Table of Contents

From Tradition to Literature in the Sagas (Theodore M Andersson); Orality harnessed with a quill in hand -- How to read written sagas from an oral culture (Gisli Sigurdsson); On the Possibility of an Oral Background for Gisla saga Surssonar (Tommy Danielsson); The oral-formulaic theory revisited (Minna Skafte Jensen); From vernacular interviews to Latin prose (Lars Boje Mortensen); Literacy in Medieval East-Central Europe -- Final prolegomena (Anna Adamska); Oral and Written Art Forms in Serbian Literature (Genres, Motifs, Heroes, Narrative Models, Style, Formulas, Interference, Transitional Forms) (Sonja Petrovic); 'Ealdgesagena worn' (a multitude of ancient stories) -- What the Old English 'Beowulf' tells us about Oral Art Forms (Graham D. Caie); The Scandinavian medieval ballad -- from oral tradition to written texts -- and back again (Olav Solberg); Apocalypse Now? The Draumkvaede as Visionary Literature (Jonas Wellendorf); The Eddic form and its contexts (Bernt Oyvind Thorvaldsen); What have we lost by writing? -- Cognitive archaisms in Scaldic poetry (Bergsveinn Birgisson); The dialogue between the audience and the text -- The variants in verse citations in Njals saga's manuscripts (Gudrun Nordal); Change between oratio tecta and oratio obliqua -- a sign for orality or literacy? (Ljubisa Rajic); Oral or scribal variations in Voluspa. A case study in Old Norse poetry (Else Mundal).

About the Author

Else Mundal is Professor of Old Norse philology at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bergen and is coeditor of multiple volumes, including Oral Art Forms and their Passage into writing, also published by Museum Tusculanum Press.

Reviews

"One of the ways in which literary scholarship has been energized during the past fifty years is through fieldwork investigating how oral art forms function in traditional societies. Another way has been through research into the residual impression of oral art forms in literature that is preserved in script or print. Oral Art Forms and their Passage into Writing carries the second of these discussions into new ground, highlighting many points of interest as it does so. ... a book that meets high scolarly standards thoughout. It seems to be almost free from typographical errors - a sign of the editorial care with which it was produced. Physically it is printed clearly on good paper in a volume that is well bound. In all these respects it compares favorably with equivalent books now being produced by British and North American university presses, sometimes at a higher price though not often with equal quality. The two co-editors and the Museum Tusculanum Press (of the University of Copenhagen) are to be congratulated for having produced a fine critical anthology, one that should stimulate much thought about the protean processes by which oral art forms and literary cultures intersect." - John D. Niles, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, July 2009