abstract: This study examines the ways in which translators writing in two contemporary medieval languages, Old Norse-Icelandic and Middle English, approached the complicated doctrine of the bodily Assumption of Mary. At its core this project is dedicated to understanding the spread and development of an idea in two contemporary vernacular cultures and focuses on the transmission of that idea from the debates of Latin clerical culture into Middle English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature written for an increasingly varied audience made up of monastics, secular clergy, and the laity. The project argues that Middle English and Old-Norse Icelandic writing about the bodily Assumption of Mary challenges misconceptions that vernacular translations and compositions concerned with Marian doctrine represent the popular concerns of the laity as opposed to the academic language, or high Mariology, of the clergy. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2014

This thesis examines the memorial meaning attributed to royal power in the Icelandic legal tradition, as it is textually negotiated in sources extant from the period c. 1250-1500. It discusses the significance and functions of the Norwegian king's legal authority as part of the Icelanders' collective remembrance of their country's legal past (spanning the years c. 870-1302), and as a defining element in the creation of the Icelandic identity as a community of law. The scope of analysis covers thirteenth- to fifteenth-century legal sources (sections of law-books and legal texts preserving legal arrangements between Iceland and Norway made in the eleventh century and in the period c. 1260-1302), and a fourteenth-century account of the Norwegian king's involvement in a settlement dispute in ninth-century Iceland. These main sources are analysed against the background of several auxiliary sources (saga narratives, diplomas) from a New Philological perspective and scrutinised using the methods developed in cultural memory studies. This provides a novel perspective on the primary sources, filling a gap in recent scholarship on cultural memory in Old Norse literature and historiography. Both categories of texts, drawing on oral and written traditions of law-making and story-telling, are vehicles for multi-faceted culturally meaningful and often contradictory memories of the Norwegian king. The Icelandic laws preserve provisions bestowed upon the Icelanders by the Norwegian monarchs, whereas the sagas convey semi-mythological images of the monarchs, who act as legislators, negotiators of legal agreements with the Icelanders, and as law-keepers. By analysing the memorial functions of royal power in the primary sources, the thesis argues for the complexity of the Icelanders' self-definition as a kingless community of law, who nevertheless incorporate and actively engage with royal power, which shapes the collective memory of the country's legal tradition.

The Íslendingasögur, written in Iceland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, primarily describe the lives of Icelanders during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Many of these lives involve encounters with foreign peoples, both abroad and in Iceland, who are portrayed according to stereotypes which vary depending on the origins of those people. Notably, inhabitants of the places identified in the sagas as Írland, Skotland and Vínland are portrayed as being less civilized than the Icelanders themselves. This thesis explores the ways in which the Íslendingasögur emphasize this relative barbarity through descriptions of diet, material culture, style of warfare, and character. These characteristics are discussed in relation to parallel descriptions of Icelandic characters and lifestyle within the Íslendingasögur, and also in the context of a tradition in contemporary European literature which portrayed the Icelanders themselves as barbaric. Innovatively, comparisons are made with descriptions of barbarians in classical Roman texts, primarily Sallust, but also Caesar and Tacitus. Taking into account the availability and significance of classical learning in medieval Iceland, the comparison with Roman texts yields striking similarities between Roman and Icelandic ideas about barbarians. It is argued that the depiction of foreigners in the Íslendingasögur is almost identical to that of ancient Roman authors, and that the medieval Icelanders had both means and motive to use Roman ideas for inspiration in their own portrayal of the world. Ultimately it is argued that when the medieval Icelanders contemplated the peoples their Viking Age ancestors encountered around the world, they drew on classical ideas of the barbarian to complement the mix of oral tradition, literary inspiration and contemporary circumstance that otherwise form the Íslendingasögur.

This thesis argues that the corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic literature which pertains to Iceland contains an intertextual narrative of the formation of Icelandic identity. An analysis of this narrative provides an opportunity to examine the relationship between literature and identity, as well as the potency of the artistic use of the idea of the past. The thesis identifies three salient narratives of communal action which inform the development of a discrete Icelandic identity, and which are examined in turn in the first three chapters of the thesis. The first is the landnám, the process of settlement itself; the second, the origin and evolution of the law; and the third, the assimilation and adaptation of Christianity. Although the roots of these narratives are doubtless historical, the thesis argues that their primary roles in the literature are as social myths, narratives whose literal truth- value is immaterial, but whose cultural symbolism is of overriding importance. The fourth chapter examines the depiction of the Icelander abroad, and uses the idiom of the relationship between þáttr (‘tale’) and surrounding text in the compilation of sagas of Norwegian kings Morkinskinna to consider the wider implications of the relationship between Icelandic and Norwegian identities. Finally, the thesis concludes with an analysis of the role of Sturlunga saga within this intertextual narrative, and its function as a set of narratives mediating between an identity grounded in social autonomy and one grounded in literature. The Íslendingasögur or ‘family sagas’ constitute the core of the thesis’s primary sources, for their subject-matter is focussed on the literary depiction of the Icelandic society under scrutiny. In order to demonstrate a continuity of engagement with ideas of identity across genres, a sample of other Icelandic texts are examined which depict Iceland or Icelanders, especially when in interaction with non-Icelandic characters or polities.

This dissertation examines the relationship between wisdom and identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. At present, the study of medieval wisdom is largely tangential to the study of proverbs and maxims. This dissertation makes wisdom its primary object of study; it sees wisdom not just as a literary category, but also as a cultural discourse found in texts not usually included in the wisdom canon. I therefore examine both wisdom literature and wisdom in literature. The central characteristic of wisdom, I argue, is its liminality. The biblical question “Where is wisdom to be found?” is difficult to answer because of wisdom’s in-between-ness: it is ever between individuals, communities, and times (Job 28:12 Douay-Rheims). As a liminal discourse, wisdom both grounds and problematizes identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. After a preliminary chapter that defines key terms such as “wisdom” and “wisdom literature,” I examine heroic wisdom in three characters who are defined by their wise traits and skills and yet who are ultimately betrayed by wisdom to death or exile. The implications of this problematic relation to wisdom are then examined in the next chapter, which analyzes the composition of wisdom in proverb poems. Like the wise hero, the poets represented in these poems blend their own voices with the voice of community, demonstrating that identity is open and therefore in need of constant revision. Next I examine how the liminality of wisdom is embodied in the figure of the wise monster, who negatively marks the boundaries of society and its desires. This then leads to a study of the reception of wisdom in chapter six, which focuses on instruction poems. Like narratives of wise monsters, these texts present lore as the nostalgic remnant of a tradition that defines identity, in this case the identity of a community. However, nostalgia assumes loss, and these texts also reveal an underlying fear that wisdom, the basis of the community’s identity, will be forgotten. Whether communal or individual, identity in this literature is both formed and threatened by liminal wisdom. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2014-05-08 15:35:46.885