The Genesis of a Saga Narrative Verse and Prose in Kormaks Saga [Hardcover]

The origins of many of the Icelandic sagas have long been the subject of critical speculation and controversy. This book demonstrates that an investigation of the relationship between verse and prose in saga narrative can be used to reconstruct how the sagas were composed. O'Donoghue provides a detailed analysis ofKormaks saga, revealing that far from being a seamless narrative of either pre-Christian oral tradition or later medieval fiction, the work is in fact a patchwork of different kinds of literary materials.

A rare and therefore welcome book-length examination of those problems aboutKormaks sagawhich troubled Gudbrandur Vigfusson, Oxford's great late-Victorian Icelandic Icelandicist, a hundred years ago and which have troubled many scholars since....O'Donoghue writes with refreshing clarity, her alert and sensitive readings producing individual apercus in plenty. --Times Literary Supplement