Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.4.16
Lauren Poyer
Editors Rebecca Merkelbach and Gwendolyne Knight introduce the volume with a robust descriptive definition of the terms “Otherness” and alterity as employed in Old Norse Studies over a range of publications over the last fifteen years. They acknowledge that many of the volume's contributions engage with “Otherness” rather than alterity, but defend the volume's focus on alterity; drawing on postmodern and postcolonial theory, they argue that alterity disrupts the dichotomy between the “Self” and the “Other” and allows scholars to discuss difference without the hegemonic associations implied by “Otherness” (pp. 10–12).The terminology employed in the volume's title and section headings is at times misleading. The term deviancy, for example, is not critically employed in any contribution. The contributions under “Paranormal Beings” all specifically explore transformations. “Rogue Sagas” contributions address issues of canonicity and critical attention within the Íslendingasögur. Contributions to “Marginality and Interconnectedness” all present valuable additions to our understanding of Scandinavia within the global Middle Ages, addressing in turn Old Norse-Icelandic literary and/or cultural engagements with Spain, Turkic nomads, and the various medieval peoples deemed blámenn [lit. blue men] in Old Norse-Icelandic sources. This ambitious collection thus attempts to unite a broad range of studies and critical approaches under the term alterity; the editors write that the volume interrogates alterity both “as a discursive result” of representations within and between texts and as a result of “hegemonic discourses of canonization and marginalization” (p. 12).Gwendolyne Knight's opening chapter lays bare the shortcomings of the etic term “shapeshifting” and argues for a “historical anthropological” (p. 29) understanding of the emic terms hamr, hugr, and fylgja, that in fact describe a “plurality of shapeshifting phenomena” (p. 42) rather than a unified tradition. A standout strength is the dense summary of the history of scholarly use of the terms (pp. 30–33), which demonstrates how “internal inconsistency” (p. 33) of their use, both within the field and the medieval corpus, can lead to imprecise analysis. Knight differentiates between doubling/projection, for which she draws from Tolley and Frog's work on representations of the Sámi, and physical transformation, which includes the use of skins. Knight's striking observation that nearly all extant Old Norse stories of wolf transformation postdate Marie de France's Lai de Bisclavret works against the final conclusion that “trying to separate the ‘native’ from the ‘new’ traditions hardly holds any water” (p. 42).Minjie Su provides an incredibly successful interpretation of Bisclaretz ljóð that relates the stages of Bisclaret's journey to three categories of wolf-related kennings that Su defines (pp. 55–6) —bestial, human, and supernatural—and argues that Bisclaret's werewolf status ultimately enables him t
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.4.03
Stephen Gordon
John the Carpenter's reaction to the fake stupefaction of “hende” Nicholas in The Miller's Tale provides some of the poem's more sardonic comic elements. Not only is John characterized as foolish for believing his lodger's warnings about the upcoming deluge, but his response to seeing Nicholas sat silent and agape in his bedroom—casting as he does a “nyght-spel” to ward off elves, wights, and evil spirits (I.3479–80)—presents a picture of John as a credulous and unlearned man, completely at odds to the type of scholarly sophistication that Nicholas (ostensibly) represents.1 This of course is confirmed at the very end of the tale, where John's credulity, his misinterpretation of Nicholas's pained cry of “Water!”, results in his very literal downfall. If John is a figure of ridicule for both Nicholas (as a “sely jalous housbonde” [I.3404]) and the pilgrim-Miller (as a stand-in for the