A Handbook to Eddic Poetry

A Handbook to Eddic Poetry
Author: Carolyne Larrington
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 675
Release: 2016-08-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1316720853

This is the first comprehensive and accessible survey in English of Old Norse eddic poetry: a remarkable body of literature rooted in the Viking Age, which is a critical source for the study of early Scandinavian myths, poetics, culture and society. Dramatically recreating the voices of the legendary past, eddic poems distil moments of high emotion as human heroes and supernatural beings alike grapple with betrayal, loyalty, mortality and love. These poems relate the most famous deeds of gods such as Óðinn and Þórr with their adversaries the giants; they bring to life the often fraught interactions between kings, queens and heroes as well as their encounters with valkyries, elves, dragons and dwarfs. Written by leading international scholars, the chapters in this volume showcase the poetic riches of the eddic corpus, and reveal its relevance to the history of poetics, gender studies, pre-Christian religions, art history and archaeology.

The Poetic Edda

The Poetic Edda
Author:
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2010-03-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0292792549

The Poetic Edda comprises a treasure trove of mythic and spiritual verse holding an important place in Nordic culture, literature, and heritage. Its tales of strife and death form a repository, in poetic form, of Norse mythology and heroic lore, embodying both the ethical views and the cultural life of the North during the late heathen and early Christian times. Collected by an unidentified Icelander, probably during the twelfth or thirteenth century, The Poetic Edda was rediscovered in Iceland in the seventeenth century by Danish scholars. Even then its value as poetry, as a source of historical information, and as a collection of entertaining stories was recognized. This meticulous translation succeeds in reproducing the verse patterns, the rhythm, the mood, and the dignity of the original in a revision that Scandinavian Studies says "may well grace anyone's bookshelf."

The Poetic Edda

The Poetic Edda
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2018-05-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9781718802636

The Poetic Edda translated From the Icelandic with an introduction and notes by Henry Adams Bellows. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. Poetic Edda is the modern attribution for an unnamed collection of Old Norse anonymous poems, which is different from the Edda written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic medieval manuscript known as the Codex Regius. THERE is scarcely any literary work of great importance which has been less readily available for the general reader, or even for the serious student of literature, than the Poetic Edda. Translations have been far from numerous, and only in Germany has the complete work of translation been done in the full light of recent scholarship. In English the only versions were long the conspicuously inadequate one made by Thorpe, and published about half a century ago, and the unsatisfactory prose translations in Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale, reprinted in the Norroena collection. An excellent translation of the poems dealing with the gods, in verse and with critical and explanatory notes, made by Olive Bray, was, however, published by the Viking Club of London in 1908. A Collection of Old Norse Poems

The Poetic Edda - a Book That Inspired Tolkien

The Poetic Edda - a Book That Inspired Tolkien
Author:
Publisher: Leaves of Gold Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2018-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781925110043

THE POETIC EDDA - With Original Illustrations. A BOOK THAT INSPIRED TOLKIEN. Also contains the original Old Norse text, side by side with English translations. The Poetic Edda, also known as The Elder Edda, is a collection of thirty-four Icelandic poems, interwoven with prose, dating from the 9th century to the 12th. Professor J. R. R. Tolkien readily acknowledged his debt to this source. He was sixteen years old when the Viking Club of London published this beautifully illustrated translation by Olive Bray. Readers of Tolkien's work will easily spot his inspirations - the names of the dwarves in The Hobbit; riddle games; Mirkwood; the Paths of the Dead; an underworld creature being tricked into remaining above-ground until dawn, when sunlight turns him to stone; different races calling a single thing by various names, and more. The language is archaic, so for 21st century readers a glossary is provided at the back of this book, as well as an index of names to help identify all the characters. Bray's lengthy introduction has also been revised for modern readers, and some footnote citations omitted; all else remains as it was in Tolkien's time.Remarkably in Bray's edition, the original Icelandic text was included. This would have appealed to Tolkien, as a philologist. He must have relished comparing the English words with the Icelandic, page by page. Illustrator W. G. Collingwood was an English author, artist, antiquary and professor. In 1897 he travelled to Iceland where he spent three months exploring the actual sites that are the settings for the medieval Icelandic sagas. He produced a large number of sketches and watercolours during this time and published an illustrated account of his expedition in 1899. His study of Norse and Anglican archaeology made him widely recognized as a leading authority, and his Art Nouveau-style illustrations for the Bray edition are rich with symbolism. The Poetic Edda, the most important existing source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends, is part of the literature that influenced Tolkien's inner world, informing the creation of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Dating the Old Norse Poetic Edda

