Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- I THE LIBERAL ARTS AND THE ARTS OF LATIN TEXTUALITY
- II THE STUDY OF CLASSICAL AUTHORS
- III TEXTUAL PSYCHOLOGIES: IMAGINATION, MEMORY, PLEASURE
- IV VERNACULAR CRITICAL TRADITIONS: THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
- 9 Medieval Irish literary theory and criticism
- 10 Anglo-Saxon textual attitudes
- 11 Literary theory and practice in early-medieval Germany
- 12 Literary criticism in Welsh before c. 1300
- 13 Criticism and literary theory in Old Norse-Icelandic
- V VERNACULAR CRITICAL TRADITIONS: THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
- VI LATIN AND VERNACULAR IN ITALIAN LITERARY THEORY
- VII BYZANTINE LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
13 - Criticism and literary theory in Old Norse-Icelandic
from IV - VERNACULAR CRITICAL TRADITIONS: THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- I THE LIBERAL ARTS AND THE ARTS OF LATIN TEXTUALITY
- II THE STUDY OF CLASSICAL AUTHORS
- III TEXTUAL PSYCHOLOGIES: IMAGINATION, MEMORY, PLEASURE
- IV VERNACULAR CRITICAL TRADITIONS: THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
- 9 Medieval Irish literary theory and criticism
- 10 Anglo-Saxon textual attitudes
- 11 Literary theory and practice in early-medieval Germany
- 12 Literary criticism in Welsh before c. 1300
- 13 Criticism and literary theory in Old Norse-Icelandic
- V VERNACULAR CRITICAL TRADITIONS: THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
- VI LATIN AND VERNACULAR IN ITALIAN LITERARY THEORY
- VII BYZANTINE LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The social and intellectual milieu of the courts gave an impetus to the development of a courtly or skaldic poetry that privileged abstruse diction, fractured syntax, riddling allusions to Old Norse myth and heroic legend and complex verse-forms. The history of literary theory and criticism in Old Norse is mainly one of an indigenous theory of poetry and poetics, partly encouraged by a knowledge of Latin grammatical rhetoric and metrics, rather than a theorising of prose literature. Modern scholarship divides Old Norse poetry into two kinds, eddic and skaldic. Old Norse poetry and medieval Scandinavian attitudes to poetry developed in an oral society and display many signs of the close relationship between poetic genres and social interactions. Old Norse terms used to differentiate kinds of skaldic verse are largely based on formal criteria, including metrical and syntactic considerations, or refer to the context in which the poem was composed or the patron for whom it was intended.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 345 - 460Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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