The project is an international collaborative research project with a team of scholars from the University of Iceland, University of Oxford, Utrecht University and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The main goal of the project is to explore the performance of emotion in medieval literature and the implications such performativity has for medieval selfhood and self-awareness in Northern Europe. The project combines a linguistic and literary approach to enable a more holistic understanding of textual emotions – as both linguistic and literary phenomena – and of how their staging may generate or mediate a sense of self.
The team
Sif Ríkharðsdóttir (PI) is Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature and Chair of the Institute of Research in Literature and Visual Arts at the University of Iceland. She is the author of Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse: The Movement of Texts in England, France and Scandinavia (2012) and Emotion in Old Norse: Translations, Voices, Contexts (2017). She has published widely on medieval European literature, most recently on literary emotionality and the history of emotion, cultural encounters, medieval romance, translation theory, literary history and world literature.
She is a series editor of Studies in Old Norse Literature (Boydell & Brewer) with Carolyne Larrington and recently published the essay collection A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre (2020) with two of the team members of the project, Carolyne Larrington and Massimiliano Bampi. She is currently working on a text edition of the Middle English romance Partonope of Blois, co-edited with David Lawton, and a co-edited volume on Charlemagne in the Norse and Celtic Worlds with Helen Fulton in connection with an international research project on Charlemagne in Europe (PI: Marianne Ailes) that was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
For further information see: http://uni.hi.is/sifr/
Carolyne Larrington is Professor of Medieval European Literature at the University of Oxford and an Official Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English at St John’s College. Her main research areas are Old Norse-Icelandic literature and European Arthurian literature, as well as medievalism topics. She has a particular interest in emotion in medieval literature and is currently writing a monograph on emotion in Middle English literature. Her most recent relevant book is Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature (2015), and she has published a number of articles on sibling and other kinds of emotion in Middle English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. In 2016 she was a Distinguished International Visitor at the Centre for the History of Emotions project at the University of Western Australia.
Frank Brandsma is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at Utrecht University. He is the co-ordinator of the English and bilingual programme in Literary Studies and also teaches in the UU-‘s Liberal Arts programme. His research focuses on narrative techniques in Arthurian romance in verse and prose around 1200, with special attention to the interlace structure, the presentation of spoken words, and the representation and transfer of emotions. With team member Carolyne Larrington and Corinne Saunders, he edited Emotions in Arthurian Romance: Mind – Body – Voice (Boydell & Brewer, 2015). He is currently working, with Bart Besamusca, on The Arthur of the Low Countries, in the series of handbooks published by the U of Wales Press. At the Huygens-ING institute in Amsterdam, he works on a digital edition of the final part of the Middle Dutch Lanceloet in the Lancelot Compilation.
Þórhallur Eyþórsson is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Iceland. His research focuses on historical linguistics, language variation and change, theoretical approaches to historical syntax, Indo-European linguistics, Old Germanic, Old Norse-Icelandic, Modern Icelandic and Faroese. He has held appointments in linguistics at multiple institutions, including Cornell University, Harvard University, the University of Manchester and the University of Oslo. He was the President of Íslenska málfræðifélagið (The Icelandic Linguistic Society) from 2015 to 2018 and has been the editor of the journal Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði (Icelandic Language and General Linguistics) since 2018. Select articles include: “Aldrnari,” Gripla 29 (2018), “Three daughters and a funeral: Re-reading the Tune inscription,” Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies 3 (2012), “Oblique subjects: a common Germanic inheritance,” Language 81 (2005). Recent books include the co-edited volume Approaches to Nordic and Germanic Poetry (2016).
Massimiliano Bampi is Associate Professor of Germanic Philology at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. He has authored articles and book chapters on a range of aspects of medieval Scandinavian literatures, with a special emphasis on the question of genre definition in saga literature, the reception of courtly literature in medieval Sweden and Denmark, and intertextual reading in medieval manuscripts. He is currently co-editing the volume A Critical Companion to Old Norse literary genre with Sif Ríkharðsdóttir and Carolyne Larrington (Boydell & Brewer) and an essay collection (with Anna Katharina Richter and Regina Jucknies) entitled The Eufemiaviser and the Reception of Courtly Culture in Late Medieval Denmark, which will submitted to the series Beiträge zur Nordischen Philologie (Tübingen-Basel). He is a member of the research programme Modes of Modification. Variation and Change in Medieval Manuscript Culture (funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond), in which he investigates the dynamics of texts and genres in manuscript transmission in medieval Scandinavia.
