Books by Sif Rikhardsdottir
In Old Norse studies, genre has been central to the categorisation, evaluation and understanding ... more In Old Norse studies, genre has been central to the categorisation, evaluation and understanding of medieval prose and poetry alike; yet its definition has been elusive and its implications often left unexplored. This volume opens up fundamental questions about Old Norse genre in theory and in practice. It offers an extensive range of theoretical approaches, investigating and critiquing current terms and situating its arguments within early Scandinavian and Icelandic oral-literary and manuscript contexts. It maps the ways in which genre and form engage with key thematic areas within the literary corpus, noting the different kinds of impact upon the genre system brought about by conversion to Christianity, the gradual adoption of European literary models, and social and cultural changes occurring in Scandinavian society; while a case-study section probes both prototypical and hard-to-define cases.
Authors throughout history have relied on the emotional make-up of their readers and audiences to... more Authors throughout history have relied on the emotional make-up of their readers and audiences to make sense of the behaviours and actions of fictive characters. But how can a narrative voice contained in a text evoke feelings that are ultimately never real or actual, but a figment of a text, a fictive reality created out of words? How does one reconcile interiority – a presumed modern conceptualisation – with medieval emotionality?
The volume seeks to address these questions. It positions itself within the larger context of the history of emotion, offering a novel approach to the study of literary representations of emotionality and its staging through voice, performativity and narrative manipulation, probing how emotions are encoded in texts. The author argues that the deceptively laconic portrayal of emotion in the Icelandic sagas and other literature reveals an emotive script that favours reticence over expressivity and exposes a narrative convention of emotional subterfuge through narrative silences and the masking of emotion. Focusing on the ambivalent borders between prose and poetic language, she suggests that poetic vocalisation may provide a literary space within which emotive interiority can be expressed. The volume considers a wide range of Old Norse materials – from translated romances through Eddic poetry and Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders) to indigenous romance.
Throughout the middle ages, many Francophone texts - chansons de geste, medieval romance, works b... more Throughout the middle ages, many Francophone texts - chansons de geste, medieval romance, works by Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France - were widely translated in north-western Europe. In the process, these texts were frequently transformed to reflect the new cultures in which they appeared. This book argues that such translations, prime sites for cultural movement and encounters, provide a rich opportunity to study linguistic and cultural identity both in and through time. Via a close comparison of a number of these texts, examining the various modifications made, and drawing on a number of critical discourses ranging from post-colonial criticism to translation theory, the author explores the complexities of cultural dialogue and dissent. This approach both recognises and foregrounds the complex matrix of influence, resistance and transformations within the languages and cultural traditions of medieval Europe, revealing the undercurrents of cultural conflict apparent in medieval textuality.
Ásdís Egilsdóttir, prófessor í íslenskum miðaldabókmenntum, er mikilvirkur vísindamaður og útgefa... more Ásdís Egilsdóttir, prófessor í íslenskum miðaldabókmenntum, er mikilvirkur vísindamaður og útgefandi fornrita og hefur áratugum saman verið vinsæll kennari í Háskóla Íslands. Í tilefni af sjötugsafmæli Ásdísar hafa nokkrir starfsfélagar hennar tekið saman afmælisritið Fræðinæmi, henni til heiðurs. Í ritinu eru alls 22 greinar um helgisögur, jarteinir, kynferði, minni, menntun og fleiri viðfangsefni.
Articles and book chapters by Sif Rikhardsdottir
The Meaning of Media: Texts and Materiality in Medieval Scandinavia, 2021
Icelandic literary history has traditionally been defined by borders, particularly the sea as the... more Icelandic literary history has traditionally been defined by borders, particularly the sea as the geographic barrier separating Iceland (as a nation and as a people) from other countries. Yet, in terms of content even the most fundamentally ‘native’ of the Icelandic sagas extend beyond those boundaries; their stories frequently begin in Norway, their characters spend years abroad. This crossing of the seas of the saga characters in search for home, valour and selfhood, replicates the movement of peoples, ideas and texts that shapes and characterises Northern literary history. This chapter considers how a transnational approach to the literary history of Iceland may reshape our perception of literary activity and its function both as a regional product of terra firma, and as evidence of the complex and multifaceted movement of ideas and texts across the Northern seas.
