Representative of a unique literary genre and composed in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Icelandic Family Sagas rank among some of the world's greatest literature. Here, Heather O'Donoghue skilfully examines the notions of time and the singular textual voice of the Sagas, offering a fresh perspective on the foundational texts of Old Norse and medieval Icelandic heritage. With a conspicuous absence of giants, dragons, and fairy tale magic, these sagas reflect a real-world society in transition, grappling with major new challenges of identity and development. As this book reveals, the stance of the narrator and the role of time – from the representation of external time passing to the audience's experience of moving through a narrative – are crucial to these stories. As such, Narrative in the Icelandic Family Saga draws on modern narratological theory to explore the ways in which saga authors maintain the urgency and complexity of their material, handle the narrative and chronological line, and offer perceptive insights into saga society. In doing so, O'Donoghue presents a new poetics of family sagas and redefines the literary rhetoric of saga narratives.

An attempt to come to grips with the family saga as formal narrative.

This major survey of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culturedemonstrates the remarkable continuity of Icelandic language andculture from medieval to modern times. Comprises 29 chapters written by leading scholars in thefield Reflects current debates among Old Norse-Icelandicscholars Pays attention to previously neglected areas of study, such asthe sagas of Icelandic bishops and the fantasy sagas Looks at the ways Old Norse-Icelandic literature is used bymodern writers, artists and film directors, both within and outsideScandinavia Sets Old Norse-Icelandic language and literature in its widercultural context

Excerpt from The Origin of the Icelandic Family Sagas It would lead us too far afield, were I to enter fully into the subject of family tradition as a whole. For our present purpose we must try to ascertain what qualifications the Icelandic settlers had for developing an art of saga-telling; and here we naturally begin by looking for evidence of family traditions and an art of story-telling among the ancient Teutons. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This book provides a realistic historical and geographical perspective to begin closest to the Scandinavian homelands of Vikings and the Viking ideology and material culture, by looking at new research into aspects of their use of the sea, maritime communications and trade.

For the past forty years The Nature of Narrative has been an essential work for students of literature, teachers, writers, and scholars. Countering the tendency to view the novel as the paradigm case of literary narrative, Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg offered a compelling history of narrative from antiquity to the twentieth century. Their main goal was to describe and analyze the nature of narrative's key elements: meaning, character, plot, and point of view. The Fortieth Anniversary Edition of this groundbreaking work has been revised and expanded to include a new preface and a lengthy chapter by James Phelan on developments in narrative theory since 1966. This new material describes the principles and practices of structuralist, cognitive, feminist, and rhetorical approaches to narrative, paying special attention to their work on character, plot, and narrative discourse. A continued leader in the field of narrative studies, The Nature of Narrative offers unique and invaluable histories of both narrative and narrative theory.