its first appearance, it is being republished as part of the Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching (MART) series with a new preface that discusses more recent contributions to the field."
Author: Frog Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura ISBN: 9518584206 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 309
Book Description
Versification describes the marriage of language and poetic form through which poetry is produced. Formal principles, such as metre, alliteration, rhyme, or parallelism, take precedence over syntax and prosody, resulting in expressions becoming organised as verse rather than prose. The aesthetic appeal of poetry is often linked to the potential for this process to seem mysterious or almost magical, not to mention the interplay of particular expressions with forms and expectations. The dynamics of versification thus draw a general interest for everyone, from enthusiasts of poetry or forms of verbal art to researchers of folklore, ethnomusicology, linguistics, literature, philology, and more. The authors of the works in the present volume explore versification from a variety of angles and in diverse cultural milieus. The focus is on metrics in practice, meaning that the authors concentrate not so much on the analysis of the metrical systems per se as on the ways that metres are used and varied in performance by individual poets and in relationship to language.
Author: Kari Ellen Gade Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501732447 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
The drottkvett was a form of Old Norse skaldic poetry composed to glorify a chieftain's deeds or to lament his death. Kari Ellen Gade explores the structural peculiarities of ninth- and tenth-century drottkvett poetry and suggests a solution to the mystery of the origins of the drottkvett and its eventual demise in the fourteenth century.
Author: Brian McMahon
Author: Carolyne Larrington
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell
Author: Sandra Ballif Straubhaar
Author: Carol J. Clover
Author: Paul Acker
Author: Derek Attridge
Author: Medieval Academy of America
Author: Frog
Author: Kari Ellen Gade