pilgrim-Reeve or carpenters in general [I.3142]), it is a sentiment that is also shared by modern readers. For most scholars, John's comically unsophisticated nature is a given. Discussing the absurd devotion John agrees to utter as he sits in the kneading tub (“Now, Pater-noster, clom!” [I.3638]), Gerald Morgan argues that the reduction of religious sincerity to folly is a theme that lies at the very heart of the Miller's Tale.2 In a similar way, John Block Friedman, Patrick J. Gallacher, and Sonja Mayrhofer each make pejorative references to “superstition” when assessing John's fears that Nicholas is being accosted by evil spirits.3 And yet, the extent to which John's apotropaic strategies in ll. 3474–86 can actually be considered superstitious—irrational, heterodox—is an issue that has yet to be fully resolved. Henry Ansgar Kelly's forensic examination of the licitness of John's actions certainly raises the bar, but this treatment, however laudable, neglects to consider the diagnosis of “despeir” (I.3474) and the enactment of the night spell within the specific context of reacting to—or, more accurately, misinterpreting—the tenor of Nicholas's performance.4 With Nicholas's reputation as a commercial astrologer established from the outset (I.3192-98), John's reactions are entirely logical, orthodox even, when confronted with the apparent fallout of an art that in certain moralistic circles was believed to involve traffic with demons. As will be discussed in more detail below, the protective procedures enacted by John and the identification of the attacking agents (“elves,” “wightes,” “nyghtes verye”) make much more sense within the milieu of contemporary medicomagical theory about the etiology of despair and the nocturnal assault (nightmare) tradition. It is an association that seems to have been current amongst early copiers of the Canterbury Tales: the otherwise obscure phrase “nyghtes verye” is pointedly rendered as “nyghtesmare” in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.24 text of the tale (ca. 1410).5With this in mind, Peter Brown's analysis of the theatrics of N
当然，格尔森并不是中世纪晚期唯一一个致力于揭露司法占星术在物质和精神上的欺诈的作家。尼古拉斯·奥勒斯姆，如上所述，和亨利的兰根斯坦(d. 1397)同样尖锐的批评虽然奥瑞斯姆和兰根斯坦的反占星术小册子并没有得到广泛的传播，但他们的论点肯定是基于当时更广泛的担忧，即相信星星而不是上帝。乔叟本人也在《富兰克林的故事》中呼应了这种对占星术的悲观看法。失恋的奥勒留的兄弟记得在奥尔良读书时，他的一个同学有一卷《魔法自然》(第1125节)，他向奥勒留吐露说，这样一本书可能包含如何制造幻觉的知识，从而解决了多里金轻率地发誓如果奥勒留搬走布列塔尼海岸上所有的岩石就嫁给他的难题。在描述这本书时，“讲述了大量的操作/触动了二十八座豪宅/长到月亮”(V.1129-31a)，富兰克林——无论是在角色中还是作为乔叟的口舌——发出了以下感叹:……在我们的日子里，我们的信仰是不值得一飞的，因为在我们的教会里，我们对信仰的信心会使我们感到悲伤。(V.1131b-34)。虽然看起来这个职员利用自然魔法而不是召唤幽灵作为他占星实践的一部分，但事实上，他用不祥的声明来迎接奥勒留和他的兄弟，他知道“[他们]到来的原因”(第1176节)，并在晚餐时用幻想的幻觉招待他们，这使读者无法理解是什么类型的力量在起作用，以便做出如此准确无误的预测，并创造出“奇妙的景象”(第1206节)。书记员(和他的同类)被同样地描述为“骗子”、“魔术师”和“哲学家”，使这种模棱两可更加复杂(V.1143、1184、1585)不管怎样，在1261-96行，我们都看到了奥尔良执事的详细描述。从用他的“托勒丹表”来预测行星相对于固定恒星的运动和运动，到确定月球的“第一大厦”，书记官对他的手艺进行了精湛的表演，用他的“魔法”使岩石看起来好像消失了即使在这里，富兰克林(或乔叟?)也无法抗拒地评论说，书记官知道其他“观察/交换幻觉和交换机制”(V.1291b-92)，进一步怀疑他是如何实现他的结果的:是利用数学技巧成功计算了异常的涨潮，还是与恶魔秘密交流以混淆感官?除了神学辩论和文学文本之外，占星家施行巫术的暗示也可以从更广泛的历史记录中看出。数学家和阿拉伯-拉丁翻译家迈克尔·斯科特(生于1236年)作为占星家在当代享有很高的声誉。在加入神圣罗马帝国皇帝腓特烈二世(约1220年代中期)的随从之前，他在托莱多(被认为是)亡灵活动的温床开始了他的职业生涯，35斯科特的声誉随着他的三部曲原创作品的出版而得到了巩固:《文学导论》、《文学专论》和《生理学》(约1232年)。尤其是《入门书》，专门讲述占星计算和占卜的艺术。这篇介绍性的文章暴露了斯考特对如何利用恶魔来预言未来的理解(如果不是道德上的接受的话)——例如，提到星盘可以用来召唤邪恶的灵魂，空气中的灵魂可以通过对星星的了解而被召唤出来——在斯考特的死后，关于他的力量来源的谣言到处都是，这并不奇怪阿夫朗什的亨利在写给腓特烈二世的一首诗中宣称，“命运的报报者已经屈服于命运”(1.84)，这可能并不意味着斯科特本身与恶魔结盟，但它确实突出了他作为“占卜者”和“星辰审察者”的不同寻常的能力。57-58) .37点对一些人来说，这可能太不寻常了。在但丁的《地狱篇》中，斯考特被列入地狱第八层的第四层。(第115-17页)，一个留给巫师和占星家的地方，非常明确地显示了占星家的负面态度，这些占星家只是有点太擅长他们的工作——用乔叟的话说，有点太擅长窥视“神的秘密”。15和16世纪以苏格兰名义流传的巫术文本只证实了这样一种信念，即这种准确无误的准确性只能通过恶魔的手段来实现。虽然斯考特可能会对他死后被称为魔术师的名声感到震惊，但这并不是说其他不那么谨慎的占星家不会炫耀他们对恶魔的依赖。 在对约翰内斯·德·萨克罗博斯科颇具影响力的天文学著作《宇宙》(约1230年代)的评论中，意大利博学家塞科·德·阿斯科利(约1327年)认为，地球和天体实际上是由邪恶的灵魂控制的在对《窥天论》中提出的类似论点的赞同中，他还指出，可以构建占星术图像，以便与恶魔交流有了这样的异端观点，德阿斯科利被宗教裁判所谴责并烧死在火刑柱上也就不足为奇了，即使起诉书的确切细节随着时间的流逝而消失了。并非所有针对占星家的法庭诉讼都像d'Ascoli事件那样含糊不清。在1441年的一个比较著名的历史例子中，占星家、牛津人罗杰·博林布鲁克(Roger Bolingbroke)，以及托马斯·索斯韦尔(Thomas Southwell)、约翰·休姆(John Hume)、玛杰里·乔德玛恩(Margery Jourdemayne)和格洛斯特公爵夫人埃莉诺·科巴姆(Eleanor Cobham)，被指控对亨利六世使用了叛国的黑魔法。