Hrafnkel or the Ambiguities
Hard Cases, Hard Choices
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 5 January 2017
- ISBN 9780198793038
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages280 pages
- Size 240x166x21 mm
- Weight 552 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
William Ian Miller presents a close reading of one of the best known of the Icelandic sagas, showing its moral, political, and psychological sophistication. His account of this complex and nuanced saga corrects simplistic readings which have governed interpretation of the saga in the past.
MoreLong description:
William Ian Miller presents a close reading of one of the best known of the Icelandic sagas, showing its moral, political, and psychological sophistication. Hrafnkel tells of a fairly simple feud in which a man rises, falls, and rises again with a vengeance, so to speak. The saga deals with complex issues with finely layered irony: who can one justifiably hit, when, and by what means? It does this with cool nuance, also taking on matters of torture and pain-infliction as a means of generating fellow-feeling. How does one measure pain and humiliation so as to get even, to get back to equal? People are forced to set prices on things we tell ourselves soporifically are priceless, such as esteem, dignity, life itself. Morality no less than legal remedy involves price-setting. This book flies in the face of all the previous critical literature which, with very few exceptions, imposes simplistic readings on the saga. A translation of the saga is provided as an appendix.
It is difficult to fault [Miller's] dedication to reading [the saga] with such a fine-toothed comb that he manages, against the odds, to say something new about a saga about which so much has been said before.
Table of Contents:
Note to Readers
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Genealogies
Part I: Introduction
A Somewhat Querulous Introduction: Hrafnkel and the Critics
Of Names and Manageability
Part II. Economic, Social, and Geological Context
The Saga's Economics (ch. 14)
New-found Land and Setting up Households (chs. 1-2)
III. Horse, Vow, and Killing
Freysgo?i, Frey, and Freyfaxi
The Ójafna?arma?r (the 'unevenman')
Sam, Einar, Hrafnkel (chs 3-6)
Freyfaxi and Hrafnkel: More on the Vow and its Price (chs 5-6)
Hrafnkel's Offer (ch. 7)
Thorbjorn's Rejection (ch. 7 cont.)
IV. Lawsuit ab ovo to 'Final' Settlement
Mustering Support and Going Public (ch. 7 cont.)
The Lawsuit: Preparatory Stages (chs 8-9)
Thorkel's Homily on Fellow-feeling and Commensurating Pain (ch. 10)
The trial (chs 11-12)
Hanging Upside-down and Sam's Self-judgment (ch. 13)
Farewell Freyfaxi and Frey (chs 15-16)
The 'True' Nature of Hrafnkel's Transformation (ch. 16)
V. Six Years Later
Eyvind Returns; a Gri?kona Takes Over (ch. 17)
Who in Hell Are We Rooting For? (ch. 18)
Hrafnkel's Judgment and Justification (ch. 19)
Sam's Last Gasp (ch. 20)
Sam and Morpheus: What Counts as Taking a Turn
Conclusion: Hard cases, hard choices
Appendices
A. Hrafnkels saga Freysgo?i, translation of MS ÁM 156, fol.
B. Glossary of Norse Terms
Works Cited
A.1 Hrafnkels saga, editions and translations consulted
A.2 Norse sources and translations
B. Secondary Works
Maps
Index
