Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 264

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Umsagnir um bœkur
Borrowing the term from Elaine Showalter, Helga Kress has employed it in an
earlier article without including it in NK. The idea is particularly attractive for
Old Norse studies because the physical reality of parchment is never far removed
from the printed text. Helga now applies it metaphorically to the Ingunn episode.
Rather than reinforcing her thesis, however, that the female literary voice was
suppressed by the dominant male culture, it undermines it and casts doubt on
her awareness of scholarship. She has chosen to read Jóns saga in Guðni Jónssons
edition of the two versions. This work has been of great service to people working
outside Iceland who may not have access to the older edition of Biskupa sögur
from 1858, but it is difficult to see why an Icelandic scholar should use it. Helga
may have preferred it because Guðni reverses the chronological sequence of the
two versions of Jóns saga. In contrast to the older edition, he claims that the longer
text which includes the Ingunn episode is older than the shorter in which it is
omitted. Arguing that the episode is a good example of uppskajningur (18), Helga
cites Guðni’s preface in a footnote (190, n. 12) but makes no reference to his
explicit admission that he is reversing the sequence from the older edition. She
has also chosen to ignore the scholarship since the 1950s which includes authors
such as Jón Helgason, Ole Widding, Peter Hallberg, and Peter Foote, who have
reinstated the older view that the longer version, including the Ingunn episode,
is later than the shorter without it. Since it is unlikely that Helga is unaware of
theseworks, heromission impugnsherscholarly integrity. In otherwords, Ingunn
is not a woman remembered by an ancient author for her knowledge of oral
tradition. Rather, she is included by a modern cleric for her Latin learning.
Perhaps he took special pride in uncovering a female pupil as learned as the
renowned Héloise. In contrast to the French woman, however, Ingunn had
received her training at a cathedral school whereas Héloise’s claim to fame
included the condition that she had not been able to obtain regular instrucdon
at the cathedral school in Paris.
The second passage concerns Helga’s interpretation of the term mansöngur.
Despite her assertion to the contrary, the Icelandic mansóngur is not related to
the German Minnesangdespite the attractiveness of the idea (MM 18-20). The
law code Grágás defmes mansöngur as erotic libel, a definition which is retained
by the passages in the sagas of Icelanders where the word also occurs. It is
nonetheless true that by the time of the rímur, mansöngurhad become a prefatory
love song often in the form of a lament, and thus was close to the German genre.
In all cases, however, the term identifies articulations by men. Only in the early
modern period did a few female poets compose mansöngur. Nonetheless, Helga
has chosen to focus on the only reference in the entire medieval literature, by
chance also found in Jóns saga helga, where women are said to be performing
mansöngsvísur whereas men engage in ‘amorous and obscene songs’ (Bs 237).
Since this passage occurs shortly before the Ingunn episode and within the
description of the cathedral school, it is likely that it also is influenced by the