CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Reinicke, Tamás |
|---|---|
| Title | With Unlearned Tongues in the Wilderness of the World: European Otherness in the Icelandic Riddarasogur |
| Summary | The fourteenth century saw the emergence of a new literary genre in Iceland. The indigenous riddarasǫgur (chivalric sagas) adapted their setting, themes, and topoi from European romance literature, seemingly completely superseding those appearing in earlier Icelandic works. The riddarasǫgur introduced chivalric literature to an environment where it had no precursor and no social basis, yet it quickly spread and acquired immense popularity that persisted for centuries. The sudden shift in the interest of saga authors and compilers is usually explained with the necessity to adjust and reformulate Icelandic identity after the widescale political and social changes that began in the late thirteenth century. This thesis uses four of the riddarasǫgur, all belonging to the subgroup known as meykongr (maiden-king) sagas, to examine the ways European identities were perceived, received, and adapted in late medieval Iceland. I investigate the textual presence of Otherness in order to explore this interaction of identities and the subsequent results. Alterity being a key element to the identity-building process, I analyze the forms it takes and the groups that represent it in these sagas, from the repulsive and monstrous to the familiar but foreign to the close but marginal. |
| Supervisor | Reed, Zsuzsanna |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/reinicke_tamas.pdf |
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