The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga by Margaret Clunies Ross

Author:Margaret Clunies Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6 Saga mode, style and point of view

An example of prosimetrum: Kormáks saga, Chapter 6

Literary and cultural background

The analysis

Valla-Ljóts saga, Chapter 4

Literary and cultural background

The analysis

Brennu-Njáls saga, Chapter 157

Literary and cultural background

The analysis

rvar-Odds saga, Chapter 42

Literary and cultural background

The analysis

Conclusion

This chapter will explore the nature of the saga's modality and present it as a modally mixed genre, although conceding that some sub-genres are less mixed than others. It will demonstrate, with selected examples, that such a mixed modality is well suited to the world-view of medieval Icelanders and enabled saga authors to present their material as historically plausible, while at the same time accommodating perspectives on human experience and the natural world that modern readers would classify as fantastic or supernatural. The chapter will also explore the implications of mixed modality for saga style generally, with a close analysis of selected examples. A special aspect of the saga's mixed modality is the prosimetrical character of many, but by no means all, sagas. This important dimension of the Icelandic saga will be investigated here, as will the role of verse in sagas, a subject on which much has recently been written.

Throughout this book, the medieval Icelandic saga is treated as a specific literary genre within which a number of sub-genres can be distinguished. It was conceded in Chapter 2 that some characteristics of the saga genre are shared with other medieval literary kinds, like hagiography, for example, but there are still enough characteristics that are distinctive to the saga to allow us to recognise it with confidence as a unique literary genre or kind. At this point in our analysis it will be helpful to identify the nature of the term ‘literary mode’ and to establish how this concept can aid us in understanding some of the characteristics of saga literature that cannot be fully comprehended within a purely generic or structural analysis. Literary modes exist within a variety of external forms, as, for example, when a novel is described as ‘comic’. This particular modal designation can be applied to a number of literary forms, dramatic, narrative or operatic. Thus, in the case of the Icelandic saga, its generic identity determines characteristics of its form, including such qualities as structure, setting, characterisation and narrative character, while its mode gives the genre its distinction of mood, its approach to the relationship between possibility and actuality as depicted in the saga world. Most modern studies of the Icelandic saga have neglected the genre's literary mode and have consequently been ill at ease with the combination of modalities sagas often display.

In earlier publications I have argued that Icelandic sagas often display a ‘mixed modality’, by which I meant that sagas switch more easily between a realistic and a non-realistic mode than much modern writing has done, especially before the advent of postmodernist literary genres. Thus I have argued that the saga form is characterised by multiple modalities, that is, modes of writing that present different dimensions of represented experience. There are very few examples of individual sagas that are uni-modal.

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