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Full Description
From the period of settlement (870-930) to the end of the fourteenth century, Icelanders produced one of the most varied and original literatures of medieval Europe. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of Old Icelandic literature within its social setting and across a range of genres. An international team of specialists examines the ways in which the unique social experiment in Iceland, a kingless society without an established authority structure, inspired a wealth of innovative writing composed in the Icelandic vernacular. Icelanders explored their uniqueness through poetry, mythologies, metrical treatises, religious writing, and through saga, a new literary genre which textualised their history and incorporated oral traditions in a written form. The book shows that Icelanders often used their textual abilities to gain themselves political and intellectual advantage, not least in the period when the state's freedom came to an end.
Contents
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.
