Book dossier

Speaker and Authority in Old Norse Wisdom Poetry

by Brittany Erin Schorn

"While there is a long tradition of research into eddic poetry, including the poems classed as wisdom literature, much of this has approached the subject either as a primarily philological commentary or has addressed literary and thematic topics of individual or small groups of poems. This book offers a wide-ranging enquiry into the defining features of Old Norse wisdom, including the representation of wisdom in texts which cross traditional generic boundaries. It builds on recent advances in understanding of pre-Christian religion in Scandinavia, and calls on comparative and supporting work from several different disciplinary backgrounds (including literary theory, other medieval literatures and anthropology). Speaker and Authority interrogates important questions about the concept of knowledge, as well as its role in medieval Scandinavian society and its broader European cultural context"-- "Speaker and Authority is an analysis of wisdom as represented in traditional medieval Scandinavian poetry. Its focus is on how wisdom was gained and exchanged through adversarial dialogue, often between supernatural beings such as gods and giants. This study brings together material from across the whole corpus of eddic poetry to consider how this mode was adapted by medieval authors to Christian and other sapiential traditions"--