This thesis examines masculinities in the Íslendingasögur. It attempts to uncover the dominant model of masculinity that operates in the sagas, outlines how masculinities and masculine characters function within these texts, and investigates the means by which the sagas, and saga characters, may subvert masculine dominance. The thesis applies to men and masculinities in saga literature the same scrutiny traditionally used to study women and femininities. The first - introductory - chapter reviews the limited scholarship that presently exists on masculinities in Old Norse literature. It then proposes a new model for the critical study of saga masculinities, drawing on sociological theories of hegemonic and subordinated masculinities. The second chapter ranges across the entire Íslendingasaga corpus in order to demonstrate how masculinity inflects homosocial relationships (and thus virtually all aspects of saga texts). It also suggests that almost all masculine characters have a problematic relationship with masculinity as a result of the intersectional nature of subject formation. The third chapter, focusing on Njáls saga, argues that the male body is used to undermine the prevailing model of masculinity. It is argued that the Njála author purposefully deploys somatic indices that have gendered significance to show embodied resistance to the demands of masculinity. The fourth chapter examines the representation and treatment of a character (Grettir Ásmundarson) that embodies masculinity to an exceptional degree, but who nevertheless - or perhaps for that reason - experiences a problematic relationship with masculinity. Finally, an epilogue briefly investigates some of the ways in which female characters may undermine and problematize the masculinity of men and the category of masculinity itself. Ultimately, this thesis shows that masculinity is not simply glorified in the sagas, but is represented as being both inherently fragile and a burden to all characters, masculine and non-masculine alike.

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

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Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2017-01-18T13:56:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 8622162 bytes, checksum: 0bcfb8b91dbbbf51331420e49b3ad1b9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-18T13:56:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 8622162 bytes, checksum: 0bcfb8b91dbbbf51331420e49b3ad1b9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-30 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The Vikings, people who inhabited the Medieval Scandinavia, before the adoption of Christianity as the official religion in the eleventh century, had a very rich set of beliefs, rites and myths that were partially preserved by oral culture, manuscripts and archaeological remains and has been studied by researchers from all over the world. This dissertation makes an investigation of religious symbolisms attributed to animals in stone monuments erected during the Viking Age, and for that we use, as a study center object, the iconography present in the Scandinavian steles, making a dialogue between these imagistic representations and literary sources of Norse mythology, as well as many other sources of Old Norse Religion. Thus so, besides highlighting the peculiarities, inquiries and religious characteristics related to the main animals present in the Nordic religion, this work provides an overview of the current concept of religion of the Vikings and their most important aspects in a systematizing approach, because no one element of this fascinating religiosity of the north can be understood disassociated from the rest. / Os vikings, populações que habitavam a Escandinávia Medieval, antes da adoção do cristianismo como religião oficial no século XI, possuíam um riquíssimo conjunto de crenças, ritos e mitos que foram parcialmente preservados pela cultura oral, por manuscritos e por vestígios arqueológicos e que vem sendo estudado por pesquisadores de todo o mundo. A presente dissertação realiza uma investigação dos simbolismos religiosos atribuídos aos animais em monumentos de pedra erguidos durante a Era Viking, e para tanto, utilizamos como objeto central de estudo a iconografia presente nas estelas escandinavas, fazendo um diálogo entre estas representações imagéticas e as fontes literárias da mitologia nórdica, bem como com diversas outras fontes da Religiosidade Nórdica Pré-Cristã. Desta maneira, além de evidenciar as peculiaridades, indagações e características religiosas relacionadas aos principais animais presentes na religiosidade nórdica, este trabalho fornece um panorama geral da atual conceituação da religiosidade dos vikings e seus aspectos mais relevantes em uma abordagem sistematizadora, pois nenhum elemento da fascinante religiosidade deste povo pode ser entendido desassociado dos demais.

