Gripla - 20.12.2016, Page 98

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much stylistically in common with the core of the genre, except its happy
ending, does seem to have had some influence on other scholars. thus
Martin arnold’s work The Post-Classical Icelandic Family Saga does not
consider Þórðar saga hreðu, even though the other sagas addressed in his
work are all found in Íslenzk fornrit volume 14. this silence is not neces-
sarily because arnold considers Þórðar saga hreðu to be a classical saga; it
simply does not fit into the intentionally subversive and ironic framework
he proposes to be the definitive characteristic of the “post-classical” genre.
the latest scholarship has therefore, ironically, dismissed Þórðar saga hreðu
from the one sub-genre it used to belong to. In what follows, I will discuss
why this saga in its complete form might best be thought of as a regional
saga, a sub-genre in need of more robust theoretical consideration.
3. Genres
assigning a genre or subgenre to a particular Íslendingasaga is a com-
plicated effort. Generic conventions change and drift over the length of
time between the development of a saga from an oral anecdote, through
an immanent saga,19 and into a written form, plus later emendations and
changes to that text as artistic styles evolve.20 Generic classification is
also complicated by the fact that a saga about the same character or events
may be treated utilizing different generic frames by different traditions of
transmission (either oral or written), which means a saga given the same
name, but carried in divergent variants and versions, could be working in
differing generic modes.
and unlike other literary fields where production information and au-
thorship are known, generic distinctions in saga studies carry an additional
complexity: they have had to be used as a proxy indicator of age, or at least
relative age, an exercise undertaken for instance by theodore andersson.21
19 Carol Clover, “the Long Prose form,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 101 (1986): 10–39.
20 Lars Lonnröth, “the transformation of Literary Genres in Iceland from orality to Lite-
racy,” in Scandinavia and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages: Papers of the 12th International
Saga Conference, Bonn/Germany, 28th July—2nd August 2003, edited by Rudolf Simek et al.,
341–344 (Bonn: Hausdruckerei der universität Bonn, 2003).
21 Theodore Andersson, The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Saga: 1180–1280 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2006).