Timothy Bourns is an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Department of English Language and Literatures and a gestafræðimaður (visiting research fellow) at the University of Iceland’s Institute of Literature and Visual Arts. He was previously the project’s postdoctoral researcher, based at the University of Iceland, from September 2019 to August 2021. In February 2018 he completed his doctorate in English at St John’s College, University of Oxford. His thesis demonstrated how animals and humans are interconnected in Old Norse literature, revealing how the categories of ‘animal’ and ‘human’ are both constructed and challenged in a variety of ways. While at Oxford, he also worked as a Lecturer in Old and Middle English, a Sub-Dean at St Edmund Hall, and a Mythology and Folklore Consultant for English Heritage. His current research interests include Old Norse-Icelandic, Arthurian Romance, and Chaucer; he is examining animal and non-human emotionality, ecological metaphors for human emotions, the emotional effects of different environments, material selfhood, and the affective force of objects – expanding emotion studies beyond the human.
Caroline R. Batten is an Icelandic Research Fund Postdoctoral Fellow, based at the School of Humanities at the University of Iceland. She completed her doctorate in English literature at the University of Oxford in 2020, where she also served as Stipendiary Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at St Edmund Hall and Trinity College. She earned her BA in English literature from Swarthmore College, and an M.Phil in English literature (650-1550) from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the body, gender, and medicine in Old English and Old Norse literature, with a particular emphasis on medical magic, and has appeared in Scandinavian Studies, JEGP, Medium Ævum, and Review of English Studies, among other publications. Her doctoral thesis is the first complete metrical, stylistic, and literary study of the twelve Old English metrical charms, and her work at the University of Iceland will examine the interplay between bodily illness and somatic emotional expression in the Old Norse medical corpus and the Íslendingasögur.
Meritxell Risco de la Torre (mrd4@hi.is) is the project’s doctoral student. She holds a BA in Modern Languages and Literature (German and English) from the University of Barcelona and an MA in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies from the University of Iceland. For her MA thesis, completed in May 2019, she analysed the plot of Laxdæla saga in terms of its narrative development through the depiction of emotions and emotional display. The aim of the analysis was to argue that the emotional world of the central character, Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, is essential to both the narrative development and its circular narrative disposition. Her doctoral research project seeks to examine different topoi of emotive performativity and their linguistic and literary features in a cross-generic dimension. The overall aim is to assess whether there is a connection between the manner in which emotion is performed and the gender of the characters in several genres, and what the implications of gender-bound performances may be for the concept of selfhood.
Bridget C. Leary is one of the project’s MA students. She holds a BA in Classics from University College London and is currently working on her MA thesis for the Viking and Medieval Norse Studies programme at the University of Iceland. Her thesis will analyse emotionality in the poem Sonatorrek when removed from the narrative of Egils saga in which it is now typically embedded. Her work will compare emotive scripting in the poem with other examples from the thirteenth-century emotive canon, and use the resulting evaluation as an inroad into the controversy around the date of the poem’s original composition. Her overall aim is to assess the implications that placing the poem’s composition in a thirteenth-century context would have for understandings of medieval self and identity both constructed (through the poem) and revealed (through the process of construction).
Maximillian Jesiolowski is an MA student in the Viking and Medieval Norse Studies program at the University of Iceland and holds a bachelor’s degree in Archaeology and Ancient History from Monash University in Australia, with minors in Music and History. For his MA thesis, he aims to examine emotional states and communal and individual identities in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar and how these concepts are reflected in the portrayal of landscape and natural environment in the saga.
Conferences & Workshops
The project hosted two workshops that were intended to provide a venue to foster a dialogue across particular linguistic and geographic regions. The first workshop was held in Utrecht in November 2019 and the second, held online, was hosted by St John’s College, University of Oxford. A third symposium on the interactive nature of emotion and genre was held in Venice, hosted by Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice in September 2022 (postponed from the previous autumn). The series of workshops and events culminated in a final conference that was held at the University of Iceland 25-27 May 2022, where both workshop participants and scholars from around the world gathered together to discuss emotion and selfhood in medieval literature and culture.
Final conference – University of Iceland & National Museum of Iceland. 25-27 May 2022
The final conference was hosted by the University of Iceland and held in the National Museum of Iceland. Scholars from the US, Europe and Australia gathered together to discuss and debate the representations of emotion and selfhood across a broad range of medieval sources and a multitude of European vernaculars. The conference programme can be found here: Emotion and Self-Programme.
