Despite various poststructuralist rejections of the idea of a singular author-genius, the question of a textual archetype that can be assigned to a named author is still a common scholarly phantasm. The Romantic idea that an author created a text or even a work autonomously is transferred even to pre-modern literature today. This ignores the fact that the transmission of medieval and early modern literature creates variances that could not be justified by means of singular authorships.
The present volume offers new theoretical approaches from English, German, and Scandinavian studies to provide a historically more adequate approach to the question of authorship in premodern literary cultures. Authorship is no longer equated with an extra-textual entity, but is instead considered a narratological, inner- and intertextual function that can be recognized in the retrospectively established beginnings of literature as well as in the medial transformation of texts during the early days of printing. The volume is aimed at interested scholars of all philologies, especially those dealing with the Middle Ages or Early Modern Period.
Author(s): Lukas Rösli, Stefanie Gropper
Series: Andere Ästhetik - Studien, 1
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 300
City: Berlin
Acknowledgements 5
Lukas Rösli and Stefanie Gropper / In Search of the Culprit. Aspects of Medieval Authorship. Introduction 9
Jürg Glauser / '...who is the author of this book?. Creating Literary Authorship in Medieval Iceland 17
Lukas Rösli / The Primal Scribe. The Old Norse 'scriptogenesis' and Ari Þorgilsson inn fróði as Iceland’s First Author 53
Stefanie Gropper / The 'Heteronomous Authorship' of Icelandic Saga Literature. The Example of 'Sneglu-Halla þáttr' 75
Sigurður Ingibergur Björnsson, Steingrímur Páll Kárason and Jón Karl Helgason / Stylometry and the Faded Fingerprints of Saga Authors 97
Judy Quinn / Anonymity and the Textual Construction of Authority in Prosimetrum 123
Lena Rohrbach / The Persistence of the Humanistic Legacy. Concepts of Authorship and Textuality in 'Konungasögur' Studies 141
Slavica Ranković / Spectres of Agency. The Case of 'Fóstbroeðra saga' and its Distributed Author 175
Gudrun Bamberger / A Theory of Early Modern Authorship. Dealing with Accountability in 16th-Century German Prose Novels 193
Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker / Shakespeare’s Medieval Co-Authors 217
Madita Knöpfle / Conceptions of Authorship. The Case of 'Ármanns rímur' and Their Reworkings in Early Modern Iceland 239
Margrét Eggertsdóttir / The Best-Written Saga and the Absence of its Author 265
Figures and Charts 289
Index of Names 291
Index of Works 294
Index of Manuscripts 297
Index of Matters 299
