Margaret clunies ross biography template

Medioevistik 20 . Mediaevistilc 20 . tlic narrative thelnes ref'lect a consider_ able sense of fluidity, uncertainty, even fear, which the confrontation with the Saracens allow to overcome. As Calkin hastens to add, however, these fears oÊ ten resulted from the conflicts between the English and the Scots, and other na_ tional groups on the British lsles, so that it makes sense to read the romances in the Auchinlec¡rc nrs. as literary mirrors and as quite effective vehicles to come to tenns with the external threats in po_ litical and military terms. Of course, ul_ tilnate proof is often missing, but the structures, themes, motifs, and figures within these romances unmistakably in_ dicate a deep-seated concern with the problematics of identity formation, which is realized through the interaction (hostile or ) with the Saracens as substitute figures who regularly emerge as noble knights and differ from their Christian counterparts only in their re_ ligious orientation. Calkin also ernphasizes that four_ teenth-century England experienced tremendous tensions in its dealings with Ftance, whether it was treated as part of England or as a military threat. This rnight indeed be reflected in fhe highly polished, almost Westernized appear_ ance of the Saracen knights, an observation that has been rnade with respect to many other texts outside of Middle Eng_ lish literature, such as l(onrad von Wür_ zburg's Partonopier und Aúeliur, but to which Calkin hardly ever refers to (see Meeting rhe Foreign in the Middle Ages, erl. A. Classen,, here not yet con_ sulted; but see the bibliography, most of which Calkin has not examined). The uncertainfy about the true conversion of the Saracen princess might, in fact, rep_ resent English uncertainty about the zone, but not in England, or elsewhere in loy_ alty and rrustworthiness of political állies, especially the French. Concomi_ tantly, there were ma

• Reviewed by:
• Stephen C. E. Hopkins
• University of Virginia
• s@

The Icelandic Sagas are renowned for their terse, vivid, and unforgettable storytelling. Translations of this unique body of novel-like prosimetric narrative still sell well today. Yet those who enjoy the sagas, many of which date to the fourteenth century, know that most of them come with difficult bits of older poetry embedded within them. This is skaldic poetry--among the most complex and highly wrought forms of poetry from the Middle Ages. The intricacy of skaldic meter is famous, as interlaced and exquisite as the goldwork on the Sutton Hoo belt buckle, and just as easy to get lost in. The complex beauty of skaldic poetry is worth the high price of admission--deep knowledge of poetic scansion, alliteration, stress patterns, complex compound kennings, and the Old Norse language itself are needed to unlock a single verse or stanza. These high barriers to entry are also the reason this poetry is understudied outside of specialist circles. Thus, the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages series has aimed from the start to make this poetry more accessible. Indeed, while it is easy to find good scholarship on the Icelandic Sagas, until now, it has been harder to find the same for the Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. This two-part volume fulfills its stated purpose admirably: “this edition, with its various editorial aids to the understanding of the poetry, will hopefully go some way towards liberating the poetry from the straitjacket of obscurity and allow an integrated view of these sagas as comprising both prose and verse” (xc).

In part, this is achieved by the format in which stanzas are presented. In this volume, as throughout the series, each skaldic stanza is presented individually in its original word order as edited from manuscript witnesses. Immediately below this, in fine print, the words are rearranged into a prose word order that reflects the natural syntactic pa

The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: Research and Reception, Volume I: From the Middle Ages to c. ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross (review) Carole M. Cusack Parergon, Volume 35, Number 2, , pp. (Review) Published by Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.) DOI: For additional information about this article Access provided by University of Sydney Library (15 Nov GMT) Reviews involved temporal narration of salvific history, liturgical time was also structured by the history of salvation and as such afforded instances of emotional expression that took a far longer view than our modern experience might allow. The eternal, ongoing act of salvation broke into the secular variously, depending on how liturgical time mapped onto each particular moment. Although far exceeding the scope of the work, analysis of the continuity and discontinuity of this sense of ‘higher times’ with earlier liturgical cultures would have been well received. Champion does note the presence of different temporalities from the outset, but it is clear that in his analysis it is liturgical time that renders all these different temporal ‘tracks’ coherent. The in-breaking of the eternal, in Champion’s approach, provides the structure for the everyday. This is the case for the calendrical calculation and gospel harmonies (Chapter 5). In a complex way, by ordering time the subject could appreciate it from a bird’s eye view that approximated the view from God’s eternity. ‘This entailed a temporal experience of reading the book, where the single time of the liturgy was marked by entering and correlating multiple episodic frames’ (p. ). In the devotional text, then, myriad lines of times and narrative were brought together into one moment. Just as one might survey episodic scenes from Christ’s life at once via

This stanza, edited here by Margaret Clunies Ross, is extant in three separate prose sources, and is attributed to Bragi skáld ‘Bragi the Poet’ in all three: Ldn, Geir (in Stu), and Hálf. For a summary of the narrative in which the stanza is embedded, see Introduction to Lv 1a.

In all sources this narrative, a version of a folktale type (cf. Boberg , , K; Mitchell ; Thompson IV, K; H) in which lower-class infants are substituted for royal or aristocratic ones, serves to give background to the vitae of the twins Geirmundr and Hámundr heljarskinn ‘Dark-skin’, who were both among the most important settlers in Iceland and had many high-ranking descendants. Whereas Ldn and Geir use this narrative to enhance Geirmundr’s status in particular, its function in Hálf is to provide a fitting conclusion to a fornaldarsaga about the brothers’ legendary ancestors.

The Bragi skáld of this narrative has been traditionally identified with Bragi inn gamli ‘the Old’ Boddason (see his Biography in Vol. III). His role (all versions) is that of a seer and moral adviser, and is comparable to that played by seeresses elsewhere in Old Icelandic literature; cf. Vsp and the lítilvǫlva ‘little seeress’ Þorbjǫrg in Eir. There is a particular similarity to an episode in Hrólf in which a vǫlva ‘seeress’ recites verses disclosing the true identity and whereabouts of two brothers whose father has been killed by King Fróði; there are verbal similarities between Bragi’s stanza and Heiðr Lv 1 and 3 (Hrólf 2 and 4). Like a vǫlva, whose name derives from vǫlr ‘wand, switch’, Bragi has a rod (sproti) which he uses to emphasise his message and direct it to the queen. In all versions of the verse text he affirms the royal birth of Hámundr and Geirmundr, while confirming the slave stock of Leifr.

The textual relationship between the three prose sources’ versions of the narrative is complex. It is described in deta