Book Section
Brian McMahon
Speech-Wrangling
Shutting Up and Shutting Out the Oral Tradition in Some Icelandic Sagas
This chapter considers the role of prolegomena and authorial interventions in constraining and contextualizing orally derived saga narratives in high medieval Iceland. It examines the question of whether prolegomena were intended to be included in oral renditions of the sagas and, if so, in whose ‘voice’ they were understood to be spoken. The ‘openness’ of a saga text — the extent of editorial freedom enjoyed by those concerned with extracting it from the oral milieu — has been much discussed; however, less attention has historically been paid to the freedom which the written texts then afforded any would-be reciter for emending or adapting their content when reading them aloud to a live audience. Prolegomena provide our most instructive source of contemporary commentary on how the written sagas should be understood and transmitted, and they therefore represent distinct and important critical texts in their own right, which inform our understanding of how ‘open’ or ‘fixed’ medieval Icelanders understood these extant written sagas to be.
Keywords: oral tradition; prologues; epilogues; authority; recitation; Old Norse
| Title |
Speech-Wrangling
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| Subtitle |
Shutting Up and Shutting Out the Oral Tradition in Some Icelandic Sagas
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| Author(s) |
Brian McMahon
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
This chapter considers the role of prolegomena and authorial interventions in constraining and contextualizing orally derived saga narratives in high medieval Iceland. It examines the question of whether prolegomena were intended to be included in oral renditions of the sagas and, if so, in whose ‘voice’ they were understood to be spoken. The ‘openness’ of a saga text — the extent of editorial freedom enjoyed by those concerned with extracting it from the oral milieu — has been much discussed; however, less attention has historically been paid to the freedom which the written texts then afforded any would-be reciter for emending or adapting their content when reading them aloud to a live audience. Prolegomena provide our most instructive source of contemporary commentary on how the written sagas should be understood and transmitted, and they therefore represent distinct and important critical texts in their own right, which inform our understanding of how ‘open’ or ‘fixed’ medieval Icelanders understood these extant written sagas to be.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
19 April 2022
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| Subject |
oral tradition
prologues
epilogues
authority
recitation
Old Norse
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
65
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| page end |
84
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| Source |
Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 65–84
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Cite as:
Brian McMahon, ‘Speech-Wrangling: Shutting Up and Shutting Out the Oral Tradition in Some Icelandic Sagas’, in Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 65-84 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-23_04>