Giulia Guarienti - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Master's Graduate in Language Science and Germanic Philology
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Thesis Chapters by Giulia Guarienti
Master's degree Final Thesis, 2020
Verbal duels are fascinating phenomena which usually involve two or more opponents engaged in a b... more Verbal duels are fascinating phenomena which usually involve two or more opponents engaged in a battle of wits and quips. In literature, this trope allows the author to play with puns and double-entendres to showcase the characters’ intelligence, while offering us the readers interesting insight in a culture’s set of values and worldview. Although they are by no mean culture-specific, verbal duels assume particular forms in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, to the point of becoming distinct genres: the senna, the mannjafnaðr and the wisdom contest. All three have origins in poetry and are well represented in the Poetic Edda, but they also found their way into sagas. Some of the most interesting instances of verbal duels in saga literature appear in the so-called fornaldarsögur or “legendary sagas”, set mainly in Scandinavia before the colonisation of Iceland and the conversion to Christianity. The presence of these types of verbal duels helps to understand the connections between fornaldarsögur and eddic poetry, but also the way mythic-heroic themes from the pre-Christian tradition were re-elaborated in 13th- and 14th-century Iceland.
Master's degree Final Thesis, 2020
Verbal duels are fascinating phenomena which usually involve two or more opponents engaged in a b... more Verbal duels are fascinating phenomena which usually involve two or more opponents engaged in a battle of wits and quips. In literature, this trope allows the author to play with puns and double-entendres to showcase the characters’ intelligence, while offering us the readers interesting insight in a culture’s set of values and worldview. Although they are by no mean culture-specific, verbal duels assume particular forms in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, to the point of becoming distinct genres: the senna, the mannjafnaðr and the wisdom contest. All three have origins in poetry and are well represented in the Poetic Edda, but they also found their way into sagas. Some of the most interesting instances of verbal duels in saga literature appear in the so-called fornaldarsögur or “legendary sagas”, set mainly in Scandinavia before the colonisation of Iceland and the conversion to Christianity. The presence of these types of verbal duels helps to understand the connections between fornaldarsögur and eddic poetry, but also the way mythic-heroic themes from the pre-Christian tradition were re-elaborated in 13th- and 14th-century Iceland.