Introduction: Discourse in Old Norse Literature

Summary

This volume contributes to the understanding of the function and development of discourse in the medieval northern world by examining strategies of verbal exchanges in Old Norse literature. As Daniel Sävborg and Theodore M. Andersson have recently pointed out, despite the fact that dialogue makes up a key stylistic component and a significant percentage of saga content, no book-length scholarly work has been ventured on the importance of dialogue in the sagas since 1935. The literary analysis in the following pages addresses this gap in scholarship by attempting to understand the literary value of certain aspects of discourse that have been illuminated in recent years by the adjacent linguistic field of pragmatics. Pragmatics, broadly conceived, recognizesthat speakers rely upon cultural, situational, and interpersonal contexts to communicate meaning. It is often the case that these contexts facilitate an emergent type of meaning that goes beyond the obvious semantic and syntactical components of an utterance. In plainer terms, the words we say often do not match the meaning we intend to communicate: we may hedge, imply, deflect, obscure meaning to save face, or employ sarcasm to register an insult – always relying upon cultural and speech-situational context to communicate our meaning. If, as the study of pragmatics indicates, these linguistic phenomena are systematic, then the literature from any given linguistic community cannot be fully appreciated without also developing a thorough understanding of the pragmatic principles at play in the verbal exchanges therein. This volume argues, first, that Old Norse-Icelandic saga-writers employed a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of pragmatic principles even though Old Norse pragmatic principles may not reflect those evident in the modern world, and second, that the usage and understanding of those principles changed in the North as the cultural, political, and religious landscapes developed over time.

Chapter one of this volume elaborates on the foundational concepts of pragmatics most important to the subsequent analysis. This introductory chapter offers a discussion of the texts under consideration in this book and a deeper rationale for a literary analysis of Old Norse-Icelandic literature grounded in the linguistic study of pragmatics.