Stories Set Forth with Fair Words

Marianne E. Kalinke

Description

This book is an investigation of the foundation and evolution of romance in Iceland. The narrative type arose from the introduction of French narratives into the alien literary environment of Iceland and the acculturation of the import to indigenous literary traditions. The study focuses on the oldest Icelandic copies of three chansons de geste and four of the earliest indigenous romances, both types transmitted in an Icelandic codex from around 1300. The impact of the translated epic poems on the origin and development of the Icelandic romances was considerable, yet they have been largely neglected by scholars in favour of the courtly romances. This study attests the role played by the epic poems in the composition of romance in Iceland, which introduced the motifs of the aggressive female wooer and of Christian-heathen conflict.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Medieval

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786830692
• Langue: English

Extrait

Stories Set Forth with Fair Words
Stories Set Forth with Fair Words
The Evolution of Medieval Romance in Iceland
MARIANNE E. KALINKE
© Marianne E. Kalinke, 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78683-067-8
eISBN 978-1-78683-069-2
The right of Marianne E. Kalinke to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: Leaf 54v, AM 152 folio; the dragon forms the letter S of the incipit of Flóvents saga . © StofnunÁrnaMagnússonar á Íslandi
Contents
Preface
Translation in Norway
Tinkering with the Translations
Chansons de geste in Iceland
Stories Set Forth with Fair Words
Icelandic Innovations
The Beginnings of Icelandic Romance
Icelandic Romance as Critique and Sequel
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Preface
By the end of the thirteenth century Icelandic literature was both sizeable and varied, indeed quite extraordinary. Its proponents excelled in producing mythography, historiography, hagiography, biography and prose epic. The last is exemplified by the unique Íslendingasögur, Sagas of Icelanders, also known as Family Sagas in the English-speaking world. Into this flourishing literary scene, translations of more or less contemporary French literature were introduced, that is, courtly lays and romances and the epic poems known as chansons de geste. The earliest renderings of these foreign narratives occurred in the second quarter of the thirteenth century in Norway, and before long the translations were transmitted to Iceland. There they were copied, completed, revised and adapted. In no time they inspired Icelanders to try their own hand at this imported narrative type. A new genre was born in Iceland, the riddarasaga, romance.
The Icelanders’ enthusiasm for romance has not been shared by modern scholars. W. P. Ker lamented that foreign romance ‘came to Iceland just at the time when the native literature, or the highest form of it at any rate, was failing; the failure of the native literature let in these foreign competitors’. 1 This pronouncement was to be repeated with variation in the early decades of the twentieth century. The first and to this day most sweeping and still authoritative investigation of the foreign imports and competitors of Iceland’s indigenous literature is Margaret Schlauch’s Romance in Iceland. The scholar pointed out that ‘towards the end of the Middle Ages, Icelandic literature … was more cosmopolitan than any other in Europe. It was lamentably inferior to the older type of narrative, to be sure, but it was greatly varied; it had plundered the whole world for themes.’ 2 Schlauch’s study of Icelandic romance, based, for want of editions at the time, in large part on manuscripts, was catholic, including texts understood by many scholars as belonging to different genres, the riddarasögur (chivalric sagas) and fornaldarsögur (mythical-heroic sagas). As she noted, ‘the Icelanders were bafflingly eclectic; the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries saw a veritable syncretism of romance in their literature’ (p. 16). When Schlauch stated that Icelandic romance is ‘lamentably inferior to the older type of narrative’, she was referring, of course, to the Íslendingasögur, the Sagas of Icelanders, the failure of which Ker mourned. Whether all romances are inferior to the traditional Icelandic sagas is debatable; not all sagas of Icelanders evince a uniform high quality of narrative. The romances too are of varying quality, but they are not necessarily inferior narratives; rather, they are a different type of narrative.
French courtly literature was introduced to the North with the rendition of Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristan into Old Norse in 1226. Translations of other French works followed, of Arthurian and other types of romance, Breton lays and chansons de geste. Several translations are ascribed, like Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, to the patronage of King Hákon Hákonarson of Norway (r. 1217–63), and unattributed translations of similar works are thought also to have been undertaken during his reign. Certain evidence in support of this is lacking, however, and it is not out of the question that some French texts were translated in Iceland. While this remains in the realm of speculation, the role of Iceland in preserving and transmitting the translations of foreign literature is indisputable. With but very few exceptions, the translations are extant solely in Icelandic manuscripts.