Dating the Old Norse Poetic Edda
Author: Christopher D. Sapp
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2022-06-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902725771X

This book offers new dating of the poems of the Old Norse Poetic Edda , perhaps our best sources about the mythology and legends of the Viking Age. This study compares the anonymous Eddic poems to dated skaldic poems with respect to five phenomena that develop diachronically in early Old Norse: the expletive particle of, types of negation, word order, types of relative clause, and metrical criteria. After examining these dating features individually, the three most reliable criteria—the particle of, negation, and relative clause type—are combined into a multifactorial analysis using a Naïve Bayes Classifier. The classifier assigns a date to each Eddic poem, and these proposed dates have interesting implications for our understanding of these texts as sources for the medieval history, mythology, linguistics, and literature of the Germanic peoples. This book will have broad interdisciplinary interest, not just to historical linguists and philologists but also to scholars of Norse history, literature, and mythology.

Revisiting the Poetic Edda

Revisiting the Poetic Edda
Author: Paul Acker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2013-06-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136227865

Bringing alive the dramatic poems of Old Norse heroic legend, this new collection offers accessible, ground-breaking and inspiring essays which introduce and analyse the exciting legends of the two doomed Helgis and their valkyrie lovers; the dragon-slayer Sigurðr; Brynhildr the implacable shield-maiden; tragic Guðrún and her children; Attila the Hun (from a Norse perspective!); and greedy King Fróði, whose name lives on in Tolkien’s Frodo. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to the poems for students, taking a number of fresh, theoretically-sophisticated and productive approaches to the poetry and its characters. Contributors bring to bear insights generated by comparative study, speech act and feminist theory, queer theory and psychoanalytic theory (among others) to raise new, probing questions about the heroic poetry and its reception. Each essay is accompanied by up-to-date lists of further reading and a contextualisation of the poems or texts discussed in critical history. Drawing on the latest international studies of the poems in their manuscript context, and written by experts in their individual fields, engaging with the texts in their original language and context, but presented with full translations, this companion volume to The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Mythology (Routledge, 2002) is accessible to students and illuminating for experts. Essays also examine the afterlife of the heroic poems in Norse legendary saga, late medieval Icelandic poetry, the nineteenth-century operas of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, and the recently published (posthumous) poem by Tolkien, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.

The Poetic Edda - Six Old Norse Cosmology Poems

The Poetic Edda - Six Old Norse Cosmology Poems
Author: Maria C. Kvilhaug
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2016-11-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781507620922

Six Edda poems presented in their original Old Norse text alongside a new translation and interpretation (as well as interpretations of mythical names and place names) by Maria Kvilhaug, author of The Seed of Yggdrasill - Deciphering the Hidden Messages in Old Norse Myths.

The Poetic Edda

The Poetic Edda
Author: Paul Acker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2002-02-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113660135X

This unique collection of essays applies significant critical approaches to the mythological poetry of the Poetic Edda, a principal source for Old Norse cosmography and the legends of Odin, Loki, and Thor. The volume also provides very useful introductions that sketch the critical history of the Eddas. By applying new theoretical approaches (feminist, structuralist, post-structuralist) to each of the major poems, this book yields a variety of powerful and convincing readings. Contributors to the collection are both young scholars and senior figures in the discipline, and are of varying nationalities (American, British, Australian, Scandinavian, and Icelandic), thus ensuring a range of interpretations from different corners of the scholarly community. The new translations included here make available for the first time to English speaking students the intriguing methodologies that are currently developing in Scandinavia. An essential collection of scholarship for any Old Norse course, The Poetic Edda will also be of interest to scholars of Indo-European myth, as well as those who study the theory of myth.