Stories Set Forth with Fair Words: The Evolution of Medieval Romance in Iceland

by Marianne E. Kalinke

Overview

This book is an investigation of the foundation and evolution of romance in Iceland. The narrative type arose from the introduction of French narratives into the alien literary environment of Iceland and the acculturation of the import to indigenous literary traditions. The study focuses on the oldest Icelandic copies of three chansons de geste and four of the earliest indigenous romances, both types transmitted in an Icelandic codex from around 1300. The impact of the translated epic poems on the origin and development of the Icelandic romances was considerable, yet they have been largely neglected by scholars in favour of the courtly romances. This study attests the role played by the epic poems in the composition of romance in Iceland, which introduced the motifs of the aggressive female wooer and of Christian-heathen conflict.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786830692
Publisher:	University of Wales Press
Publication date:	03/23/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	418 KB

About the Author

Professor M.E. Kalinke (retired) was until May 2006 Trowbridge Chair in Literary Studies Emerita and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Germanic languages and Comparative Literature Emerita, University of Illinois.

Editorial Reviews

“Kalinke’s close readings, following the development from French originals, of Norwegian translations and Icelandic rewritings to the indigenous riddarasögur, as well as her comparisons of variants of the same text, provide us with a much clearer picture than we have had before of the evolution of medieval romance in Iceland.”

Else Mundal

“This large-scale consideration of the foreign and native influences on the evolution and development of medieval Icelandic romance marks a stimulating new turn in riddarasögur scholarship which will be of significant interest to medievalists outside the field of Old Norse as well as to Scandinavian specialists.

Geraldine Barnes

“In this new and definitive history of romance in medieval Iceland, Kalinke shows how, from the first translations from French into Norwegian through to the popular and inventive late romances composed in Iceland, the north embraced the new genre. Kalinke’s achievement is to persuade us that the Icelandic romances bear comparison not only with the great family sagas but also with romance texts from elsewhere in medieval Europe.”

Carolyne Larrington