Gripla - 20.12.2007, Page 9

Gripla - 20.12.2007, Page 9
1 Based on a lecture given at the XIIIth International Saga Conference, Durham 6th-12th August 2006, which had the themes: “The Fantastic in Old Norse / Icelandic Literature” and “Sagas and the British Isles”. This article can be seen as supplementing my attempt at a general description of the genre of Íslendingasögur in my book from 1998, as well as an article of mine from 2007. MUCH has been written about the concept of the fantastic in literature (Todo- rov 1970/1975, Hume 1984, Jackson 1986). I shall use the word in a broad and – for me – conveniently vague sense in this attempt to survey a section of this field. Fantasy is indeed a necessary precondition for the creation and en- joyment of fiction, but it is also an intrinsic feature of all historical narrative and its interpretation. Nevertheless we tend to make a distinction between narratives characterized by fantasy and those supposed to be a ‘true’ imitation of the ‘real’ world. Obviously, images created by fantasy bear some relation to reality, that is to say, to experience, but they exaggerate, reverse and transform experience to such a degree that it may be hard to recognize for other people than their creators. However, since the basic conditions of human life and the workings of the human mind seem to be very deeply rooted in our culture, fantastic images are similar in different cultures, and within each culture cer- tain conventions are formed that help people to express their own fantasies and interpret the ones of others. Thus a certain kind of belief is created, belief in phenomena that cannot be experienced in the same concrete way as everyday experiences: belief in ghosts or revenants, giants or magicians, dwarfes and elves, in the ability of certain parts or aspects of the individual to leave the body and travel long distances, etc. For the present generation (most of its academics, anyway) such phenomena are easy to distinguish from our own experiences because we have not had them and do not believe in them, we consider them to be creations of the mind, fantasies or fantastic. It is or was more complicated to identify the fantastic in times when most people believed VÉSTEINN ÓLASON THE FANTASTIC ELEMENT IN FOURTEENTH CENTURY ÍSLENDINGASÖGUR A SURVEY1 Gripla XVIII (2007): 7–22.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Page 24
Page 25
Page 26
Page 27
Page 28
Page 29
Page 30
Page 31
Page 32
Page 33
Page 34
Page 35
Page 36
Page 37
Page 38
Page 39
Page 40
Page 41
Page 42
Page 43
Page 44
Page 45
Page 46
Page 47
Page 48
Page 49
Page 50
Page 51
Page 52
Page 53
Page 54
Page 55
Page 56
Page 57
Page 58
Page 59
Page 60
Page 61
Page 62
Page 63
Page 64
Page 65
Page 66
Page 67
Page 68
Page 69
Page 70
Page 71
Page 72
Page 73
Page 74
Page 75
Page 76
Page 77
Page 78
Page 79
Page 80
Page 81
Page 82
Page 83
Page 84
Page 85
Page 86
Page 87
Page 88
Page 89
Page 90
Page 91
Page 92
Page 93
Page 94
Page 95
Page 96
Page 97
Page 98
Page 99
Page 100
Page 101
Page 102
Page 103
Page 104
Page 105
Page 106
Page 107
Page 108
Page 109
Page 110
Page 111
Page 112
Page 113
Page 114
Page 115
Page 116
Page 117
Page 118
Page 119
Page 120
Page 121
Page 122
Page 123
Page 124
Page 125
Page 126
Page 127
Page 128
Page 129
Page 130
Page 131
Page 132
Page 133
Page 134
Page 135
Page 136
Page 137
Page 138
Page 139
Page 140
Page 141
Page 142
Page 143
Page 144
Page 145
Page 146
Page 147
Page 148
Page 149
Page 150
Page 151
Page 152
Page 153
Page 154
Page 155
Page 156
Page 157
Page 158
Page 159
Page 160
Page 161
Page 162
Page 163
Page 164
Page 165
Page 166
Page 167
Page 168
Page 169
Page 170
Page 171
Page 172
Page 173
Page 174
Page 175
Page 176
Page 177
Page 178
Page 179
Page 180
Page 181
Page 182
Page 183
Page 184
Page 185
Page 186
Page 187
Page 188
Page 189
Page 190
Page 191
Page 192
Page 193
Page 194
Page 195
Page 196
Page 197
Page 198
Page 199
Page 200
Page 201
Page 202
Page 203
Page 204
Page 205
Page 206
Page 207
Page 208
Page 209
Page 210

x

Gripla

Direct Links

If you want to link to this newspaper/magazine, please use these links:

Link to this newspaper/magazine: Gripla
https://timarit.is/publication/579

Link to this issue:

Link to this page:

Link to this article:

Please do not link directly to images or PDFs on Timarit.is as such URLs may change without warning. Please use the URLs provided above for linking to the website.