This book explores the foundation, growth and flowering of romance in Iceland. It is a story of translation and transcription; of manuscripts imported to Iceland from Norway; of texts copied, redacted and revised in Iceland; of scribal intervention in plot, structure and style; of imported texts adapted to new ends; and, finally, of the creation of original romances. Icelanders imported a foreign genre, adopted it wholeheartedly, and at the same time adapted it to indigenous narrative conventions. Icelandic romance is the product of cultural transfer and acculturation, the outgrowth of an interlingual and intralingual process.
The French lays, romances and epic poems translated in Norway were metrical compositions. The octosyllabic rhymed couplets of the lays and romances, and the alexandrines of the assonanced stanzas of the chansons de geste were turned into an alliteratively ornamented prose in translation. Apart from the Strengleikar, the translation of a collection of lays, and Elíss saga ok Rósamundar, the rendering of a romance epic, which are preserved in a thirteenth-century Norwegian manuscript produced only a few decades after their translation, the other translations of French literature known or thought to have been undertaken in Norway are extant solely in considerably later Icelandic manuscripts. That is the case with Tristrams saga and the Arthurian Ívens saga, Möttuls saga and Parcevals saga. Since the Strengleikar and Elíss saga are our sole witnesses to the translation process in thirteenth-century Norway, this study commences with a consideration of the transformation of French verse into the courtly Norse prose.
With but few exceptions, Icelandic copyists seem to have perceived their role, whether consciously or not, more as editors than scribes. They amplified or reduced texts; they modified their plot, distinct style or structure. The French source of Elíss saga was defective, and when the Norwegian manuscript of the incomplete translation reached Iceland, one ambitious author composed a continuation, but in a style strikingly at odds with that of the translator. In turn, the Norwegian translation with its continuation was repeatedly copied and redacted in Iceland. The case of Erex saga, which derives from Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide, and which originally was most likely a fairly faithful translation from the French, is unique. The author of the text preserved in Iceland not only removed every aspect of what presumably had been a courtly prose style but also condensed and modified the plot. At the same time he interpolated additional episodes from another translation, thereby affecting the narrative’s structure and meaning. While some Icelandic copyists did not alter the substance of the Norwegian translations that were imported to Iceland, for example, Tristrams saga or Ívens saga, others revised a transmitted text significantly. Some narratives deriving from French sources, such as Partalopa saga, underwent acculturation as they were transformed under the influence of contemporary Icelandic literature.
The oldest Icelandic codex transmitting both translated and original riddarasögur dates from the very beginning of the fourteenth century. The manuscript is noteworthy for containing translations of three chansons de geste, that is, Elíss saga, Flóvents saga and Mágus saga jarls, and three Icelandic romances, Bærings saga, Konráðs saga keisarasonar and Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar, the last usually designated a fornaldarsaga, although it is in fact a multi-tiered bridal-quest romance, a riddarasaga. The medieval codex is believed to have contained a fourth Icelandic romance, namely, Mírmanns saga, a copy of which survives in a seventeenth-century manuscript. The translations of the chansons de geste, unlike those of the courtly romances, are relatively unknown and have been considerably neglected in the study of Icelandic romance. The epic poems imported to Iceland played an important role, however, in the development of the riddarasögur, for they were the source of many a motif and theme that was subsequently adopted, adapted and developed by authors of romances.
A remarkable aspect of Icelandic literature is the proclivity of copyists, better said, authors, to tinker with existing texts, to rewrite them with a view to telling a better story. No one addressed more compellingly the impulse of Icelanders to rework an existing text than the author of the longer version of Mágus saga jarls, which derives ultimately from a chanson de geste. In an apologia the writer attributes the existence of variants of a tale to critical authors who considered an older version to be ineptly told and who therefore eloquently amplified the story. This occurred in two of the riddarasögur preserved in the oldest codex of romances, the aforementioned Mágus saga jarls and Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar. Both s