这一罪行源于博林布鲁克和索斯韦尔预测国王英年早逝的占星术博林布鲁克被捕后，在圣保罗的十字架上公开示众，被迫放弃他的“暗语术”，他被判有罪，被绞死，被绞死，被分尸。由于他们在婚外情中的作用，Jourdemayne被烧死在火刑柱上，Southwell在预定执行死刑的前一天死在监狱里，休谟被赦免，埃莉诺·科巴姆被迫公开忏悔。呼应约翰·阿森登(约1350年)的断言“巫术有时与天文学混淆”，42和罗杰·培根(约1267年)的抱怨，即那些研究合理占星图像的人几乎总是被谴责为魔术师43，博林布鲁克的情节是一个完美的例子，说明在大众的观念中，这两个学科之间缺乏真正的界限。对于大多数评论家来说，维恩图几乎是一个圆圈。回到《磨坊主的故事》，上面对占星术的道德地位的概述为“亨德”尼古拉斯的肖像增添了额外的细微差别。考虑到牛津大学作为占星术研究中心的声誉，加上上面提到的约翰·阿申登(1368年)、沃特·伊夫舍姆(1330年)和西蒙·布雷登(1372年)等在占星术领域较为知名的专家，尼古拉斯很有可能追随他杰出的前辈们的脚步在这方面，他作为牛津学生“学习占星学”的愿望很难被认为是不正统的。他对当地商业占星术的尝试也不能被看作是不寻常的。尽管，正如Sophie Page所指出的，关于英格兰低级占星家工作习惯的书面证据很少，特别是在14世纪，伦敦人Richard Trewythian (BL MS Sloane 428, ca. 1455)幸存的笔记本提供了一个诱人的类似于尼古拉斯自己提供的服务类型根据他的笔记，Trewythian也为客户做一些平凡的工作，如预测天气、个人占星和进行审讯(见反对Miller's Tale, II.3196-97)。与尼古拉斯不同的是，特雷维西安还利用他的知识来预测医学治疗最有利的占星术时间。基于以上，对尼古拉斯占星设备的描述也需要重新评估。就像《富兰克林的故事》中奥尔良的书记员所使用的托勒丹表一样，托勒密的《天文学大全》是计算恒星运动和运动的基础文本，与其说是占星术，不如说是天文学。就其本身而言，任何拥有《大法师》的人都很难被指控为巫师。然而，反对暗指“大大小小的书”(I.3208)，怀疑开始产生。事实上，这些“书”都没有名字，这比之前人们所认为的更能说明问题。在这里，乔叟似乎在词汇上区分了有名字的(合法的)卷和没有名字的(可能是非法的)教科书，区分了科学课程的关键部分和需要保密的文本，以免激起宗教当局的兴趣。Richard Kieckhefer有一个著名的
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.4.02
Kathryn Maude
The Encomium Emmae reginae is a narrative history centered on the praise of Queen Emma, widow of both Æthelred and Cnut. After the death of Cnut, Emma commissioned the Encomium while she ruled England jointly with her sons Edward and Harthacnut.1 The frontispiece of the earliest extant manuscript portrays Emma enthroned in state with her two sons standing at her side (London, British Library Additional MS 33241, f.1v, henceforward BL Additional 33241; see Figure 1). This manuscript appears to have been produced either in 1041 or 1042, before the death of Harthacnut in 1042 when Edward became king, banishing Emma to Winchester and seizing her property.2 The Encomium text diverges from other contemporary sources, placing Emma and her two sons by different fathers as the natural heirs to a Danish dynasty and celebrating Emma's role as a bringer of peace.3 The Encomium Emmae reginae frontispiece validates the text's version of events by projecting Emma's authority, separating her out from her sons as ruler in her own right. Using the iconography of Evangelist author portraits and book donation portraits, the image presents Emma, and the Encomium itself, as authoritative carriers of truth. The grammar of authority in the Encomium frontispiece activates specific iconographical reference points from the manuscript tradition centered on the abbey of St.-Bertin to convey Emma's power and support the Encomium's narrative of events, placing BL Additional 33241 within the artistic exchange between Flanders and England throughout the early Middle Ages.Extensive scholarship on the Encomium Emmae reginae text has demonstrated its careful construction of a usable history for Emma, showing how it edits historical events to place Emma in the best light.4 As Emily Butler puts it, “the project of this text is precisely to shift perceptions of events of recent, familiar history.”5 Pauline Stafford shows how the text uses the titles queen, mother, and lady to negotiate Emma's position, ending with a depiction of Emma ruling jointly and lovingly with her sons Edward and Harthacnut. She notes that this image “does not simply describe reality, it was designed to conjure it.”6 Elizabeth Tyler situates the Encomium's production within the Anglo-Danish court of Harthacnut, showing how the use of Latin and complex allusions to Virgil function to create a foundation legend for the Danish dynasty.7 The Encomium text was commissioned by Emma and designed to intervene directly in contemporary politics.I argue here that the frontispiece of the Encomium makes a truth claim for the Encomium text's contested narrative of recent events by using a specific grammar of authority taken from a tradition of manuscript production between Flanders and England. The iconography used in the frontispiece conveys Emma's authority by depicting her as an Evangelist figure, as well as an imperial ruler. In particular, the use of imagery taken from Evangelist portraits and donor portraits suggests th
