Month: January 2023

The international symposium on ´Emotion & Genre’, was held in Venice in September 2022 . We met with a lovely group of colleagues from all over Europe and Canada to discuss the intersection between emotion  (as a phenomenon) and genre (as a literary framework and modality). The symposium was hosted by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and formed part of a collaboration between our project  and the research project ‘Modes of Modification: Variance and Change in Medieval Manuscript Culture’.

This past September, Timothy Bourns, the project’s former postdoctoral researcher, started a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at University College London. While his new research is focused on medieval Greenland, he has also given three papers related to the emotion and selfhood project in recent months. He gave the Michaelmas Old Norse in Oxford Research Seminar with a paper titled ‘Animal Emotionality in Norse Myth, Saga, and Romance’; he then presented ‘Human-Tree Hybridity and Arborescent Emotionality in Norse Myth and Legend’ at the Aarhus Old Norse Mythology Conference, ‘Hybrids and Metamorphoses’, at Charles University in Prague; and he presented ‘Translating the Unknown: Emotive Hapax Legomena in Old Norse Verse’ at the ‘Translating the Middle Ages’ workshop held at Linacre College, University of Oxford.

Bridget Leary has successfully completed her Master thesis “The Anachronistic Skald: The Emotionality in Sonatorrek“. A summary of the thesis can be found below:

This thesis deals with the Old Norse poem Sonatorrek, today typically read in the saga Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, where it is attributed to the tenth-century skald Egill Skallagrímsson. Considered an exemplar of linguistic skill and interiority, Sonatorrek is a highly emotive poem which stands in marked contrast to the typical conventions of saga emotionality.
This thesis uses emotive scripting and cultural memory theory to examine the emotionality of Sonatorrek in order to reconsider the context of its composition. It draws comparisons between the behavioural codes used to perform literary emotion in the sagas, in the poem, and in continental romances, their translations and indigenous imitations, to show that Sonatorrek utilises literary conventions that did not become standard until much later – until closer to the twelfth or thirteenth century than the tenth.
Due to issues with the manuscript evidence for the poem’s transmission, there has been some debate around the date of Sonatorrek’s composition – albeit heavily weighted towards scholars who favour a tenth-century composition date. Despite the poem’s emphasis on emotive force however, there has been as yet no attempt to use emotionality to question its literary context and detach it from the saga. This thesis will introduce this new facet to the argument, and will consider the implications that viewing the poem as arising from a later context has for understandings of self and identity in the medieval period.

Maximillian Jesiolowski has successfully completed his Master thesis on “Emotional States and Identity in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar: Conveying Identity through Natural Landscape”. A summary of the thesis can be found below:

This thesis investigates the portrayal of the natural landscape and its unique relationship to emotions and ideas of identity and the self in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar. The saga has been studied from a wide range of perspectives, with scholars focussing on societal and political roles, the nature of Viking Age outlaws, and the supernatural. Many works have also examined the saga’s characters, with the figure of Grettir Ásmundarson being of particular interest to scholars in the mid and late 20th century. Recently, the modern prominence of environmentalism awareness has resulted in several recent works investigating the portrayal and use of landscape in Grettis saga. However, there has not as yet been an extensive study of the link between the identity and emotional state of the main character and the portrayal of the natural environment in the saga. Icelandic sagas are often characterised by the lack of emotional displays by their characters, and Grettis saga is no exception. By examining the natural environment in Grettis saga, this thesis show sthat the emotions and identity of the main character are significantly influenced by it and that the portrayal of landscape is an important medium through which Grettir’s interiority is conveyed. As an outlaw saga, Grettis saga features more natural landscapes than many other sagas and therefore utilises these landscapes in more prominent thematic roles. This thesis highlights these roles, showing how the author’s portrayal of natural landscape contributes to the complex emotional journey of Grettir Ásmundarson and his ongoing struggle to find his place within human society.