Exemplaria, 2020
This article considers the ways in which sensory perception underlies the aesthetic appreciation ... more This article considers the ways in which sensory perception underlies the aesthetic appreciation of the Middle English Pearl. In particular it focuses on how sensory description and perception is used to interlink the different aspects of the poem’s representational properties, such as its form, its thematic content, and the narrative medium, to engage the audience. The article therefore addresses the intricate correlation between the poetic form of Pearl and the function of sensory perception within the poem as means of mediating between the external audience and what might be termed the internal poetic sensorium. Sensorium is here conceived as the entirety of the sensory realm of an individual, including the external objects, sounds or smells along with perceived sensations, perception and the cognitive processes associated with deciphering and processing the sensorial input. Poetic sensorium instead refers to the fictive description of a sensory realm and experiences that are actualized and materialized via the process of reading or listening. In the article it is argued that the haptic sense is the fulcrum on which much of the poetry turns, revealing the underlying implications of the poem’s function as a memorializing artifact.
A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, 2020
Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, 2019
Making use of examples such as the Icelandic saga, Brennu-Njáls saga (The Saga of the Burning of ... more Making use of examples such as the Icelandic saga, Brennu-Njáls saga (The Saga of the Burning of Njal), the Eddic poetry, Chrétien de Troyes’ romances and Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristran along with its Northern adaptations, the chapter explores how this complex interplay of transnational textual movement and regional identity formation reveals the role of cultural exchange and cultural resistance in the formation of literary identities and mentalities and the function emotive scripts have in actualising such cultural identities.
A Companion to World Literature, 2020
This chapter addresses the relevance of the medieval Nordic genres of the sagas of Icelanders and... more This chapter addresses the relevance of the medieval Nordic genres of the sagas of Icelanders and eddic poetry to a global audience and to the field of world literature. It considers factors such as cultural and historical contingencies and how the gap can be bridged between the modern (international) reader and geographically and temporally distant literary works. It features some recent theoretical approaches to the sagas and the eddic poems along with textual examples of their simultaneous untranslatability and universality. Ultimately, it suggests a mode for reading medieval literature in a global context, featuring the reading experience both as an aesthetic process and as a cultural encounter.
Medieval Romance Across European Borders, 2018
This essay considers the Old Norse romance Clári saga, purportedly translated in the mid-fourteen... more This essay considers the Old Norse romance Clári saga, purportedly translated in the mid-fourteenth century from a Latin source that is now lost. The story is situated in the larger context of European romance transmission and, more specifically, within the Latin tradition, thereby infusing it with authority through its presumed Latin origin. The intertextual connections between Clári saga and other translated and indigenous romances in Iceland provide a fascinating insight into the establishment of a new subgenre, specifically aimed at interrogating the status of women and female independence, i.e. the maiden king romance. Clári saga is one of the earliest known works to feature the thematic narrative structure that later became the hallmark of the maiden king romances, making the question of the romance’s origin of particular importance. The essay makes use of the presumably Latinate romance to address the question of origin and originality as it pertains to medieval translation and writing practices.
Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur´s Court in Medieval European Literature, 2017
Chronology, Anachronism and Translatio Imperii "History is played along the margins which join a ... more Chronology, Anachronism and Translatio Imperii "History is played along the margins which join a society with its past and with the very act of separating itself from that past. It takes place along these lines which trace the figure of a current time by dividing it from its other, but which the return of the past is continually modifying or blurring." (De Certeau 1988, 37-38) 1 I draw here on James Simpson's (2002) concept of a constructed past to articulate the fictive past of Arthurian history.
