Calendar

Sif Ríkharðsdóttir: Pain, Emotion and Embodiment

This lecture will address the medieval concept of pain and its various manifestations in Old Norse literature. It will consider the relation between pain and ideological values, the physiological and psycho-somatic dimensions of pain and, ultimately, the function of pain as an emotion. In the lecture it will be suggested that in Old Norse literature pain is intimately interlinked with the notion of interior emotionality and its physical manifestations.

The lecture starts at 10:00 am.

Torfi H. Tulinius: Subjectivation and the sagas: the conflict of norms and its expression in medieval Icelandic literature

This lecture will explore the way medieval  Icelandic sagas stage their characters as an expression of a conflict of norms within the society which produced them, i.e. Iceland in the thirteenth century. Two contemporary sagas show how this conflict of norms is part of the reality facing chieftains in a society where they must use violence to preserve their power and protect themselves and their kinsmen, but where the fate of their souls is also at stake in a Christian world-view forcefully promoted by a militant Church. Two sagas of Icelanders are then studied in which this conflict of norms is thematized as one between Christianity and paganism. The conflict of norms in question is instrumental in generating an image of the self which is  generated by the forces in presence in medieval culture.

The lecture starts at 11:30 am.

The event is a part of the EHP-CZ-ICP-4-010 „Supporting threatened plurality: Medieval Languages and Literatures“ project.