Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Magic and Kingship in Medieval Iceland: The Construction of a Discourse of Political Resistance

Magic and Kingship in Medieval Iceland: The Construction of a Discourse of Political Resistance

Meylan, Nicolas

Hardcover

Series: Studies in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, Book 3

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral Political ScienceScandinavian History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 2503551572
ISBN13: 9782503551579
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Published: Jul 22 2014
Pages: 243
Weight: 1.20
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.40
Language: English
This volume examines the performative and ideological functions of texts dealing with magic in contexts of social and political conflict. While the rites, representations, and agents of medieval Scandinavian magic have been the object of numerous studies, little attention has been given to magic as a discourse. As a consequence, Old Norse sources mobilizing magic have been analysed mainly as evidence for a stable extra-textual phenomenon. This volume breaks with this perspective.The book focuses on the use of discourses of magic in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Icelandic texts concerned with kingship. It is argued that Icelanders constructed magic as a discursive answer to the increasingly pressing question of how to deal with the reality of their subordination to kings. This they did by telling stories of flattering Icelandic successes over kings brought about by magic in a bid to challenge dominant definitions and the social and political status quo. The book thus follows the conditions of emergence that made these subversive discourses of magic meaningful; it describes the various forms they were given, the various constraints weighing upon their use, and the particular political goals they served.

Also in

Medieval & Renaissance History

View All