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.4.07
Denis Ferhatović
It has become a convention to open reviews of books written before 2020 with the caveat that we cannot judge with the same eyes anything published before the recent global pandemic and the impending realization of several dystopian scenarios (the environmental cataclysm, the encroachment of fascism in the world, the ongoing war in Ukraine). Fortunately, Beowulf the poem and its hero seem fitting for pondering dystopias, but unlike many contributors to Dating Beowulf, I do not think that they have much to offer us in terms of solutions, utopian or otherwise. It is nevertheless moving to see a group of scholars turn to an ancient literary work, seeking intimacy that will, at best, not be returned. Said differently, the project bespeaks a belief in art and humanities that we should keep alive and carry outside our fields and subfields, especially outside academia.Daniel C. Remein and Erica Weaver note in their introduction the urgency of reaching across disciplines. They hope that the individual essays “will shape critical conversations and knowledge about that particular poem, and [contribute] to a larger theoretical conversation in the humanities—beyond medieval studies—about intimacy as a critical term and its place in fields such as affect studies, queer theory, and histories of the emotions and the senses” (p. 19). Earlier on, the editors speak about the pressing need to include those historically excluded from the field; their generous, theoretically rich conceptualization of intimacy with Beowulf might help toward such an objective (p. 8). I commend Manchester University Press for making the volume available in open access. Yet the question of accessibility goes beyond the ability to obtain the actual book. While I appreciate the excited, sweeping tone of the introduction, I find it difficult to imagine a nonspecialist, or indeed a specialist without an immediate recall of all the theorists, deftly disentangling crucial passages requiring much theoretical sophistication. Let me quote one instance: “Dinshaw's queer historian, we recall, may be a queer historiographical fetishist who is ‘decidedly not nostalgic for wholeness and unity’ and yet ‘nonetheless desires an affective, even tactile relation to the past such as a relic provides’. If the touch imbues the historiographical act with latent intimacies, positing a queer fetish as its object multiplies their complexities but also the potential for intimacies that eschew the intimate as determined by the private, the known, and the lasting, in favour of the public, the anonymous, the fleeting, the ghostly, or even the utopian, as in José Esteban Muñoz's conception of ‘queer futurity’.” (p. 16). These are important points that should be explained as patiently and clearly as possible for full impact.Not surprising for a book that asks “is Beowulf on Grindr?” in its introduction (p. 2), Dating Beowulf abounds with queer discoveries. In “Beowulf and Andreas: Intimate Relations,” Irina Dumitrescu q
开放2020年之前写的书的评论已经成为一种惯例，但警告说，我们不能用同样的眼光来评判最近全球大流行和即将实现的几个反乌托邦场景(环境灾难、法西斯主义在世界上的侵犯、乌克兰正在进行的战争)之前出版的任何东西。幸运的是，《贝奥武夫》这首诗及其主人公似乎适合于思考反乌托邦，但与《约会贝奥武夫》的许多撰稿人不同，我认为他们在解决方案方面没有多少东西可以提供给我们，无论是乌托邦式的还是其他的。然而，看到一群学者转向古代文学作品，寻求亲密感，这是令人感动的，这种亲密感最多也只能是一去不复返了。换句话说，这个项目表明了一种对艺术和人文学科的信念，我们应该保持这种信念，并将其带到我们的领域和子领域之外，尤其是学术界之外。Daniel C. Remein和Erica Weaver在他们的引言中指出了跨学科研究的紧迫性。他们希望这些单独的文章“将形成关于这首诗的批判性对话和知识，并[有助于]人文学科中更大的理论对话——超越中世纪研究——关于亲密作为一个批判性术语及其在情感研究、酷儿理论、情感和感官历史等领域的地位”(第19页)。早些时候，编辑们谈到了迫切需要包括那些历史上被排除在该领域之外的人;他们对与贝奥武夫的亲密关系的慷慨的、理论上丰富的概念化可能有助于实现这一目标(第8页)。我赞扬曼彻斯特大学出版社将这本书开放获取。然而，可访问性的问题超出了获取实际书籍的能力。虽然我很欣赏这本书引言的激动、概括的语气，但我发现很难想象一个非专业人士，或者实际上是一个专家，如果不立即回忆起所有的理论家，就能巧妙地解开需要大量理论知识的关键段落。让我引用一个例子:“我们记得，丁肖笔下的酷儿历史学家，可能是一个酷儿的历史学家，他‘绝对不怀念整体性和统一性’，但‘仍然渴望一种情感上的，甚至是触觉上的关系，就像遗迹所提供的那样’。如果触摸使历史行为充满了潜在的亲密关系，将酷儿恋物癖作为其对象，增加了它们的复杂性，但也增加了亲密关系的潜力，这种亲密关系是由私人，已知和持久的决定的，有利于公众，匿名的，转瞬即逝的，幽灵般的，甚至是乌托邦的，正如jos<s:1> Esteban Muñoz的“酷儿未来”概念。