Comparative Literature, 2017
This article considers how we can discuss emotions (a human phenomenon) within literature (a disc... more This article considers how we can discuss emotions (a human phenomenon) within literature (a discursive construction). The article poses the question of where we can locate this perceived literary emotionality in medieval works and considers the role of the reader in constructing the emotive interiority of the feeling subject in medieval literature. The focus of the essay is thus on the modern reader’s engagement with the medieval textual object d’art and the unique representation of medieval literary creativity as both a physical artifact (the manuscript) and an act of vocal performance in the past. It therefore addresses material textuality as well as the implications of aural performativity for generating and sustaining empathetic connection between text and reader, or between the text and an audience of listeners.
This article addresses some of the recent debates and current approaches to the poems ascribed to... more This article addresses some of the recent debates and current approaches to the poems ascribed to the so-called Gawain poet. It conceives of the author as an elusive voice made material in a single fourteenth-century manuscript. The article contends with the theorizing of perception, visualization, and the senses in Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness and asks how these are related to illusions of permanence and the interactions between materiality and the immaterial in the poems. The formation of subjectivity, self, and identity—and the subject’s self-conscious and affective performance—is explored in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, querying some of the intrinsic thematic concerns that interlink the Cotton Nero poems and Saint Erkenwald. Ultimately the article contends with the artificial and fictive past as construed by the poems and by the modern reader.
This essay considers the translatability of literary representation of emotion across linguistic ... more This essay considers the translatability of literary representation of emotion across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The premise of the discussion is the question of the stability of emotional representation and categorisation across cultures. The discussion draws its definition of emotion partially from neuroscience and psychology, yet recognises that in case of fictive characters, emotions are discursive or textual constructions. These discursive constructions furthermore abide not only by social and cultural rules, as products of a particular social or cultural context, but also by generic and discursive traditions of emotional representation. The chapter examines the way in which the Norse translator of Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain engages with the emotive content of his material within the context of Nordic literary and social conventions. The focus is on the function of emotive discourse within text and its generic parameters, particularly the role of vocalisation and embodiment of emotion within particular narrative and social contexts. The comparative analysis reveals tantalising evidence of the function of somatic indicia and ritualised emotive behaviour as literary motifs and, furthermore, as generically determined signifiers of the emotive subtext.
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Books by Sif Rikhardsdottir
The volume seeks to address these questions. It positions itself within the larger context of the history of emotion, offering a novel approach to the study of literary representations of emotionality and its staging through voice, performativity and narrative manipulation, probing how emotions are encoded in texts. The author argues that the deceptively laconic portrayal of emotion in the Icelandic sagas and other literature reveals an emotive script that favours reticence over expressivity and exposes a narrative convention of emotional subterfuge through narrative silences and the masking of emotion. Focusing on the ambivalent borders between prose and poetic language, she suggests that poetic vocalisation may provide a literary space within which emotive interiority can be expressed. The volume considers a wide range of Old Norse materials – from translated romances through Eddic poetry and Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders) to indigenous romance.
Articles and book chapters by Sif Rikhardsdottir
The volume seeks to address these questions. It positions itself within the larger context of the history of emotion, offering a novel approach to the study of literary representations of emotionality and its staging through voice, performativity and narrative manipulation, probing how emotions are encoded in texts. The author argues that the deceptively laconic portrayal of emotion in the Icelandic sagas and other literature reveals an emotive script that favours reticence over expressivity and exposes a narrative convention of emotional subterfuge through narrative silences and the masking of emotion. Focusing on the ambivalent borders between prose and poetic language, she suggests that poetic vocalisation may provide a literary space within which emotive interiority can be expressed. The volume considers a wide range of Old Norse materials – from translated romances through Eddic poetry and Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders) to indigenous romance.
Keywords: emotion, neurology, medieval, Nibelungenlied, Njal´s saga