The 9 essays collected in this volume are the result of a workshop for international doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies held at the Institute for Nordic Philology (LMU) in Munich in December 2018. The contributors focus on 'unwanted', illicit, neglected, and marginalised elements in saga literature and research on it. The chapters cover a wide range of intra-textual phenomena, narrative strategies, and understudied aspects of individual texts and subgenres. The analyses demonstrate the importance of deviance and transgression as literary characteristics of saga narration, as well as the discursive parameters that have been dominant in Saga Studies. The aim of this collection is to highlight the productiveness of developing modified methodological approaches to the sagas and their study, with a starting point in narratological considerations.
Author(s): Andreas Schmidt, Daniela Hahn
Series: Münchner Nordistische Studien, 50
Publisher: Utzverlag
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 314
City: München
Preface 5
Andreas Schmidt & Daniela Hahn / Unwanted: An Introduction 6
Alexander J. Wilson / Let the Right Skald In: Unwanted Guests in Sagas of Poets 28
Sebastian Thoma / A Friend in 'níð': On the Narrative Display of Gender and 'níð' in 'Njáls saga' 57
Anita Sauckel / Skarpheðinn Njálsson: An Agent of Transgression or a 'Youth gone Wild'? 87
Lucie Korecká / Unwanted Hero, Praised Outcast: The Outlaw Motif in 'Arons saga Hjörleifssonar' and 'Sturlunga saga' 107
Rebecca Merkelbach / Outlawed Bears and Trollish Foster-Parents: Exploring the Social Dimension of the 'Post-Classical' Sagas of Icelanders 143
Zuzana Stankovitsová / 'Tasteless Additions': Post-Medieval Textual Variation in 'Króka-Refs saga' as Audience Reception 180
Yoav Tirosh / Tearing a Text Apart – Audience Participation and Authorial Intent in 'Ljósvetninga saga' and Tommy Wiseau’s 'The Room' 206
Mathias Kruse / How to Scare Away the Devil. A Frenchman, the Devil, a Jew, and a Cunning Disguise in an Icelandic 'ævintýr' known as 'Callinius saga' 243
Jan Alexander van Nahl / 'A waste of effort'? Towards a Reassessment of the Old Norse Kings’ Sagas (With a Comment on a 'Living Handbook of Old Norse Studies') 272
The Authors 308
Index 311