(第16页)。这些都是重要的观点，应该尽可能耐心和清楚地解释，以充分发挥作用。对于一本问“贝奥武夫在Grindr上吗?”在前言中(第2页)，《贝奥武夫的约会》充满了奇怪的发现。在《贝奥武夫与安德烈亚斯:亲密关系》(Beowulf and Andreas: Intimate Relations)中，伊琳娜·杜米特莱斯库(Irina Dumitrescu)通过观察安德烈斯诗人对贝奥武夫诗人文本的敬意和挑战，颠覆了哈罗德·布鲁姆(Harold Bloom)文学影响的俄狄浦斯模式(年轻诗人隐喻地杀死并取代了年长诗人的父亲，同时与缪斯发生性关系)。Dumitrescu机智而博学的工作甚至使Stephen Guy-Bray在他的《诗中的爱:情色的诗歌影响》(2006)中将布卢姆派的影响重新定义为年轻诗人和年长诗人之间的同性恋结合的观点复杂化。我们无法确定贝奥武夫和安德烈斯诗人的性别，所以这对男性夫妇首先想象的可能是两个女同性恋修女，或者完全是其他性别和性配置。毕竟，正如杜米特雷斯库所写，“如果安德烈亚斯有时借贝奥武夫的衣服，目的是……拖”(第259页)。彼得·布坎南(Peter Buchanan)的文章《贝奥武夫、布赖尔和闪电战:一段酷儿的历史》(Beowulf, Bryher and the Blitz: A Queer History)向读者介绍了布赖尔的小说，“一部酷儿、女权主义的杰作，集纪实现实主义和现代主义奇思妙想于一身”(第280页)。作者写得很有魅力，这本迷人的书以二战德国轰炸伦敦为背景，充满了实事求是的韧性。他找机会描述了布赖赫的亲密圈子，包括双性恋诗人h.d.，他第一次见到布赖赫时问:“你见过海雀吗?它是什么样子?”(第282页)。虽然拥护一个有趣的中世纪女性，但没有必要像布坎南在他的尾注74(第303页)中所做的那样，将自己与更明确的男性化改编拉开距离。我没有理由为罗伯特·泽米基斯(Robert Zemeckis)灾难性的夸大其词的《贝奥武夫》(Beowulf)辩护。 Joliewulf[2007])，但为什么Santiago García和David Rubín的图解贝奥武夫(2013)不值得仔细研究呢?漫画的特点是:一些未经审查的贝奥武夫的平均天赋的描绘(不像泽米基斯的电影，只有取笑和阻碍观众的目光与各种对象<s:1>奥斯丁权力:国际神秘人[1997]);格伦德尔用卷须状的身体部位抓住并刺穿所说的阳具;以及怪物向贝奥武夫裸露的胯部大量射精。至少从简·钱斯的萌芽论文《贝奥武夫的结构统一性:格伦德尔母亲的问题》(《德克萨斯文学与语言研究》第22期[1980])开始，我们就已经理解了格伦德尔母亲与贝奥武夫在情色方面的斗争。格伦德尔渴望与贝奥武夫发生性关系意味着什么?为什么西班牙艺术家García和Rubín如此公开地想象它?贝奥武夫可能会“在这里度过一段美好的时光，而不是很长时间”，正如Grindr上所说的那样，他从未表明自己是否接种了新冠病毒和猴痘疫苗。另外，不要询问他的政治观点。他可以是DL和枕头公主。我们对他的期望当然是有限的。消极的例子，什么不该做，偶尔苦乐参半的安慰可能是我们最好的选择。在《贝奥武夫的社区、快乐和叙事的亲密关系》中，本杰明·萨尔茨曼想象“叙事亲密关系”有可能与“公共亲密关系”相交，从而产生“一种深刻的快乐体验……”在诗中”(第31页)。与此同时，他没有隐瞒任何类型的社区建设的危险。如果社区按照他们的定义总是排斥他人，或者，甚至更隐蔽地，要求他们的成员削减他们自我的重要部分(萨尔茨曼引用了罗伯托·埃斯波西托的作品[p. 391])。[35])，那么围绕贝奥武夫建立一个不那么有害、更包容的中世纪早期英国学者社区的重要事业还有什么希望呢?从一篇文学评论中要求具体的、现实的指导方针是不合理的，但这篇文章确实提出了这个问题。唐娜·贝丝·埃拉德在《贝奥武夫与婴儿》中揭示了在《锡尔德》和《贝奥武夫》的背景故事中，社区照顾被父母遗弃的婴儿的现象。这是对一首通常被认为是男性主义的诗的一个方面的深刻阐释。埃拉德写道:“就像《Scyld》的微观叙事一样，贝奥武夫提到的童年‘生存’引入了一种矛盾心理，这种矛盾心理在情感弹性和时空纠缠方面管理着复杂性”(第110页)。然而，“情感弹性和时空纠缠”只会产生两个强大的军阀。谨慎而圆满的集体养育的最终结果是，一个男人会恐吓他周围的所有部落，以保持他的权力(并保护他的人民)。玛丽亚·达瓦娜·黑德利(Maria Dahvana Headley)的实验性和不平衡的翻译(2020)将贝奥武夫想象成一个特朗普的人物，这对虚构的野蛮人是不公平的，玛丽·多克雷-米勒(Mary Dockray-Miller)在《与威格拉夫约会:与贝奥武夫年轻英雄的情感联系》中把威格拉夫描绘成奥巴马的人物。她总结道:“威格拉夫年轻、忠诚、勇敢、有技能、有直觉、有教养”(第311页)。他可能来自一个混合的种族背景，因为他既是瑞典人又是捷克国王的亲戚。男人之间可能存在比父子关系更灵活的忠诚网络
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.4.14
Thomas Bredsdorff
The Sagas of Olden Days—references to the fornaldarsögur in English vacillate between Sagas of Antiquity and Sagas of Ancient Times; I suggest we coin a more Germanic name, Sagas of Olden Days—have not received much attention by scholars within the field of Old Norse-Icelandic. According to the romanticist scholar N.M. Petersen, who valued saga texts according to their historical credibility, the sagas of olden days were “without historical characters, imbued with confused memories of ancient times patched up with absurd fairy-tales” (in his “Bidrag til den oldnordiske Litteraturs Historie,” published posthumously [1861], p. 277). That the Sagas of Olden Days were considered late arrivals made them even less attractive in the eyes of the historically minded critics.When in the early twentieth century scholars’ focus shifted from historical validity to aesthetic accomplishment, the fornaldarsögur once again were left behind, eclipsed by the (from a literary point of view) more attractive family sagas. In the second half of the twentieth century, a revived historicity came to dominate, not in the nineteenth-century notion of sagas as reliable source material, which was gone forever, but as late and distorted versions of oral tales whose more authentic form could be glimpsed through a study of the formulas employed by present time singers of tales from the Balkans and elsewhere. Once again, the Sagas of Olden Days were left by the wayside: too marked by influence from other medieval literature to parade as oral products.The prioritizing of lost oral versions and the identification of formulae that took a particularly strong hold among North American saga scholars did not yield much in terms of an understanding of the world of the sagas, their themes, and the view of the world embedded in them. That is exactly what the book under review