Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson by Marlene Ciklamini
English | 1979 | ISBN: 0805763341 | 188 Pages | PDF | 17.4 MB
English | 1979 | ISBN: 0805763341 | 188 Pages | PDF | 17.4 MB
Snorri’s literary reputation rests primarily on his historic chron icle, Heimskringla, “Sagas of the Norwegian Kings,” and to a lesser extent on the charmingly told myths in his mythological handbook, the Prose Edda. Despite the recognition that Snorri is one of the most imaginative, resourceful, and skilled writers of the Middle Ages, there is no literary analysis of his work in English except for discrete studies in handbooks and journals necessarily limited in scope or in approach.
In general, studies devoted to Snorri’s work have had a utilitarian rather than an esthetic objective. Scholars have in vestigated the historicity of Heimskringla and have traced the transmission of narrative motives Snorri had culled from earlier sources, both extant and lost. There have been some signal exceptions, works by Sigurður Nordal, Hallvard Lie, and Siegfried Beyschlag, whose investigations are distinguished by a wider and inspiring purview. No single monograph written in recent years surpasses in depth of learning, literary observation, and broad interest the studies written by Nordal and Lie in the 1920s and 1930s.