EBOOK Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga

Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga is the first book to investigate        both the relation between gender and violence in the Old Norse Poetic Edda and key        family and contemporary sagas, and the interrelated nature of these genres.          Beginning with an analysis of eddaic attitudes to heroic violence and its gendered        nature through the figures of Gurn and Helgi, the study        broadens out to the whole poetic compilation and how the past (and particularly        themythological past) inflects the heroic present. This paves the way for a        consideration of the comparable relationship between the heroic poems themselves and        later reworkings of them or allusions to them in the family and contemporary sagas.          The book's thematic concentration on gender/sexuality and violence, and itsgeneric        concentration on Poetic Edda and later texts which rework or allude to it, enable a        diverse but coherent exploration of both key and neglected Norse texts and the way        in which their authors display a dual fascination with and rejection of heroic        vengeance.