does.Annette Lassen is one of the most prolific scholars of her generation. In addition to her own research, she has edited a Danish translation of the entire bodies of the Sagas of Icelanders (5 volumes, 2014) and of the Sagas of Olden Days (8 volumes, 2016–19). And now she has published a treatise on the world of the Sagas of Olden Days, in which she argues that this body of texts, rather than confused memories and absurdities, develops a coherent world of its own worth dealing with.Lassen builds her argument slowly and meticulously, employing a considerable number of examples, allowing for exceptions and carefully considering counterarguments. In the chapter on the sagas’ (lack of) historicity, she does allow for certain elements to mirror historical events, for example Ragnarr loðbrók, in the saga named for him, who is a credible version of one Reginherus documented through other sources. Despite this and other instances of intended historical veracity, “there is a striking mismatch between the saga and the underlying historical events” (p. 49).Here is how she views her material: “Even though we must assume that s
古代传奇——英语中fornaldarsögur的指称在古代传奇和古代传奇之间摇摆不定;我建议我们取一个更日耳曼人的名字——《古代传奇》——它并没有受到古挪威-冰岛研究领域的学者们的太多关注。浪漫主义学者N.M.彼得森(N.M. Petersen)根据传奇文本的历史可信度来评价它们，他认为古代的传奇“没有历史人物，充满了对古代的混乱记忆，夹杂着荒谬的童话故事”(在他死后出版的《Bidrag til den oldnordiske文学史》(1861年)中，第277页)。《旧日传奇》被认为是姗姗来迟的作品，这使得它们在具有历史头脑的批评家眼中更没有吸引力。20世纪初，当学者们的关注点从历史有效性转向审美成就时，fornaldarsögur再次被抛在后面，被(从文学角度来看)更有吸引力的家族传奇所掩盖。在20世纪下半叶，一种复兴的历史性开始占据主导地位，不是在19世纪将传奇故事视为可靠的来源材料的观念中，这种观念已经一去不复返了，而是作为口头故事的晚期和扭曲版本，通过研究来自巴尔干和其他地方的当代故事歌手所使用的公式，可以瞥见其更真实的形式。再一次，《古代传奇》被抛在了一边:受其他中世纪文学的影响太大，无法作为口口相传的产品进行宣传。对丢失的口头版本的优先排序和对公式的识别在北美传奇学者中占有特别强大的地位，并没有在理解传奇的世界、它们的主题和其中嵌入的世界观方面产生太多影响。这正是这本正在接受评论的书所做的。安妮特·拉森是她那一代最多产的学者之一。除了自己的研究，她还编辑了《冰岛传奇》(5卷，2014年)和《旧日传奇》(8卷，2016-19年)的整个丹麦语译本。现在她出版了一篇关于古代传奇世界的专著，她在书中认为，这些文本，而不是混乱的记忆和荒谬，形成了一个连贯的世界，它本身就值得研究。拉森缓慢而细致地构建她的论点，使用了大量的例子，允许例外情况，并仔细考虑反驳。在关于传奇(缺乏)历史性的章节中，她确实允许某些元素反映历史事件，例如拉格纳尔loðbrók，在以他命名的传奇中，他是通过其他来源记录的一个Reginherus的可信版本。尽管有这样的例子和其他的历史真实性，“在传奇和潜在的历史事件之间存在着惊人的不匹配”(第49页)。她是这样看待她的材料的:“尽管我们必须假设古代传奇的一些元素起源于关于古代英雄的口头报告和故事，但这些传奇，当它们被传递给我们时，是文学，也就是说，是用文字创作的”(第13页)。她接着描绘了文学背景，这些背景在文本中是如此明显，以至于没有人会误以为这些故事总体上是“真实的”。它们有四大支柱，都是文学:北欧和日耳曼古诗、书面历史和法国宫廷史诗。她对文体影响的观察是准确而有启发性的。她的总结也是如此:尽管小说的动机和情节可能来源于欧洲文学，但“这些传奇作家从不敷衍地重复使用他们的灵感”(第25页)。在百科全书式的简短章节中，拉森向读者介绍了文本的传播和传统的子类型，这些文本要么是基于英雄传奇，维京人，要么是童话;或者态度上:喜剧或悲剧。拉森的作文以悬念为基础。在定义了她的材料和部分，提出了支持和反对历史的论据，并讨论了欧洲影响的四个来源之后，她转向了一个有趣的问题:这些传奇是如何形成的，以及它们在创作时是如何被理解的?拉森引用的证据表明，古代的传奇故事曾被用作婚礼上的娱乐节目，而国王斯韦里尔(公元1202年)曾说过“这样的故事最有趣”。“高大的故事”(丹麦语“løgnehistorier”)一直是这些传奇故事的众多名称之一，当然，这增加了严肃学者对它们的蔑视。与这些传奇故事同时代的人更清楚;不仅仅是21世纪的读者与那些有历史头脑的学者有着不同的价值观。拉森引用了一位13世纪冰岛人的话说:“这是一个好故事，因为它讲得很好。” (我的斜体)。拉森最初的贡献达到了高潮，她的悬念在书中最长的一章“Oldtidssagaernes samfund”中得到了释放，这一章传达的信息比“samfund”(社会)这个简单的词所暗示的要多。这就是那些传奇故事的“世界”及其哲学被揭露的地方。这一章不仅描绘了社会角色，还描绘了各种各样的男性和女性身份，狂暴者，娘娘腔的男人，怀恨的女人。别忘了外人喜欢可怜的老单身女人指挥巫术，还有年轻的芬兰女人指挥男人的欲望。拉森小心翼翼地指出，当一个即时的评价，即一个现代读者的偏见，被文本反驳时。一个典型的例子是《Hrólfs saga kraka》中的场景，Ólöf女王为了避免被上床而羞辱了她的追求者Helgi国王:把他灌醉，把他剃光，涂上焦油，把他装进皮袋，然后把他带回他的船上。拉森说，我们现代人倾向于为她的行为鼓掌，然后又提醒我们，叙述者不会这么做。古代的传奇故事常常描绘出一个具有个性的英雄。在《家世传奇》中，年轻人无论做了什么事，都要离开家回家;在《古时候的传奇》中，一个前途无量的年轻人永远离开了他卑微的农业出身，在一个更崇高或更危险的环境中度过余生。在《家传》中，家庭关系是最重要的——这就是他们名字的由来——在《旧日传奇》中，友谊可能比亲情更重要。年轻人有权选择自己的忠诚，而不是由出身决定。当然，这就是法国宫廷史诗的价值所在。说到爱情，作为法国文学流派的中心，《旧日传奇》比宫廷故事更自由。是的，有宫廷之爱。也有灾难;爱情可能会导致混乱和破坏，就像Friðϸjófs ækna的传奇一样，但《古代传奇》展示了一种更接地气的方式来处理两性之间的恋爱关系。Lassen引用了Bósa传奇故事ok herrau.s中对做爱的生动描述，这绝对是滑稽的，在家庭传奇中绝对是不可想象的。还有一些有趣的爱情故事，比如男人Ketill和半女巫Hrafnhildr之间的爱情故事，导致的家庭冲突似乎与现代爱情问题惊人地接近(第87页)。在一些场景中，男性的美德和对男性力量的崇拜被彻底颠覆和嘲笑:一个男人从手腕处砍下敌人的手，然后是一只脚的五个脚趾，最后是另一只手臂。这只是个开始:“他割破自己的臀部，让臀部的皮肤一直垂到膝盖的凹陷处。”拉森指出，这让她想起了巨蟒剧团(Monty Python)的《追求圣杯》(Quest for the Holy Grail)中的黑骑士。这是提醒我们幽默对古代传奇的哲学至关重要的好方法。更严肃地说，“男人们总是在荣誉与耻辱之间的细微界限上行走”(第97页)。拉森通过贯穿托尔金、《权力的游戏》和《维京人》的浪漫主义，对fornaldarsögur的来世进行了注解。拉森书的最后一部分是一系列简明扼要的35篇文章fornaldarsögur和-ϸættir，很像西奥多·m·安德森在他的《冰岛家庭传奇》(1966)中以24篇文章的摘要结尾Íslendingasögur和-ϸættir，这是他的素材。事实上，拉森对《旧日传奇》的贡献相当于安德森对《冰岛家族传奇》的贡献。她的书还不如加上他为自己的书选择的副标题——“分析性阅读”。她的文笔优美，既是入门书，又是原创学术。在美国学斯堪的纳维亚语的学生应该有一本《Oldtidssagaernes verden》的英译本。在她2011年的论文——《奥丁在基督教羊皮纸上的奥丁》中，拉森做了那本书的标题(奥丁在基督教羊皮纸上)所建议的;她分析了我们在基督徒写的文本中看到的奥丁，这些文本有他们自己的目的，而不是重建一个我们看不