abstract: The mid-eighteenth century publication of national British folk collections like James MacPherson's Works of Ossian and Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, placed a newfound interest in the ancient literature associated with Northern/Gothic heritage. This shift from the classical past created a non-classical interest in the barbarism of Old Norse society, which appeared to closely resemble the Anglo-Saxons. In addition to this growing interest, Edmund Burke's seminal treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, provided a newfound aesthetic interest in objects of terror. The barbaric obscurity and exoticism associated with the Norse culture provided the perfect figures to explore a Gothic heritage while invoking the terror of the sublime. This interest accounted for a variety of works published with Gothic themes and elements that included Old Norse pagan figures. Though a few scholars have attempted to shed light on this sub-field of Romanticism, it continues to lack critical attention, which inhibits a more holistic understanding of Romanticism. I argue that "Norse Romanticism" is a legitimate sub-field of Romanticism, made apparent by the number of primary works available from the age, and I synthesize the major works done thus far in creating a foundation for this field. I also argue that one of the tenets of Norse Romanticism is the newfound appreciation of the "Norse Woman" as a democratized figure, thus opening up a subversive space for dialogue in women's writing using the Gothic aesthetic. To illustrate this, I provide analysis of three Gothic poems written by women writers: Anna Seward's "Herva at the Tomb of Argantyr," Anne Bannerman's "The Nun," and Ann Radcliffe's "Salisbury Plains. Stonehenge." In addition, I supplement Robert Miles' theoretical reading of the Gothic with three philosophical essays on the empowerment of the imagination through terror writing in Anna Letitia Aikin (Barbauld) and John Aikin's "On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror" and "On Romances" as well as Ann Radcliffe's "On the Supernatural in Poetry." / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

Courtesy and Women in the Scandinavian Knightly Epic Abstract The aim of this dissertation was synchronic and diachronic evaluation of gender roles in Scandinavian courtly epic from its beginning in the 13th century until the end of the 15th century. Its different conceptions of women, love, and courtesy were chosen as criteria, which make the main specifics of continental courtly fashion apparent - of the fashion which these translations were meant to introduce into Scandinavia. Besides literary analyses of gender norms, we have considered texts of pragmatic nature and even selected artefacts of material culture. Our focus, therefore, included a broader social, cultural, and political context of this literature and social norms and literary conventions of other contemporary literary genres in Scandinavia. Our work is based not only on primary sources and findings of literary history, but also on interdisciplinary research. Our analyses demonstrate the destabilisation and redefinition of gender boundaries in Old Norse literature, which was caused by translations of knightly epic, where the male hero was allowed so far unparalleled degree of sensitivity and feminine openness of emotions. Prior to these translations, honour and status of any man, who would humbly beseech his beloved like the heroes of...

M.A. (Afrikaans) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

<p>While the body in medieval literature can be compared to a text, the nature of this text varies depending on the classification of the body in question. For a monster, the body is static: it indicates victory, marks borders, and is not engaged with beyond the initial dismemberment and display. Conversely, the saintly body is a dynamic body, constantly called upon to continue acting on behalf of the community in the form of miracles. The saintly body is a body in flux—changing and accruing narratives to itself over time. Despite these differences, however, the body itself exists on a spectrum, ranging from human to non-human, and from monstrous to beatific. I therefore further argue that it is the relationship of the deceased individual and the community that determines how a body is treated and understood after death, even if the postmortem body in question bears signs that could easily be interpreted as either monstrous or saintly. This reception, in turn, is reflected in the body’s role within the community.</p>

This work attempts to outline concepts associated with body in the Old Norse literature. As the word for the body (líkamr) as well as the term for an incorporeal soul (sál) do not occur in the Old Norse literature until the translated Christian works and cannot therefore be used as markers, two areas closely connected with the concept of body have been chosen for the research: shifting of shape (hamr) and somatic expressions of emotions. In the first area, i.e. phenomena associated with shape-shifting, contexts of all (113) occurrences of radix ham- in the Old Norse literature are analysed in order to describe the semantical field of this root. Within the themes that have appeared in the material (i.e. shape-shifting related to flying, battle frenzy and magic), occurrences are ordered on an axis from those where the form (hamr) is considered to be holistic to those where just the form of body or soul is described. In this context, it is important to mention the proximity of man and animal in the Germanic environment, as shape-shifting is often related to an animal and thus points to the limits of human identity. In the second area, i.e. somatic expressions of emotions, we can also find cases where the mental and the physical area intersect and the boundaries between diseases and emotions are not...

This thesis compares Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad with the Norse Sagas, the Young and Elder Edda. More specifically, it analyses, whether the Odyssey and Iliad should indeed derive from the Norse Sagas, which is a claim brought forth by Felice Vinci. Throughout the thesis, passages, sentences and words from both the Greek and Norse texts have been singled out through the process of text analysis tools from Python and Orange3. Similar passages or words from both texts were filtered out by building a program that would print sentences with given key words. These were then analysed and studied, in order to compare the texts to each other and for the most part, to see if the Greek texts should indeed have derived from the Nordic texts. Finally, no proof has been found that the Norse Sagas should have predated the Greek Myths. However, this was a very interesting theory, that I am glad to have examined.