Author : CARL. PHELPSTEAD
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 19,52 MB
Release : 2024-05-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780813080680
Combining an accessible approach with innovative scholarship, Carl Phelpstead draws on historical context, contemporary theory, and close reading to deepen our understanding of Icelandic saga narratives about the island's early history.
Author : Jane Smilely
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 40,94 MB
Release : 2005-02-24
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0141933267
In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.
Author : Margaret Clunies Ross
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 37,92 MB
Release : 2010-10-28
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1139492640
The medieval Norse-Icelandic saga is one of the most important European vernacular literary genres of the Middle Ages. This Introduction to the saga genre outlines its origins and development, its literary character, its material existence in manuscripts and printed editions, and its changing reception from the Middle Ages to the present time. Its multiple sub-genres - including family sagas, mythical-heroic sagas and sagas of knights - are described and discussed in detail, and the world of medieval Icelanders is powerfully evoked. The first general study of the Old Norse-Icelandic saga to be written in English for some decades, the Introduction is based on up-to-date scholarship and engages with current debates in the field. With suggestions for further reading, detailed information about the Icelandic literary canon, and a map of medieval Iceland, this book is aimed at students of medieval literature and assumes no prior knowledge of Scandinavian languages.
Author : William R. Short
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 14,51 MB
Release : 2010-03-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0786447273
The Sagas of Icelanders are enduring stories from Viking-age Iceland filled with love and romance, battles and feuds, tragedy and comedy. Yet these tales are little read today, even by lovers of literature. The culture and history of the people depicted in the Sagas are often unfamiliar to the modern reader, though the audience for whom the tales were intended would have had an intimate understanding of the material. This text introduces the modern reader to the daily lives and material culture of the Vikings. Topics covered include religion, housing, social customs, the settlement of disputes, and the early history of Iceland. Issues of dispute among scholars, such as the nature of settlement and the division of land, are addressed in the text.
Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 49,90 MB
Release : 2013-03-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0141975520
Comic Sagas and Tales brings together the very finest Icelandic stories from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, a time of civil unrest and social upheaval. With feuding families and moments of grotesque violence, the sagas see such classic mythological figures as murdered fathers, disguised beggars, corrupt chieftains and avenging sons do battle with axes, words and cunning. The tales, meanwhile, follow heroes and comical fools through dreams, voyages and religious conversions in medieval Iceland and beyond. Shaped by Iceland's oral culture and their conversion to Christianity, these stories are works of ironic humour and stylistic innovation.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 36,52 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Old Norse literature
ISBN :
The set contains "the first complete, coordinated English translation of The sagas of Icelanders, forty in all, together with forty-nine of the shorter Tales of Icelanders."--Preface.
Author : Jesse L. Byock
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 49,89 MB
Release : 1993-03-09
Category : History
ISBN : 0520082591
Byock sees the crucial element in the origin of the Icelandic sagas not as the introduction of writing or the impact of literary borrowings from the continent but the subject of the tales themselves - feud. This simple thesis is developed into a thorough examination of Icelandic society and feud, and of the narrative technique of recounting it.
Author : Theodore Murdock Andersson
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 46,79 MB
Release : 2006
Category : History
ISBN : 9780801444081
Andersson introduces readers to the development of the Icelandic sagas between 1180 and 1280, a crucial period that witnessed a gradual shift of emphasis from tales of adventure and personal distinction to the analysis of politics and history.
Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 43,54 MB
Release : 2005-03-31
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0141961422
Written around the thirteenth century AD by Icelandic monks, the seven tales collected here offer a combination of pagan elements tightly woven into the pattern of Christian ethics. They take as their subjects figures who are heroic, but do not fit into the mould of traditional heroes. Some stories concern characters in Iceland - among them Hrafknel's Saga, in which a poor man's son is murdered by his powerful neighbour, and Thorstein the Staff-Struck, which describes an ageing warrior's struggle to settle into a peaceful rural community. Others focus on the adventures of Icelanders abroad, including the compelling Audun's Story, which depicts a farmhand's pilgrimage to Rome. These fascinating tales deal with powerful human emotions, suffering and dignity at a time of profound transition, when traditional ideals were gradually yielding to a more peaceful pastoral lifestyle.
Author : Alison Finlay
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 124 pages
File Size : 12,80 MB
Release : 2019-08-05
Category : History
ISBN : 1501514679
Unique among the Icelandic sagas, part-history, part-fiction, the Saga of the Jómsvikings tells of a legendary band of vikings, originally Danish, who established an island fortress of the Baltic coast and launched and ultimately lost their heroic attack on the pagan ruler of Norway in the late tenth century. The saga's account of their stringent warrior code, fatalistic adherence to their own reckless vows and declarations of extreme courage as they face execution articulates a remarkable account of what it meant to be a viking. This translation presents the longest and earliest text of the saga, never before published in English, with a full literary and historical introduction to this remarkable work.
