The dream-women in Gísla saga are subject to a dual representation: they are described once in the saga's prose, and once in the poetry embedded in it. Although these accounts differ considerably from one another, the compiler's interpretation of the poetic account has too often been taken at face value. When the dream-poetry of Gísla saga is studied in isolation from the prose, the juxtaposition of the two types of dream corresponds so closely to medieval Christian vision-literature that it may fruitfully be studied as a member of this tradition. Crucial formal elements of the dream-vision, however, are demonstrably vernacular northwestern-European material. Thus a blend of Christian and vernacular elements serves two motifs of warning: the death-warning follows a vernacular tradition, while the didactic message of what follows is given a Christian format.
One of the more conspicuous literary devices structurally employed throughout Egils saga resides in the depiction of the central family. Those of its members who receive focal attention are typically characterised as either dark, ugly, and unruly, or handsome, cheerful, and popular. However, a unifying characterisation of the family may also be discerned, in which all of its members are tall, strong, and proud, an identity that wins the family a mixture of success and trouble. While these two aspects of the family, its division and its unity, have received some deal of individual attention, their interplay merits a study of its own: it is where the two meet that the compiler’s purpose may be most clearly discerned. This paper examines the author’s aims in the juxtaposition, proposing that it represents an attempt to explain differences within the family with reference to a mixed ethnicity, signalled by the association of the darker half with tröll. This divided ancestry enabled the compiler to draw on a heroic past while salvaging a proto-Christian heritage for the Mýramenn of his own age.
None of the many claims that either Deor or The Wanderer has received formative influence from Boethius's De consolatione Philosophiae is without problems. In an analysis of concepts like fate and Providence as used in The Wanderer and the Latin and Old English redactions of the Consolatio, it becomes clear that Boethianism and medieval Western Christianity share a number of axioms that predict their agreement in such matters. However, the two also have differences by which their respective adherents may be told apart. When such differences are sought out in The Wanderer and Deor, it is found that both these poems convey messages essentially incompatible with the Boethian world–view. While the possibility of fragmentary borrowing cannot be excluded, neither poet reflects in his work the message at the heart of the Boethian Consolatio.
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The apparent mitigation of Eve's guilt in the Old English Genesis B has divided scholars into two camps. While some have proposed that the poet indeed wished to reduce her guilt, others have pointed out flaws in Eve's assessment of the situation, suggesting that Eve is in fact blamed for the Fall. This article argues that the poet emphasises both Eve's good intentions and the grave consequences of her actions, which double emphasis serves at least two objectives. A theoretical reason for this position is the Christianisation of Adam and Eve, who through the Harrowing of Hell have earned a place in the medieval theology of penance. This required that they should assume the attitude prerequisite to the forgiveness of sin, which involved some degree of Christian interpolation in the Hebrew narrative. A practical reason for the double emphasis is to use the first couple as a warning against sin and a paradigm for penitence, for the benefit of the medieval audience.
Discusses the state of the transition to a more fully computer-assisted field of humanities and the role therein of the digitisation of scholarship in general and the vision of the Septentrionalia project in particular.