Narrative in the Icelandic Family Saga: Meanings of Time in Old Norse Literature

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Representative of a unique literary genre and composed in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Icelandic Family Sagas rank among some of the worlds greatest literature. Here, Heather ODonoghue skilfully examines the notions of time and the singular textual voice of the Sagas, offering a fresh perspective on the foundational texts of Old Norse and medieval Icelandic heritage. With a conspicuous absence of giants, dragons, and fairy tale magic, these sagas reflect a real-world society in transition, grappling with major new challenges of identity and development. As this book reveals, the stance of the narrator and the role of time from the representation of external time passing to the audience's experience of moving through a narrative are crucial to these stories. As such, Narrative in the Icelandic Family Saga draws on modern narratological theory to explore the ways in which saga authors maintain the urgency and complexity of their material, handle the narrative and chronological line, and offer perceptive insights into saga society. In doing so, ODonoghue presents a new poetics of family sagas and redefines the literary rhetoric of saga narratives.

Reviews

This important new study explores the often-ignored reality that Icelands family sagas focus squarely on human society. Instead of pursuing the usual literary questions of invention or fantasy, Prof. ODonohuge delves deeply into the real-feeling world of deceptively familiar human characters in everyday, though dramatic circumstances as she focuses on the remarkably consistent portrait of early medieval Icelandic society. Saga authors were, ODonohuge states, working with an authentic and detailed picture of their ancestral society accurately transmitted via oral tradition. Here is a work that has much to teach us and contributes significantly to the field. * Jesse Byock, Professor of Old Norse and Viking Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *
No reader of this book will emerge unconvinced of the artistry of the saga authors, or of the current authors position as one of the foremost saga scholars of our generation. The lucidity and ease with which ODonoghue approaches the central subject of time in saga narrative ensure that this book will become essential reading both for established scholars and for anyone looking to learn more about the sagas. * Tom Birkett, Lecturer in Medieval Literature, University College Cork, Ireland *
A wonderfully eye-opening exploration of not only the Sagas of Icelanders as a genre, but also broader ideas about how narrative can act as a connecting bridge between history and fiction. By turns philosophical and theoretical, ODonoghue paints a vivid picture of the saga world and the passage, perception, and representation of time: the rhythms of the seasons, the cultural events marking the social calendar, the deeper historical time spanning the generations. A skillful analysis that reveals the considerable narratological talents of the Icelandic saga authors and the richness of the stories themselves. * Eleanor Barraclough, Associate Professor of Medieval History and Literature, Durham University, UK *
Heather ODonoghue studies narrative time, specifically the representation and production of time in six sagas of the Icelanders, arguing that the saga narrators withheld some details yet revealed others, shaping the representation of narrative time and their readers experience of order, silence, and duration. Her groundbreaking work on narratorial time management will ensure that readers discern the nuances of the self-effacing narrators more and in ways that scholars have never before appreciated. This new look at an old subject is approachable, informative, and well worth reading. * Jana K. Schulman, Director of the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, USA *

Author Bio

Heather ODonoghue is Professor of Old Norse at University of Oxford, UK and a Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford, UK. She is the author of The Genesis of a Saga Narrative (1991), Old Norse Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (2004), Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative (2005), From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths (2007) and English Poetry and Old Norse Myth: A History (2014). She has also broadcast with the BBC on the topic of the Norse Gods.