Published by De Gruyter

Memory and the Medieval North

Edited by: Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, Stephen Mitchell and Lena Rohrbach

ISSN: 2699-7339

e-ISSN 2699-7347

Overview
Volumes

This series focuses on cultural memory studies in relation to the extensive and varied Nordic cultural goods from, and since, pre-modern times. Its interdisciplinary monographs and essay collections analyze the roles of memory, remembrance, commemoration, and other forms of anamnesis in, and deriving from, the Viking Age and the Middle Ages in Scandinavia. Volumes in the series often build on and extend the work of the international research network, "Memory and the Pre-Modern North" (http://premodern-memory.org/), whose members earlier published The Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches (2018).

Topics

Book 2022

Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas

Pernille Hermann

Volume 1 in this series

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This book brings together Old Norse-Icelandic literature and critical strategies of memory, and argues that some of the particularities of this vernacular textual tradition are explained by the fact that this literature derives from, represents, and incorporates into its designs mnemonic devices of different kinds. Even if Old Norse-Icelandic manuscript culture is relatively silent about the mnemonic context of the literature, the texts themselves exhibit multiple reminiscences of memory. By showing that this literature reveals glimpses of mnemonic technologies at the same time as it testifies to a cultural memory, this study demonstrates how ‘the past’, and narrative traditions about the past, were constructed in a dynamic relationship with ideas that existed at the time the texts were written. Moreover, the book deals with the function of memory in early book-culture, with metaphors of memory, and with mnemonic cues such as spatiality and visuality. With its new readings of canonical texts like the Íslendingasǫgur, the Prose Edda and selected eddic poems, as well as of less widely studied branches of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, such as the sagas of bishops and religious texts, this book will be of interest to Old Norse scholars and to scholars interested in medieval Scandinavia and memory studies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958
ISBN:: 9783110674958
ISBN:: 9783110675030
ISBN:: 9783110674842
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: 8th-15th Century
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Subject:: Literature of other Nations and Languages
Subject:: Scandinavian Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Memory and Remembering in Early Irish Literature

Beyond the Backward Look

Sarah Künzler

Volume 2 in this series

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Ireland possesses an early and exceptionally rich medieval vernacular tradition in which memory plays a key role. What attitudes to remembering and forgetting are expressed in secular early Irish texts? How do the texts conceptualise the past and what does this conceptualisation tell us about the present and future? Who mediates and validates different versions of the past and how is future remembrance guaranteed? This study approaches such questions through close readings of individual texts. It centres on three major aspects of medieval Irish memory culture: places and landscapes, the provision of information about the past by miraculously old eye-witnesses, and the personal, social and cultural impact of forgetting. The discussions shed light on the relationship between memory and forgetting and explore the connections between the past, present and future. This shows the fascinating spatio-temporal identity constructions in medieval Ireland and links the Irish texts to the broader European world. The monograph makes this rich literary sources available to an interdisciplinary audience and is of interest to both a general medievalist audience and those working in Cultural Memory Studies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110799132
ISBN:: 9783110799132
ISBN:: 9783110799224
ISBN:: 9783110799095
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Memory
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 8th-15th Century
Subject:: Literature of other Nations and Languages
Subject:: Indo-European Literature
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Memory
Publisher:: De Gruyter