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.4.06
Max Ashton
Britt Mize's powerful introduction establishes the volume's importance, identifying children's literature as “the single largest category of Beowulf representation and adaptation” (p. 3). He sets the stage for the book's essays with articulate musings on the history, study, and state of children's literature and an illustrative survey of Beowulf adaptations for young people. This introduction stands on its own as an essay, but a consequence of its strength is to set a pitch somewhat beyond what this single volume can match.Mark Bradshaw Busbee's impressively researched essay is one of the collection's best. Drawing from a wealth of historical context and his incisive close readings of text, Busbee explains how the story of Beowulf's entrance into the tradition of children's literature is also the story of N. F. S. Grundtvig's epoch-making engagement with the poem, especially his translation Bjowulfs Drape, and its role in the development of his ethnonationalist philosophies of political and educational reforms. Busbee also chronicles Bjowulfs Drape's legacy by examining the influence of the translation on children's adaptations of Beowulf written by “Grundtvigian” authors in the following generations. From this narrative emerges one of the most pervasive themes of the volume—the connection between Northern European cultural jingoism and the adaptation of Beowulf for young readers.Renée Ward's “The Adaptational Character of the Earliest Beowulf for English Children: E. L. Hervey's ‘The Fight with the Ogre’” is about a short prose adaptation she says has not yet been studied; one of the virtues of this collection is its recuperative nature, how it exhibits understudied texts like this one. This essay pairs well with Busbee's study of Grundtvigian Denmark's affair with Beowulf by discussing the position of “The Fight with the Ogre” within Victorian England's imperial cultural schemes.Amber Dunai's chapter on J. R. R. Tolkien's adaptations of Beowulf, and on the poem's influence on his work in general, wrestles with a crucial question underlying the whole collection: what makes “children's literature” for children? She approaches this question by comparing Tolkien's theories of fantasy and of children's literature first to the content and circumstances of his oeuvre and then to contemporary works written specifically for children; the essay is valuable in part for this account of a complex relationship between theory and practice. Without reference to scholarship theorizing definitions of children's literature, Dunai's argument sometimes feels a bit unmoored. She makes a point of resisting strong conclusions that the Tolkien texts discussed can be absolutely defined as “for children”—a point that could have been strengthened by joining the critical conversation confronting the paradox that the harder theorists of children's literature work to propose a strict definition, the more it eludes them.Carl Edlund Anderson's essay surveys Beowulf-for-childre
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.1.02
Davide Salmoiraghi
In the sixth century, the Roman Catholic Church recognized St. Ambrose of Milan as one of the Latin Fathers1 and elevated him to the rank of Doctor of the Church in the late thirteenth century, alongside Sts. Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory.2 During his office, he worked in close proximity to the imperial court in Milan, which was then the capital of the Western Roman Empire, and established personal ties with the Valentinian and Theodosian dynasties. His firm defense of orthodoxy in every aspect of society, along with his governance capabilities which he had acquired before his election to the bishopric, made him an influential figure in the politics of his times. His hagiography and its reelaborations celebrate Ambrose as pastor (shepherd of souls) and defensor ecclesiae (defender of the Church). In Iceland, his cult is first attested in the late twelfth century, and a Norse version of his legend, Ambrósíuss saga biskups, was produced between the late twelfth and the thirteenth century. This article discusses the Old Norse–Icelandic version of the legend of St. Ambrose, its manuscript tradition, and its composition. Yet despite the centrality of his life and theology in the Christian world, scholars have devoted little attention to Ambrósíuss saga. The only critical text
