Narrative in the Icelandic Family Saga

Meanings of Time in Old Norse Literature

Häftad, Engelska, 2022

AvHeather O'Donoghue

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Representative of a unique literary genre and composed in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Icelandic Family Sagas rank among some of the world’s greatest literature. Here, Heather O’Donoghue skilfully examines the notions of time and the singular textual voice of the Sagas, offering a fresh perspective on the foundational texts of Old Norse and medieval Icelandic heritage. With a conspicuous absence of giants, dragons, and fairy tale magic, these sagas reflect a real-world society in transition, grappling with major new challenges of identity and development. As this book reveals, the stance of the narrator and the role of time – from the representation of external time passing to the audience's experience of moving through a narrative – are crucial to these stories. As such, Narrative in the Icelandic Family Saga draws on modern narratological theory to explore the ways in which saga authors maintain the urgency and complexity of their material, handle the narrative and chronological line, and offer perceptive insights into saga society. In doing so, O’Donoghue presents a new poetics of family sagas and redefines the literary rhetoric of saga narratives.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-08-25
Mått154 x 232 x 16 mm
Vikt360 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor232
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN9781350211636

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Heather O’Donoghue is Professor of Old Norse at University of Oxford, UK and a Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford, UK. She is the author of The Genesis of a Saga Narrative (1991), Old Norse Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (2004), Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative (2005), From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths (2007) and English Poetry and Old Norse Myth: A History (2014). She has also broadcast with the BBC on the topic of the Norse Gods.

This important new study explores the often-ignored reality that Iceland‘s family sagas focus squarely on human society. Instead of pursuing the usual literary questions of invention or fantasy, Prof. O’Donohuge delves deeply into the “real-feeling” world of deceptively familiar human characters in everyday, though dramatic circumstances as she focuses on the remarkably consistent portrait of early medieval Icelandic society. Saga authors were, O’Donohuge states, “working with an authentic and detailed picture of their ancestral society accurately transmitted via oral tradition.“ Here is a work that has much to teach us and contributes significantly to the field.