This work includes the first complete translation of a 13th-century vernacular history of Norway from the ninth to the 12th centuries. This translation preserves many of the metrical features of this complex verse form, which are explained in the commentary.
Kirsten Wolf's annotated bibliographical survey of doctoral dissertations written at North American institutions of higher learning, and treating topics pertaining to Old Norse-Icelandic language, literature, and culture, provides a new tool for basic research. It also offers insight into trends and tendencies in scholarship within the field of Old Norse-Icelandic in the United States and Canada from the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the first doctoral dissertations in the field appeared, to late 1995. Specifically, it demonstrates a gradual shift from studies in language and style, firmly rooted in Germanic philology, to anthropological studies and literary analyses of individual works or themes. Author, director, and institution indices appear at the end of the volume. To facilitate research, Wolf provides a subject index that includes not only titles of works and proper names but also concepts.
First encounters are intense and often decisive moments both in life and literature. This study analyzes nineteenth-century French and German texts by comparing six representative scenes of first encounters and their implications. The close readings reveal how, while dealing with appearance, first encounters inevitably lead to deeper insights. The selected scenes show how the self is affected by the challenging appearance of the encountered other. Crucial psychoanalytic and epistemological issues are raised as well as new perspectives on major French and German texts.