Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T20:15:13.127Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Traditions of eddic scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2016

Joseph Harris
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Carolyne Larrington
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Judy Quinn
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Brittany Schorn
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

This chapter characterises some types of eddic scholarship as ‘traditions’ or ‘streams (of tradition)’. It is in no way a full history of scholarship on eddic poetry; but, because traditions everywhere in cultures represent similar phenomena flowing through history, the traditions of eddic scholarship treated here can, it is hoped, suggest the lineaments of such a history. And despite academia's emphasis on originality, tradition is a force in scholarship no less than in literature or culture in general. Possibly scholars are more aware of it even than poets – who famously suffer ‘the burden of the past’ – precisely because consciousness of our traditions is or should be an integral and conscious part of our practice. The vagueness of this vocabulary – rather than, for example, ‘schools’ or ‘foci’ – has the advantage that it obviously seeks to adumbrate rather than to offer sharp differences, and in this way reflects the borderlessness of actual thought. This chapter's contribution is itself part of a tradition – albeit a humble one – of surveys of scholarship, and some of the best of its antecedents (for example, Fidjestøl, cited just below) succeeded in giving their material a historical feeling by allowing underlying binaries to exert structural force. Fully appreciative of that heritage, I nevertheless seek to avoid such structure here. No survey can absorb all its predecessors, so it is still worthwhile reading surveys of various ages and emphases, even the oldest.

At present, the single work best representing the development of eddic scholarship is an unfinished posthumous book, The Dating of Eddic Poetry from 1999, written by the Norwegian scholar Bjarne Fidjestøl and saved for us after his premature death by his colleague Odd Einar Haugen. Although Fidjestøl's specific interest is dating, the problem of how to place these poems in time, his reading was so comprehensive and his analyses so fine that the book gives the best available picture of the development of studies in eddic poetry generally, even if only through the prism of dating. Anyone interested in a more comprehensive historical view of scholarship on eddic poetry would be advised to go next after this chapter to Fidjestøl's book.

Type
Chapter
Information
A Handbook to Eddic Poetry
Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia
, pp. 33 - 57
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×