Voice is a fleeting physical phenomenon that leaves behind traces of its existence. Medieval literary voices offers a wide-reaching approach to the concept of literary voices, both the vanished authorial ones and the implicit textual ones. Its impressive lineup deepens our understanding of how literary voices evoke the elusive voices lurking beyond the text, capturing the absent authorial voice, the traces of scribal voices and the soundscape of the uttered text. It explores multiple dimensions of medieval voice and vocalisations, and the interactions between literary voices and their authorial, scribal and socio-political settings. It contends that through the theorizing of literary voices we can begin to understand the ways in which medieval voices mediate or proclaim an embodied selfhood or material presence, how they dictate or contest moral conventions, and how they create and sustain narrative soundscapes. -- .

The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature offers a new, inclusive, and comprehensive context to the study of medieval literature written in the English language from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Middle Ages. Utilising a Trans-European context, this volume includes essays from leading academics in the field across linguistic and geographic divides. Extending beyond the traditional scholarly discussions of insularity in relation to Middle English literature and 'isolationism', this volume: Oversees a variety of genres and topics, including cultural identity, insular borders, linguistic interactions, literary gateways, Middle English texts and traditions, and modern interpretations such as race, gender studies, ecocriticism, and postcolonialism. Draws on the combined extensive experience of teaching and research in medieval English and comparative literature within and outside of anglophone higher education and looks to the future of this fast-paced area of literary culture. Contains an indispensable section on theoretical approaches to the study of literary texts. This Companion provides the reader with practical insights into the methods and approaches that can be applied to medieval literature and serves as an important reference work for upper-level students and researchers working on English literature.

Captured here for the first time is the richness of the Charlemagne tradition in medieval Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Wales and Ireland and its coherence as a series of adaptations of Old French chansons de geste The reception of the Charlemagne legends among Nordic and Celtic communities in the Middle Ages is a shared story of transmission, translation, an exploration of national identity, and the celebration of imperialism. The articles brought together here capture for the first time the richness of the Charlemagne tradition in medieval Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Wales and Ireland and its coherence as a series of adaptations of Old French chansons de geste. Emerging from the French sources is a set of themes which unite the linguistically different Norse and Celtic Charlemagne traditions. The ideology of the Crusades, the dichotomy of Christian and heathen elements, the values of chivalry and the ideals of kingship are among the preoccupations common to both traditions. While processes of manuscript transmission are distinctive to each linguistic context, the essential function of the legends as explorations of political ideology, emotion, and social values creates unity across the language groups. From the Old Norse Karlamagnus saga to the Irish and Welsh narratives, the chapters present a coherent set of perspectives on the northern reception of the Charlemagne legends beyond the nation of England. Contributors: Massimiliano Bampi, Claudia Bornholdt, Aisling Byrne, Luciana Cordo Russo, Helen Fulton, Jon Paul Heyne, Susanne Kramarz-Bein, Erich Poppe, Annalee C. Rejhon, Sif Rikhardsdottir, Helene Tetrel.

An examination of what the translation of medieval French texts into different European languages can reveal about the differences between cultures. Throughout the Middle Ages, many Francophone texts - chansons de geste, medieval romance, works by Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France - were widely translated in north-western Europe. In the process, these texts were frequently transformed to reflect the new cultures in which they appeared. This book argues that such translations, prime sites for cultural movement and encounters, provide a rich opportunity to study linguistic and cultural identity both in and through time. Via a close comparison of a number of these texts, examining the various modifications made, and drawing on a number of critical discourses ranging from post-colonial criticism to translation theory, the author explores the complexities of cultural dialogue and dissent. This approach both recognises and foregrounds the complex matrix of influence, resistance and transformations within the languages and cultural traditions of medieval Europe, revealing the undercurrents of cultural conflict apparent in medieval textuality. SIF RIKHARDSDOTTIR is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland and Vice-Chair of the Institute ofResearch in Literature and Visual Arts.

An examination of what the translation of medieval French texts into different European languages can reveal about the differences between cultures. Throughout the Middle Ages, many Francophone texts - chansons de geste, medieval romance, works by Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France - were widely translated in north-western Europe. In the process, these texts were frequently transformed to reflect the new cultures in which they appeared. This book argues that such translations, prime sites for cultural movement and encounters, provide a rich opportunity to study linguistic and cultural identity both in and through time. Via a close comparison of a number of these texts, examining the various modifications made, and drawing on a number of critical discourses ranging from post-colonial criticism to translation theory, the author explores the complexities of cultural dialogue and dissent. This approach both recognises and foregrounds the complex matrix of influence, resistance and transformations within the languages and cultural traditions of medieval Europe, revealing the undercurrents of cultural conflict apparent in medieval textuality. Sif Rikhardsdottir is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland and Vice-Chair of the Institute ofResearch in Literature and Visual Arts.

A comprehensive guide to a crucial aspect of Old Norse literature. We cannot read literary works without making use of the concept of genre. In Old Norse studies, genre has been central to the categorisation, evaluation and understanding of medieval prose and poetry alike; yet its definition has been elusive and its implications often left unexplored. This volume opens up fundamental questions about Old Norse genre in theory and in practice. It offers an extensive range of theoretical approaches, investigating and critiquing current terms and situating its arguments within early Scandinavian and Icelandic oral-literary and manuscript contexts. It maps the ways in which genre and form engage with key thematic areas within the literary corpus,noting the different kinds of impact upon the genre system brought about by conversion to Christianity, the gradual adoption of European literary models, and social and cultural changes occurring in Scandinavian society. A case-study section probes both prototypical and hard-to-define cases, demonstrating the challenges that actual texts pose to genre theory in terms of hybridity, evolution and innovation. With an annotated taxonomy of Old Norse genres and an extensive bibliography, it is an indispensable resource for contemporary Old Norse-Icelandic literary studies.

Draws on Old Norse literary heritage to explore questions of emotion as both a literary motif and as a social phenomenon. Authors throughout history have relied on the emotional make-up of their readers and audiences to make sense of the behaviours and actions of fictive characters. But how can a narrative voice contained in a text evoke feelings that are ultimately never real or actual, but a figment of a text, a fictive reality created out of words? How does one reconcile interiority - a presumed modern conceptualisation - with medieval emotionality? The volume seeksto address these questions. It positions itself within the larger context of the history of emotion, offering a novel approach to the study of literary representations of emotionality and its staging through voice, performativityand narrative manipulation, probing how emotions are encoded in texts. The author argues that the deceptively laconic portrayal of emotion in the Icelandic sagas and other literature reveals an "emotive script" that favours reticence over expressivity and exposes a narrative convention of emotional subterfuge through narrative silences and the masking of emotion. Focusing on the ambivalent borders between prose and poetic language, she suggests that poeticvocalisation may provide a literary space within which emotive interiority can be expressed. The volume considers a wide range of Old Norse materials - from translated romances through Eddic poetry and Islendingasoegur (sagas of Icelanders) to indigenous romance. Sif Rikhardsdottir is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland and Vice-Chair of the Institute of Research in Literature and Visual Arts.