UID:
almafu_9960966118102883
Format:
1 online resource (xxxviii, 222 pages) :
,
illustrations (black and white), digital PDF file(s).
ISBN:
1-80010-611-4
Series Statement:
Studies in Old Norse literature
Content:
Sagas of Icelanders, also called family sagas, are the best known of the many literary genres that flourished in medieval Iceland, most of them achieving written form during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Modern readers and critics often praise their apparently realistic descriptions of the lives, loves and feuds of settler families of the first century and a half of Iceland's commonwealth period (c. AD 970-1030), but this ascription of realism fails to account for one of the most important components of these sagas, the abundance of skaldic poetry, mostly in drt̤tkvt̆t 'court metre', which comes to saga heroes' lips at moments of crisis. These presumed voices from the past and their integration into the narrative present of the written sagas are the subject of this book. It investigates what motivated Icelandic writers to develop this particular mode, and what particular literary effects they achieved by it.
Note:
Previously issued in print: 2022.
,
Introduction -- 1. The Poetic Corpus -- 2. Poetry in an Icelandic Environment -- 3. The Authenticity Question -- 4. Strategies of Poetic Communication -- 5. Subjects of Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders -- 6. A Suitable Literary Style -- 7. New Emphases in Late Sagas of Icelanders -- 8. Sagas without Poetry -- Conclusion -- Glossary of Old Norse Terms -- Bibliography. -- INDEX -- Back Matter.
Additional Edition:
Print version: Clunies Ross, Margaret Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders Woodbridge : Boydell & Brewer, Limited,c2022 ISBN 9781843846390
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1515/9781800106116
URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781800106116/type/BOOK
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