Emotion & Genre, International Symposium, Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice. 22-23 September 2022
The international symposium on ´Emotion & Genre’ formed part of the final work package of the project, with a focus on the intersection and interaction of emotion (as a phenomenon) and genre (as a literary framework and modality). The symposium was hosted by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and formed part of a collaboration between the project on ‘Emotion and the Medieval Self’ and the research project ‘Modes of Modification: Variance and Change in Medieval Manuscript Culture’.
Workshop 2 – St John’s College, Oxford. 25-26 March 2021
The second workshop, initially slated for March 2020, was finally held online and hosted by St John’s College, University of Oxford. Textual discussion was divided into three sections: French, English, and Celtic (Welsh, Irish, and Scots). The project once again invited experts, from junior to senior scholars, to explore the performance of emotion and medieval selfhood. A full report on the second workshop can be found here.
Workshop 1 – Utrecht University. 13-15 November 2019
The first workshop was generously hosted by Utrecht University and encompassed the Germanic cultural realm, including Scandinavia, medieval Flanders, Germany and the Lowland territories. The project invited experts, from junior to senior scholars, to debate questions of terminology, approaches and the concept of literary emotions. A full report on the first workshop can be found here.
Output
Carolyne Larrington, ‘”This was a sodeyn love”: Ladies Fall in Love in Medieval Romance´, Essays on Medieval Romance and Arthurian Literature Presented to Elizabeth Archibald, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 93-110
Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, ‘Poetic Sensorium and Aesthetic Objectification in the Middle English Pearl’, Exemplaria 32.4 (2020), 283-303. Eprint link: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2IWY6ZS2HSDT5PXCBD4G/full?target=10.1080/10412573.2020.1846311
Timothy Bourns, ‘Blood, Rain, and Tears: Eco-Emotive Metaphor in the Medieval North’, Cultural Models for Emotions in the North Atlantic Vernaculars: 700-1400, ed. by Javier Díaz Vera, Teodoro Manrique Antón, and Edel Porter (Brepols, forthcoming)
Timothy Bourns, ‘Trees in the Saga Dreamscape’, Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies, ed. Reinhard Hennig, Emily Lethbridge, and Michael Shulte (Brepols, forthcoming)
Timothy Bourns, ‘Driftwood and the Divine: Ecocritical Readings of trémenn’, Eco-Norse: Essays on Old Norse Literature and the Environment, ed. by Timothy Bourns and Carl Phelpstead (Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, in progress)
Presentations:
‘Human-Tree Hybridity and Arborescent Emotionality in Norse Myth and Legend’, Aarhus Old Norse Mythology Conference, ‘Hybrids and Metamorphoses’, Charles University in Prague, 24-26 November 2022 (Timothy Bourns)
‘Animal Emotionality in Norse Myth, Saga, and Romance’, ONORS, University of Oxford, 15 November 2022 (Timothy Bourns)
‘The Performative Face in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar’, Visages perturbés / Disturbed Faces / Verstörte Gesichter, International Conference, University of Geneva, 3-5 November 2022 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Emoting femininity and masculinity in Partonopeu de Blois and its translations’, Late Antique and Medieval Postgraduate Seminar at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 10 October 2022 (Meritxell Risco de la Torre)
‘Emotion as Generic Marker’, Medieval Emotion & Genre, Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, 22-23 September 2022 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘En þat þickir mer askorta er ek se þik eigi: Emotions, Gender, and the Body in the Old Norse Translation of Partonopeu de Blois’, 18th International Saga Conference: Sagas in the Circum-Baltic Arena, Helsinki and Tallinn, 7-14 August 2022 (Meritxell Risco de la Torre)
‘Emotion and the Medieval Self: Roundtable’, Emotion and the Medieval Self Conference, University of Iceland, 25-27 May 2022 (Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington, Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Illness, Emotion, and the Embodied Self in the Old Norse Textual Tradition’, Emotion and the Medieval Self Conference, University of Iceland, 25-27 May 2022 (Caroline Batten)
‘Feline Feelings: Animal Emotionality and the Lions of Yvain‘, Emotion and the Medieval Self Conference, University of Iceland, 25-27 May 2022 (Timothy Bourns)
‘”De voix femmenine”: Jean d’Arra´s Mélusine and the Prevalence of Self through Voice and Emotive Display’, Emotion and the Medieval Self Conference, University of Iceland, 25-27 May 2022 (Meritxell Risco de la Torre)
