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When "Tutelary Tales" (""Formynder-fortaellinger"") was first published in Denmark in 1964, a reviewer wrote, "If Danish were a global language, I believe "Tutelary Tales" would rapidly gain a world-wide audience." That is likely to happen now that Paula Hostrup-Jessen has translated into English this collection of striking short stories by Villy Sorensen, whose position as a leading Scandinavian writer was confirmed when he won the 1986 Swedish Academy Prize, know as the "Little Nobel." Unified...

A collection of original papaers on old Icelandic literature and its reception. Snorri Sturlson is one of the central Icelandic figures of the 12th and 13th centuries. These papers dicuss themes ranging from the problems of the manuscripts and their transmission through early reception accorded to Snorri in the 18th century.

This collection of essays spans Swedish literature from 1891 to 1991. It ranges from the works of Selma Lagerloef to that of Ingmar Bergman and Kerstin Ekman in the late-20th century, taking in such major figures as Hjalmar Bergman, Stig Dagerman and Lars Noren. Some essays deal with individual works, whereas others provide a broader perspective on the authors' writing. All of the essays have been specially commissioned for this volume, which provides a tribute to the lifelong work of Karin Peth...

Dubbed by the "New York Times" as "one of the most sought-after legal academics in the county," William Ian Miller presents the arcane worlds of the Old Norse studies in a way sure to attract the interest of a wide range of readers. "Bloodtaking and Peacemaking" delves beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses. Miller's unique and engaging readings of ancient Iceland's sagas and extensive legal code reconstruct and ill...

Norwegian author Alf Proysen's feisty little old Mrs Pepperpot appeared for the first time in print in 1955. Translated into well over twenty languages, the now classic Mrs Pepperpot stories have, so far, received surprisingly little critical attention. Empowering Transformations: Mrs Pepperpot Revisited fills that long over-due gap by providing a range of essays written by experts in the field. The volume explores Proysen's heroine in dialogue with recent theorising in order to broaden and deep...

Amalie Skram is a major nineteenth-century Norwegian novelist, whose novels vividly evoke both the atmosphere of her native town, Bergen, with its bustlinglife and its grinding poverty, and the battle of the sexes at a time when sexual morality was the subject of a great Nordic debate. Erik Skram is a Danish writer and journalist at the centre of the literary life of Copenhagen, embroiled in the political and cultural upheavals of his day. The letters they exchanged during the last two decades o...

Demonstrates that the emergence of Modernism in the Nordic literatures is closely related to, and inspired by, the modernizing works and movements in early 20th century Europe.

Gunnar Ekelof (1907-1968), poet and essayist, is widely regarded as one of the most original Scandinavian writers of the 20th century. Subtle and penetrative as his mature thought undoubtedly is, and shot through with cryptic allusions and esoteric overtones, he was nevertheless always concerned to try to temper his erudition in ways which would achieve a strong simplicity and directness of meaning. Taking his point of departure in his early years from the ideas and the aspirations of the French...

Ibsen's Drama: Right Action and Tragic Joy argues that in his late plays Ibsen struggled with, and finally repudiated the Aristotelian ideas of reality and change that held sway over the earlier part of his career, and more generally over nineteenth-century drama and culture. The first chapter analyzes Aristotle's Poetics, which centers on the classical relation of catharsis, rational agency, and intelligible change in human affairs. The second chapter presents Nietzsche's transformation of thos...

This is the first book in English to deal with the twin subjects of Old Norse poetry and the various vernacular treatises on native poetry that were a conspicuous feature of medieval intellectual life in Iceland and the Orkneys from the mid-twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Its aim is to give a clear description of the rich poetic tradition of early Scandinavia, particularly in Iceland, where it reached its zenith, and to demonstrate the social contexts that favoured poetic composition, from...

With original translations of primary texts and articles by leading researchers in the field, Sanctity in the North gives an introduction to the literary production associated with the cult of the saints in medieval Scandinavia. For more than five hundred years, Nordic clerics and laity venerated a host of saints through liturgical celebrations, written manuscripts, visual arts, and oral traditions. Textual evidence of this widespread and important aspect of medieval spirituality abounds. Writ...

When A Doll's House was first published in 1879 it created a sensation. The play follows the ordinary life of a housewife. Gradually the tensions within her marriage become clear and build to a final, stunning action. The play is widely studied because of its sharp critique of 19th century marriage norms, and its feminist tendencies.