{"title":"The Old Norse–Icelandic Hagiography of St Ambrose of Milan: Manuscript Tradition, Sources, and Composition","authors":"Davide Salmoiraghi","doi":"10.5406/1945662x.122.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/1945662x.122.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"In the sixth century, the Roman Catholic Church recognized St. Ambrose of Milan as one of the Latin Fathers1 and elevated him to the rank of Doctor of the Church in the late thirteenth century, alongside Sts. Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory.2 During his office, he worked in close proximity to the imperial court in Milan, which was then the capital of the Western Roman Empire, and established personal ties with the Valentinian and Theodosian dynasties. His firm defense of orthodoxy in every aspect of society, along with his governance capabilities which he had acquired before his election to the bishopric, made him an influential figure in the politics of his times. His hagiography and its reelaborations celebrate Ambrose as pastor (shepherd of souls) and defensor ecclesiae (defender of the Church). In Iceland, his cult is first attested in the late twelfth century, and a Norse version of his legend, Ambrósíuss saga biskups, was produced between the late twelfth and the thirteenth century. This article discusses the Old Norse–Icelandic version of the legend of St. Ambrose, its manuscript tradition, and its composition. Yet despite the centrality of his life and theology in the Christian world, scholars have devoted little attention to Ambrósíuss saga. The only critical text","PeriodicalId":44720,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49582220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.1.03
C. Arthur
The Æcerbot is one of the famous Old English “metrical charms” that details lengthy prescriptions for ritual performances if a field fails to produce crops.1 It has attracted much debate over many decades. Scholars initially viewed it as providing evidence of surviving pagan customs in eleventhcentury England before more nuanced interpretations of it were made as a popular, perhaps heterodox, Christian performance, if not a ritual script akin to a liturgical ordine for a procession or exorcism.2 One striking feature of this field remedy that has at times been at the center of these debates is its unique triple invocation of “erce,” which is then followed by an address to “eorþan modor,” or “mother of earth.” Immediately following
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.1.09
Jacob Riyeff
{"title":"The Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, and Devotion in Medieval England by Laura Saetveit Miles (review)","authors":"Jacob Riyeff","doi":"10.5406/1945662x.122.1.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/1945662x.122.1.09","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44720,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47464372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5406/1945662x.122.1.06
M. Kalinke
{"title":"A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre ed. by Massimiliano Bampi, Carolyne Larrington, and Sif Rikharðsdottir (review)","authors":"M. Kalinke","doi":"10.5406/1945662x.122.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/1945662x.122.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44720,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43071389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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