‘The Emotional Environment of the Old Norse World’, Conference of the Medieval Association of the Pacific, ‘The Natural World’, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 21-24 April 2022 (Timothy Bourns)
‘Warrior Women and Maiden-kings: Gender Fluidity and Trans-Identity in Medieval Iceland’, poster presentation, 11th University of Iceland Student Conference, The Medieval North, 7-9 April 2022 (Bridget Catherine Leary with Ema Grey Bushnell)
‘Emotions and the Environment in Medieval Icelandic Literature’, Environmental Humanities Discussion Group at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan), 17 March 2022 (Timothy Bourns)
‘The Syntax of Sorrow: The Syntactic Characteristics of Some Verbs of Emotion in Old Icelandic’, Annual Congress of the Humanities, University of Iceland 11-12 March 2022 (Þórhallur Eyþórsson)
‘Pain and Emotionality in Old Norse Literature’, Annual Congress of the Humanities, University of Iceland 11-12 March 2022 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Illness, Embodied Emotion, and Old Norse Medicine’, Annual Congress of the Humanities, University of Iceland 11-12 March 2022 (Caroline Batten)
‘Hybridising Emotion: Selfhood and Emotionality in Jean d’Arras’s Mélusine ou la Noble Histoire de Lusignan’, Annual Congress of the Humanities, University of Iceland 11-12 March 2022 (Meritxell Risco de la Torre)
‘Þeim var ek verst er ek unna mest: The Concept of Love in Old Norse Literature’, Keynote at Love and Emotions in Old Norse Literature: Patterns, Formulae, Reality, University of Tartu, 27-29 January 2022 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Secular Love – ást’, Saga Emotions Workshop, University of Oxford, Oxford, 27-29 September 2021 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Pain, Love and the Embodiment of Emotion in Old Norse Literature’, invited to present at the University of Gothenburg, 22 April 2021 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Blood, Rain, and Tears: Eco-Emotive Metaphor in the Medieval North’, presented at the Contributors Workshop for Cultural Models for Emotions in the North Atlantic Vernaculars, 700-1400, University of Castilla La Mancha, 8 April 2021 (Timothy Bourns)
‘Gender Rules / Gender Roles: Sex, Emotions, and Power in Partalopa saga and La Historia de L’Esforçat Cavaller Partinobles’, presented at the 14th Interdisciplinary Aarhus Student Symposium on Viking and Medieval Scandinavian Subjects, 24-26 March 2021 (Meritxell Risco de la Torre)
‘Sorg og sársauki í Íslendingasögunum’ (‘Pain and Sorrow in the Icelandic Sagas’), invited to present at the Annual Meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association, 18-22 January 2021 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Non-Human Emotion in Old Norse Literature’, presented at the Modern Language Association Convention in Toronto, 7-10 January 2021 (Timothy Bourns)
‘El Yo, el cuerpo y las emociones en el Roman de Silence’ (‘Self, Body, and Emotion in the Roman de Silence’), presented at the 2nd Congreso de Jóvenes Investigadores JIMENA (CJIJ), ‘El Cuerpo en el Medievo’ (‘The Body in the Middle Ages’), Complutense University of Madrid, 30 November – 2 December 2020 (Meritxell Risco de la Torre)
‘Trees in the Saga Dreamscape’, presented at the Fourth Workshop of the Ecocritical Network for Scandinavian Studies (ENSCAN), ‘Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies’, University of Agder, 26-27 November 2020 (Timothy Bourns)
‘Pain, Emotion and Embodiment in Old Norse Literature’, invited to present at the Old Norse in Oxford Research Seminar, University of Oxford, 24 November 2020 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘The Animals of Óðinn’, invited to present at the Postgraduate Old Norse Religions Seminar, University of Iceland, 18 February 2020 (Timothy Bourns)
‘Dream-Animals in Medieval Iceland’, presented at the Island Dynamics conference ‘DREAMS’ in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, 12-16 January 2020 (Timothy Bourns)
‘Driftwood and the Divine: Ecocritical Readings of trémenn’, invited to present at the Miðaldastofa Lecture Series, University of Iceland, 28 November 2019 (Timothy Bourns)
‘Emotion, Genre and Style in Medieval Literature’, Keynote Panel at ‘Codici e confine: Quando migrano culture e testi’, Università degli Studi di Trento, 20-21 November 2019 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir & Massimiliano Bampi)
‘Embodied Emotion: Love and Pain in Old Norse Literature’, invited to present at the University of Oslo, 23 September 2019 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘Pain, Emotion and Embodiment in Old Norse Literature’, Annual Guest Speaker by invitation, Conférence universitaire de Suisse occidentale, Universitè de Genève, 22 May 2019 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
‘The Poetic Sensorium and Form in the Middle English Pearl’, invited to present at Arizona State University, 11 April 2019 (Sif Ríkharðsdóttir)
