An examination of what dialogues and direct speech in Old Norse
literature can convey and mean, beyond their immediate face-value.
The vast and diverse corpus of Old Norse literature preserves the
language spoken not only by the Vikings, kings, and heroes of
medieval Scandinavia but also by outlaws, missionaries, and
farmers. Scholars have long recognized that the wealth of verbal
exchanges in Old Norse sagas presents the modern reader with the
opportunity to speak face-to-face, as it were, with these great
voices of the past. However, despite the importance of verbal
exchanges in the sagas, there has been no book-length study of
discourse in Old Norse literature since 1935. This book meets the
need for such a study by offering a literary analysis based on the
adjacent field of pragmatic linguistics, which recognizes that
speakers often rely upon cultural, situational, and interpersonal
context to communicate their meaning. The resulting,
context-dependent meaning often deviates from the base semantic and
syntactical components of an utterance: speakers hedge, imply,
deflect to save face, or obscure meaning to damage an opponent's
self-worth. Saga writers, this book argues, were masters of this
type of indirectness in speech. It aims therefore to unlock the
depth and subtlety of discourse in Old Norse literature and to
leave readers with an understanding of how principles of pragmatics
were employed throughout the sagas. A wide body of Old Norse
materials is examined, including some of the best examples of
Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders), such as Brennu-Njáls
saga, Laxdœla saga, and Gísla saga Súrssonar, while also giving
due attention to Konungasögur (kings' sagas), fornaldarsögur
(legendary sagas), and other literature from the medieval North.
General
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